The Calgary Flames have a new coaching group for the 2017-18 season, with Bill Peters at the head. Today, the team announced that Geoff Ward and Ryan Huska have been hired as Peters’ assistants.
Ward had spent the last three seasons with the New Jersey Devils, but had interviewed for the Flames head coaching job in 2016 before the team eventually hired Glen Gulutzan. The 56-year old will likely be in charge of fixing the team’s powerplay, a unit that ended up 28th in the league last season with just a 16% success rate. With players like Johnny Gaudreau and Dougie Hamilton that number should easily be much higher, and Ward will be tasked with developing the new strategy.
Huska on the other hand is a homegrown coaching talent that had been the head coach of the Stockton Heat/Adirondack Flames for the past four years. The 42-year old was a third-round pick by the Chicago Blackhawks in 1993, but ended up playing just a single NHL game in his short career. After finding great success in the WHL as the coach of the Kelowna Rockets, the AHL was a tougher assignment. Huska will end his AHL coaching career (for now) with a 135-118-27 record, and only one playoff appearance (that ended in first round exit).
He’ll be asked to run the penalty kill this season and help the defensemen, though Peters is obviously expected to also be a big part of fixing the Flames blue line. Going into the season Calgary looked to have one of the deepest and most talented defensive groups in the NHL, but many failed to live up to expectations and struggled to find any consistency. Peters has been known for some time as a defensive guru, though his results on that front are far from conclusive during his days in Carolina. That will be the key to turning everything around in Calgary, and it starts with Huska who will step in to a group that needs to live up to expectations in 2018-19.