6/20: Philadelphia has made Reirden’s appointment official. They also announced they’ll be hiring Dylan Crawford to an assistant role as well. Crawford spent the last seven years in various video coaching positions across the NHL – first spending three years as an assistant video coach in Chicago, then getting promoted to head video coach for one year, and most recently continuing to serve the last three years as head video coach for the Vancouver Canucks. The 35-year-old Crawford’s move to assistant coach will mark the next big step in his young coaching career.
6/19: The Flyers have “made progress” toward hiring former Capitals head coach Todd Reirden to complete Rick Tocchet’s staff of assistants, reports Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff.
Reirden, 54 later this month, is the third and final assistant hire for the Flyers this offseason, concluding what’s been a complete staff turnover aside from goaltending coach Kim Dillabaugh. He’s likely geared as a replacement for former associate coach Brad Shaw, who took over as interim head coach in the final days of the season after John Tortorella’s firing but finished as the runner-up to Tocchet in their head coaching search several weeks ago. He’ll presumably manage the club’s defense group while new assistants Jaroslav Svejkovský and Jay Varady, whose hirings were announced earlier this month, will handle other duties.
Reirden, a former NHL defenseman himself, has spent his entire coaching career in the Metropolitan Division, mostly with the Penguins. He landed his first professional job there as an AHL assistant for the 2008-09 season but was promptly promoted to head coach when the Pens brought Dan Bylsma up from the minors to coach the NHL club en route to the 2009 Stanley Cup. Reirden spent one full season as head coach in WBS before being promoted again to an assistant role on the NHL bench in 2010. He spent four years in the role before being fired alongside Bylsma in the 2014 offseason.
The Illinois native was quickly scooped up by the Capitals to serve as an assistant on Barry Trotz’s staff, and he was named their head coach four years later when Trotz departed the organization following their Stanley Cup victory in 2018. Reirden compiled an 89-46-16 (.642) record in two seasons behind the Washington bench before being fired following the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Reirden then returned to Pittsburgh, where he again served as an associate coach under Mike Sullivan from 2020-21 until the former’s dismissal last year. While both he and Tocchet share a former employer with the Pens, their tenures didn’t overlap there. Nonetheless, he’ll get his next NHL job after not coaching at all during the 2024-25 season.