SAN JOSE — The San Jose Sharks are in the final stages of their search for a new head coach but there remains no firm timeline for having someone in place, a source indicated Wednesday.
The number of finalists the Sharks have for the job has not been revealed. The final stage could be quick or take a while, the source said.
Sharks’ general manager Mike Grier recently said on one of the team’s podcasts, “The Undercurrent with Tara Slone,” that he hoped to hire a coach before the NHL Draft near the end of this month, specifically to get their input on the free agent decisions the team will have to make.
The draft runs June 28-29, and the first day of unrestricted free agency is July 1. The Sharks remain the NHL’s only team without a head coach.
“It’s been good. The people we’ve talked to all have interviewed well,” Grier said on the podcast. “The candidates, we feel really, really happy with and strongly that they’ll be able to help nurture our young group.”
The Sharks began their search for their 11th full-time head coach shortly after former bench boss David Quinn was fired by Grier on April 24 after the team finished with a league-worst 19-54-9 record this past season.
Grier said he had modest expectations, at best, for the 2023-24 season after trading both forward Timo Meier, one of the team’s leading scorers, and three-time Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson. Still, he felt the team needed a new voice after Quinn had been on the job for two years.
Quinn had one year remaining on his Sharks contract when he was let go, but he was officially hired by the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday to be an assistant coach on Mike Sullivan’s staff.
“It was obviously a tough decision. Quinny I go back 20 something years,” said Grier, who, like Quinn, and Sullivan, is Boston University alum.
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Reported leading candidates include 36-year-old Ryan Warsofsky, an assistant on Quinn’s staff for the past two years, and former Sharks forward Marco Sturm, 45, who has coached the Los Angeles Kings’ AHL affiliate for the past two years. Neither has been an NHL head coach before.
This Sharks’ coaching search contrasts with the one two years ago that led to Quinn’s hiring. Roughly three weeks after Grier was hired to be San Jose’s GM in June 2022, Quinn, who had three years of experience as an NHL head coach with the New York Rangers from 2018-2021, was brought aboard.