Maple Leafs make surprising head coach move
Jay Woodcroft is one of the front runners to coach the Toronto Maple Leafs next season, per Frank Seravalli, with interviews this week.
The report dropped Wednesday afternoon. Woodcroft is scheduled to meet with Toronto's brass over Zoom in the coming days.
He's not the only name in the mix. Seravalli reports up to 20 candidates have already been interviewed with widely varying experience.
That's a swath, not a shortlist. The Leafs are casting a massive net after a 32-36-14 season that landed them 28th overall in the league.
Toronto finished with a -46 goal differential and limped to the finish line on a seven-game losing streak. That's the job Woodcroft is applying for.
He's also reportedly fresh off an interview with the Los Angeles Kings last week. The Kings already hired D.J. Smith back on March 1, so that ship has sailed.
Either way, Seravalli calls him a solid bet to be an NHL head coach again next season. The market for experienced bench bosses isn't deep this summer.
Woodcroft pitch lands in front of a roster that bled 299 goals
So what is Woodcroft actually walking into if Toronto picks him? A bottom-five defensive group and a top six that ran a minus rating across the board.
William Nylander finished with 79 points but a -14 rating. Auston Matthews managed 53 points in 60 games at a -4 rating. Matthew Knies posted a -30.
Even the depth pieces struggled. Max Domi went minus-29. John Tavares took a -28 in his age-35 season. Every regular forward in the top nine finished underwater.
Want a reminder of how rough the road got? Toronto went 2-7-1 over its final 10 games. That's not the look of a roster a few tweaks away from contention.
The 28th-place finish overall is the hill the next coach has to climb. Whoever gets it inherits a $13.25 million center, a $11.5 million winger, and a defensive structure that allowed 3.6 goals per game.
Seravalli adds that Leafs brass will regroup next week at the Draft Combine in Buffalo, then move to in-person interviews with a small handful of finalists the week after.
That's the runway. Zoom this week, Combine next, in-person finals after that. The Toronto job won't drag deep into June if this timeline holds.
Read the full Seravalli post here:
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Woodcroft has done this before. He coached the Edmonton Oilers from 2022 until his dismissal in November 2023. He's seen what a top-heavy roster looks like up close.
The question now is whether Toronto wants the familiar voice or one of the 19 other names. Twenty interviews is a lot of doors to open. It's also a lot of doors to close.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 26, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Gabriel Landeskog | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Cole Smith | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mark Stone | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Dylan Coghlan | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nic Dowd | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nazem Kadri | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Brayden McNabb | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Martin Necas | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Shea Theodore | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | - | - | |
| Mackenzie Blackwood | - | - | - | |
| Brent Burns | - | - | - | |
| Ross Colton | - | - | - | |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | - | - | - | |
| Jack Drury | - | - | - | |
| Jack Eichel | - | - | - | |
| Noah Hanifin | - | - | - | |
| Carter Hart | - | - | - | |
| Tomas Hertl | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||