Three years ago, Andrew Brunette wasn’t even in coaching. A year ago, he still wasn’t quite sure whether being a head coach was even what he wanted.
When he took over as the interim coach of the Florida Panthers in the first month of the 2021-22 NHL season, he took the same wait-and-see approach the Panthers did. It was a big ask to step in for Joel Quenneville and take over the reins of the best team in the NHL — Quenneville, with his three Stanley Cups, was hard to replace and the Panthers still hadn’t lost — and Brunette and Florida were open to the idea he might just be a placeholder until Bill Zito found a long-term solution.
Even though it technically never became anything more than temporary, Brunette stayed in charge for the full season, guided the Panthers to their first Presidents’ Trophy and their first postseason series victory since the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs, and even became a finalist for the Jack Adams Award.
Temporary still might just be temporary. Florida’s season has been done for more than a week, and neither Brunette nor Zito have provided any indication of where the coach will be next year.
“We’re going to take a little bit of time here,” Zito said Wednesday. “We’re going to let all the emotions just settle, and we’re going to make a thorough and rational call, go through a decision-making process and we’re going to come to conclusions for the right reasons.”
Said Brunette: “I don’t know what it’s going to be. Everybody’s got to pretty much dissect the situation, and take a few days and reflect on where we went wrong, how we can be better as an organization, as a coach, as players.”
On Thursday, Brunette could be named the NHL’s coach of the year — the league will announce the Adams Award winner Thursday and Brunette is one of three finalists, along with New York Rangers coach Gerard Gallant and Calgary Flames coach Darryl Sutter — and it still wouldn’t guarantee he’s leading the Panthers next season.
Even after a record-setting regular season and only the second first-round win in franchise history, Florida ended its season in unacceptable fashion. The Panthers still haven’t won a game in the second round of the Cup playoffs since 1996 after the rival Tampa Bay Lightning swept them 4-0 last month.
Along the way, Florida’s historically great offense collapsed — the Panthers went from averaging 4.11 goals per game in the regular season to 2.3 in the playoffs — and its power play went 1 of 31 overall.
As one of Quenneville’s assistant coaches for more than two years, Brunette coached Florida’s forwards and ran its power play. He bears added responsibility for what went wrong in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs and immediately expressed regret for his handling of the power play in the aftermath of Florida’s season-ending 2-0 loss to the Lightning last week in Tampa.
“I take a lot of the blame for the power play. That was my fault. It should be better, has to be better. I’m disappointed in myself for that,” he said. “I don’t know if I trusted too much that we were going to turn it around. That one—I’ll kick myself all summer. It already caused me sleepless nights. It might cause me a sleepless summer.”
At the same time, this season was, by any measure, one of the two best in Panthers history and Brunette deserves credit, too.
Above all else, Brunette’s handling of Florida’s early season turmoil was masterful. After Quenneville resigned after just seven games amid revelations about his involvement in the Chicago Blackhawks’ mishandling of a 2010 sexual-assault allegation, the Panthers still posted the third-best record in the league across their final 75 regular-season games and set a franchise record by winning 13 in a row in the spring.
A lot of Brunette’s success, of course, came from keeping Quenneville’s structures intact, in particular the liberal usage of defensemen on offense and the aggressive forecheck.
In the regular season, there was no better course of action than maintaining what worked. In the postseason, the lack of adjustments, however, caught up with Florida, and keeping Brunette would mean an internal confidence he learns from his maiden postseason and is even better in his first full season.
“It was a really tough situation to come in in the middle of the season, especially when you’re not expecting any changes or anything, and then take over like he did, stay calm, calm the group down and just be himself,” star center Aleksander Barkov said Wednesday. “He knows a lot about hockey and there’s always things that he wants to get better at, and you can see it.”
Still, there’s a fair argument to be made that this isn’t a situation where a coach should be learning on the job. Even though their core is made up of mid-20s skaters, the Panthers are a Cup contender and the window could close a bit after next year if Florida can’t extend All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau.
If the Panthers opt for experience, plenty of Cup-winning coaches are available, including Barry Trotz, Claude Julien, Dan Bylsma, John Tortorella, Mike Babcock, Marc Crawford and Quenneville.
Although Brunette said he still needs to discuss with his wife, he also said he “of course” wants to coach Florida next season.
“I love this team, but I understand the business and it is what it is,” Brunette said. “What I did is on the table and it’s what they want to do going forward, and I understand either side of the equation, but it was a fun ride and I enjoyed every moment of it.”
