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Three-time Stanley Cup Champion coach Joel Quenneville still requires clearance from the National Hockey League, but it is starting to look like he'll be back behind a bench next season, according to TSN Hockey Insider Darren Dreger.
“Joel Quenneville hasn’t been officially cleared by the NHL. A formal interview request will likely encourage the commissioners approval. With existing coaching vacancies and speculation around the NYR, Quenneville’s return to a bench is a strong possibility,” Dreger wrote on Tuesday morning.
The New York Rangers lost in Game 7 to the New Jersey Devils on Monday night, and there are rumors that coach Gerard Gallant could be removed as the team's head coach this offseason.
Quenneville resigned as the head coach of the Florida Panthers in the fall of 2021, following the Chicago Blackhawks saga from 2010 that involved the team mishandling allegations of sexual abuse by an assistant coach in 2020.
The team won the Stanley Cup that season and the sexual abuse was largely swept under the rug, per TSN. Quenneville was the head coach in Chicago when the abuse occurred, and thus stepped down from his role when details were fully revealed 11 years later.
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“There's nothing currently happening with Joel,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said last May when asked if the former coach had approached him about potential reinstatement into the league, per TSN. “And if and when there's a real conversation to be had, then I'll focus on it at the time.”
“I assume it'd be initiated by Joel, if and when he thinks it's the appropriate time and he feels that he's ready to come back and there's an opportunity. But again, I'll have to make an evaluation at that time.”
It looks like that time has come, and following clearance from Bettman and the NHL, Quenneville will be eligible to coach behind a bench again in 2023-24.
Joel Quenneville is the second-winningest coach in NHL history with 969 victories; that trails only Scotty Bowman's 1,244.
