The Athletic’s Max Bultman spoke with former Arizona Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet and former Arizona Coyotes forward Conor Garland (now a 52-point-scorer with the Vancouver Canucks) regarding the work of former Arizona Coyotes assistant/Tuscon Roadrunners coach Jay Varady.
The Red Wings hired Varady to be one of Derek Lalonde’s assistants behind the Red Wings’ bench this upcoming season, and Bultman discusses Varady’s hands-on approach this morning:
Detroit had only carried two on-bench assistant coaches since 2020, when Adam Nightingale left the Red Wings for the U.S. NTDP and was not replaced, but now is going back to a deeper bench under first-year coach Derek Lalonde. After hiring associate coach Bob Boughner and goaltending coach Alex Westlund during the NHL Draft, Varady is the latest piece of a staff that Lalonde envisions as a collaborative unit, sharing special teams assignments between them to get more eyes and minds on each task.
And certainly, one of the biggest areas of emphasis for Detroit will be improving a penalty kill that last season ranked as the worst in the league.
Tocchet’s staff was similarly collaboratively-driven, but Varady was relied upon there to helm a unit that had been a top-five PK in the NHL under Tocchet — but had also just lost their three most-trusted forwards (based on time-on-ice) from that unit: Derek Stepan, Brad Richardson and Michael Grabner. And as Tocchet recalls, replacing them got off to a rocky start.
But Varady and fellow assistant coach Cory Stillman helped the Coyotes right the ship, and by year’s end, buoyed the PK back to being a fringe-top-10 unit again.
“Jay did a hell of a job,” Tocchet said last week. “He didn’t waver. Sometimes, when things don’t go your way, you panic a little bit. He didn’t panic.”
Continued (paywall)
