The Winnipeg Jets have fired head coach Claude Noel and assistant coach Perry Pearn.
The Jets also announce that they have Hired Paul Maurice as Noel’s replecement behind the bench.
The Jets were coming off their fifth straight loss, a 6-3 loss at home to the Columbus Blue Jackets. The team sits in 12th place in the NHL’s Western Conference with a 19-23-5 record. He is 80-79-18 over his two and a half seasons coaching the Jets, and 90-87-24 in his NHL career.
Now in their third season in Winnipeg, it was hoped that the Jets would be able to take a step forward after narrowly missing the playoffs the last two years. With the move to the tougher Western Conference that simply hasn’t happened and so with the team currently mired in a slump, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff has made the decisions that the struggles have cost Noel and Pearn their jobs.
The job of turning around the Jets fortunes now falls to veteran head coach Paul Maurice, who last coached the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2010-11 season. Maurice who has also coached the Toronto Maple Leafs and Hartford Whalers, has a career 460-457-99 (ties)-68 record as an NHL head coach. Maurice was working as part of TSN’s hockey panel during their national broadcasts.
Noel is the third NHL coach to be fired this season, following the firings of Peter Laviolette in Philadelphia, and Kevin Dineen in Florida.
The Jets job was Noel’s second head coaching job in the NHL, as he served 24 games as the interim head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2009-10 season, following the firing of then Jackets head coach Ken Hitchcock. He was also the head coach of the AHL’s Manitoba Moose in the 2010-11 season, and earlier with the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals.
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