Nearly a month after agreeing to become the Wild’s 5th head coach in history Bruce Boudreau has selected former Devil and open-ice demon Scott Stevens as an assistant coach.
The #MNWild hired Hall of Famer Scott Stevens as an assistant coach on Bruce Boudreau‘s staff.
— Chad Graff (@ChadGraff) June 7, 2016
Spending parts of three seasons as an assistant for the New Jersey Devils in addition to teaming up with Adam Oates as a co-coach for most of the third in 2014-15, he spent his tenure working with the defense, a position he excelled at for 22 NHL seasons as a player. He will reprise his role on Boudreau’s staff in addition to working on the penalty kill, a unit that finished 27th in the League this past season at 77.9%, and has finished in the bottom five twice in the past three seasons after finishing first in 2014-15. He’ll work with a core that includes the steady Ryan Suter, Jared Spurgeon, and Marco Scandella in the top four and some interesting young blue liners in Jonas Brodin, Mike Reilly and Mathew Dumba who are 22, 22, and 21 respectively. It will be interesting to see what philosophy Stevens brings to a defense that loved to be active under Mike Yeo and his staff. Boudreau-coached teams have finished in the top-15 in penalty killing five times, with two top-2 finishes including the 1st overall unit this past season with Anaheim.
Scott Stevens will be qualified as the first asst, will run D and penalty kill. Scott Niedermayer called Boudreau on Stevens behalf #mnwild
— Michael Russo (@Russostrib) June 7, 2016
The now-52-year old Stevens has spent this past season working at the NHL Network as a studio analyst. Before his coaching days, the 2007 Hockey Hall of Fame Inductee was busy logging 1,635 NHL contests (2nd all-time among defensemen) and putting up 908 points in the process (12th all-time among defensemen). He tallied 118 more in the postseason, capturing three Stanley Cups (1995, 2000, 2003) and the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2000. His 2785 career penalty minutes rank fourth all-time, and he is best known for his open-ice takedowns of unlucky victims such as Eric Lindros and Paul Kariya.
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