It’s time for Todd Nelson to get another crack as an NHL head coach

It’s almost hard to believe it’s been a decade since Todd Nelson was behind an NHL bench as a head coach.

His tenure in doing so was short, lasting just 51 games coaching the Edmonton Oilers in the 2014-15 season, when he replaced a fired Dallas Eakins. The team had sputtered under Eakins’ tutelage in his second season in Edmonton, lasting all of 31 games that year in which he coached the team to a 7-19-5 record and a .306 points percentage.

While Nelson didn’t fare too much better — a 17-25-9 record and a .422 points percentage — it was a noticeable enough increase that it caught the eye of many who thought he should’ve gotten a crack at the full-time job. After all, Nelson already had a wealth of coaching experience dating back to the early 2000s when he got his first coaching job as the AHL Grand Rapid Griffins’ assistant coach in 2002.

Nelson would bounce between gigs for the next number of years, spending three years as the UHL Muskegon Fury’s head coach — winning back-to-back championships in his first two years — the AHL Chicago Wolves’ assistant coach for two years and as an assistant coach of the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers for another pair of seasons.

It was in 2010 when he arrived in the Oilers organization as the head coach of their then AHL affiliate Oklahoma City Barons, coaching 333 games over four and a half seasons, winning 176 of them and posting an impressive .598 points percentage over his tenure, despite the team not having much playoff success.

Despite that, there were a number of players who came through their ranks that would play NHL games for the Oilers, including the likes of Teemu Hartikainen, Liam Reddox, Linus Omark, Jeff Petry, Marc Arcobello, Magnus Paajarvi, Tyler Pitlick, Anton Lander, Iiro Pakarinen, Jujhar Khaira, Laurent Brossoit, and Oscar Klefbom. He even got his hands on the likes of Jordan Eberle, Justin Schultz, Taylor Hall, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, all of whom played for the Barons during the NHL lockout.

There is, of course, varying levels of success for most of these players, but if you omit the aforementioned four NHL’ers, the other group of players played 1,769 games for the Edmonton Oilers over years, scoring 158 goals and 506 points. Sure, they were largely depth players, but having a system that could develop depth players who could play NHL minutes was important.

After Nelson was passed over for the Oilers’ full-time job for Todd McLellan — an understandable choice — he wanted to be a head coach and would return to Grand Rapids for a trio of seasons, winning a league championship in his second year, before spending four years between 2018 and 2022 as the Dallas Stars’ assistant coach.

Unable to land another NHL job when the Stars moved on from Rick Bowness as their bench boss, he returned to the American League where he’s helped turn the Hershey Bears into an absolute powerhouse. They’ve won back-to-back AHL titles in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and his Bears are looking to three-peat this season, currently up 1-0 in the Atlantic Division finals over the Charlotte Checkers.

In early May before the coaching carousel started to turn, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli highlighted how Nelson was due for another shot.

It’s borderline bizarre that Nelson hasn’t landed a full-time NHL head coaching gig given his nearly unparalleled success at the AHL level. Since a 51-game run as Oilers interim coach in 2015, Nelson has won three Calder Cups – including one in Grand Rapids and two more back-to-back last year in Hershey. Yes, the Bears stock their AHL roster a little bit differently, but he’s also won two UHL titles. Nelson, 55, has also spent seven years as an NHL assistant. Maybe this is the year?

Seravalli’s right: it is borderline bizarre that no team has offered up a head coaching job to Nelson. Was the stink of the Oilers’ Decade of Darkness that rank that teams are overlooking all the success he’s had since departing the organization, or has the fact that as teams look to hire their head coach before the summer kicks off they’ve overlooked Nelson because his team has continued deep runs?

Either way, with head coaching vacancies still in Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Seattle, one has to wonder if any of these teams are eyeing him up as an option.