Mike Van Ryn To Step Away From Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs will have to fill another hole on the bench. Assistant coach Mike Van Ryn is not expected to return to the club after three years behind the Leafs’ bench per Leafs Nation’s Nick Alberga. Van Ryn moved to the Maple Leafs after a five-year stint with the St. Louis Blues in 2023. He was joined by Blues’ head coach Craig Berube in 2024, who he served behind for the next two seasons. Van Ryn will now step away with Berube replaced as Toronto’s head coach.

Van Ryn played through eight seasons and 353 games in the NHL prior to his coaching career. He was a bruising defender who finished his career with 27 games with Toronto in 2008-09. His coaching career began in the OHL and AHL through the 2010s, ahead of his first NHL role as an Arizona Coyotes’ development coach in 2016. Van Ryn found his way to the Blues bench in 2018-19, just in time to join the club in a run to their first Stanley Cup win.

Van Ryn has only served as head coach for one pro season – overseeing the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners for the 2017-18 season. He led the club to the top of the AHL’s Pacific Division but ultimately lost in the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs. He will likely find his way into another NHL assistant coach role when he’s ready for a move. Having already coached with Toronto and St. Louis, the only team from his playing days that Van Ryn hasn’t rejoined behind the bench are the Florida Panthers, who he played with from 2003 to 2008.

The Panthers do not currently have any bench vacancies, leaving Van Ryn as a candidate to follow Berube to his next spot, or branch out on his own for the first time in seven years. He is a strong defense coach who oversaw a wide array of talent behind the Blues and Maple Leafs benches.