While the Wings are no doubt watching the Stanley Cup Final and hopefully taking notes about the contributions being made by the youth on the Penguins who were given a chance this season, there are other pressing matters for them to attend to. Most noticeably, the Wings still have yet to replace Pat Ferschweiler behind their bench as the assistant coach in charge of the forwards and the power play.
If you’ll remember, Ferschweiler will remain with the club, but as an “eye in the sky” assistant.
We’ve already covered that the Red Wings have talked to former Minnesota Wild interim head coach John Torchetti, but the search to fill the role of the guy next to Doug Houda behind head coach Jeff Blashill continues. Today, we’ve got another candidate in recently-fired Ottawa Senators head coach Dave Cameron. Here’s the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch reporting:
While there are no guarantees, and it isn’t known where he stands, the former Ottawa Senators coach was given permission to speak with the Detroit Red Wings about an assistant’s job with Jeff Blashill and may have met with them not long after returning from the world championship.
Garrioch continues:
Since being fired by the Senators in April, the 58-year-old Cameron knows it’s going to be difficult for him to get back behind a bench in a head coaching role. There is belief in league circles he’s open to the idea of going back to the American Hockey League or even junior.
Cameron filling the role of the power play coach would be kind of odd, as during his tenure with the Senators, they were ranked 26th in the NHL at power play efficiency and were 25th in power play goal differential with just 35.
It would be especially odd for Cameron to take the role of the assistant coach in charge of the forwards as well, considering he came from a team whose best defenseman outscored anybody else by more than 20 points.
I’m guessing this is a case of the Red Wings leaving no stone unturned during their search and seeing what kind of perspectives they can get during the hiring process. The piece about Cameron being open to working in lower leagues is also intriguing. I don’t think the Red Wings would be looking to bring Todd Nelson up to coach behind Blashill, but in all honesty, if the Red Wings are going to hire Dave Cameron for something, I’d rather they do that then put him behind their bench.
Former Columbus head coach Todd Richards is still considered by most of the diggers to be the front-runner for this still-open coaching position, but we’ve yet to hear about the status with him. I expect the Wings will want to have this hire done by mid-month one way or another.
