It’s official, the Pittsburgh Penguins have a new head coach. And it’s someone almost none of us saw coming.
Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas named Dan Muse the 23rd head coach in team history Wednesday afternoon. Muse, 42, was most recently an assistant coach with the New York Rangers.
So, in a way, the Penguins and Rangers traded coaches, with Mike Sullivan taking the vacant head coaching gig in New York, and Muse coming to take charge in Pittsburgh.
Muse was not named in much of the reporting about the team’s coaching search. Mitch Love, an assistant coach with the Washington Capitals, was long considered the front runner for the job. DJ Smith, former head coach of the Ottawa Senators and assistant coach in Toronto during Dubas’ time there, was also often mentioned.
But no, it’s Muse.
Prior to coming to Pittsburgh, Muse was on the Rangers’ bench for two years, serving under head coach Peter Laviolette. In his first season there, New York won the President’s Trophy and went on a run to the Eastern Conference Finals. That group’s second season, 2024-25, didn’t go nearly as well.
But team success doesn’t seem to be the top priority for the Penguins next season. That’s part of the reason why Dubas was looking at names like Love; now is the perfect opportunity to hire and up-and-comer like Muse. The team needs someone who can develop their younger talent and help them further establish themselves at the NHL level.
Dubas praised Muse’s ability to develop players, which will be a key element during the next few years of Penguins hockey.
“During this process, we met with many candidates who we felt would have been a fit as the next head coach of the Penguins,” Dubas said in the team’s press release. “But ultimately, Dan Muse stood out as the best choice. What separated Dan was his ability to develop players, win at all levels where he has been a head coach and his consistent success coaching special teams in the NHL.
“From his success in developing college and junior players, to his impactful work with veteran players during his time in the NHL, Dan has shown a proven ability to connect with players at all stages of their careers and help them to reach their potential.”
Muse also has experience running successful special teams units, which the Penguins could certainly benefit from.
During his first gig in the NHL, Muse was an assistant on the bench in Nashville from 2017 to 2020, where he oversaw Nashville’s penalty kill, which ranked fourth overall in the NHL over his two full seasons with the team. While the special teams jobs will likely fall to the assistants under Muse, having someone who has excelled in running a penalty kill is always a plus.
Look, I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about this man. He was kept pretty under wraps by the Penguins during this coaching search. He was the ultimate sleeper pick.
Time will tell how effective Muse can be behind the bench with the Penguins. The bar for him in his first go-around is pretty low. In all likelihood, Muse won’t be the head coach during the team’s next full window of contention. His job is just to deliver the Penguins to that point.
Can he help further the youth movement in Pittsburgh? Can he elevate the level of young prospects like Rugter McGroarty, Ville Koivunen, and Owen Pickering? Can he simply do the best with what he is given? Those are the things his performance will be judged on, far more than his win-loss record will be.
But my favorite thing about this hire is simple: it’s someone new.
The NHL has such an annoying habit of recycling head coaches. The coaching carousel in this league consists of about 36 guys, who flip flop around teams, and organizations so rarely go outside of that group to find that next coach. For the Penguins, they avoided that recycled method.
They didn’t go with Smith, who in my view would not have been a good fit for this team. They didn’t go with Jay Woodcroft, who is a decent coach but probably not the fit for this stage of the Penguins.
They brought someone new into the inner circle, and this was the perfect time for it.
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