Joel Quenneville will be hired as head coach of the Ducks d’Anaheim, league sources indicated to Athletics THURSDAY. Quenneville, triple champion of the Stanley Cup as a chief coach, has been out of the NHL since 2021, when the League determined that Quenneville had an “inadequate response” to allegations of sexual assault within the Chicago Blackhawks when he was team coach.
The Ducks should present Quenneville on Thursday at a press conference at 1 p.m. PT. The news of Quenneville’s hiring was reported for the first time by Darren Dreger de TSN.
Quenneville, 66, ranks second in NHL coaches with 969 regular season wins. He recently trained the Florida Panthers of 2019-21, but resigned after a meeting with Commissioner Gary Bettman concerning his role in the Blackhawks scandal, in which former player Kyle Beach allegedly alleged that he had been sexually assaulted by the way in which the video coach of Chicago Brad Aldrich in 2010. Chicago has failed to contact allegations correctly.
Bettman later announced that Quenneville, then the director general of the Blackhawks, Stan Bowman, and the director of Chicago, Al Macisaac, who all left their roles in 2021 – should meet him before returning to the NHL. All three were reintegrated on July 1 and Bowman was hired as Director General of Edmonton’s Oilers this month, but Quenneville stayed on the sidelines.
According to league sources, the Ducks have carried out “an in -depth exam in the last two weeks of the Kyle Beach affair” and will approach their conclusions later Thursday when the rental is officially announced.
In 2023, a second player – identified only as “John Doe” – filed a complaint against the Blackhawks, saying that the team had not played during the 2010 eliminatory series when he was informed of allegations of sexual assault against Aldrich.
In a press release, the lawyers of Romanucci & Blandin, the company representing this second player, said:
“We are deeply disturbed to hear about the hiring of the coach Q by another NHL team this week, despite his complicity in the Blackhawks clubhouse concerning the sexual abuse of a player and now an active dispute on the sexual abuse of another player by a staff member. The expected management of a head coach and the decency expected as a human being should have guided him to protect these players. Sacrifice The well-being of players for winning. »»
The Ducks were looking for a replacement for Greg Cronin, which they fired this month after two seasons. The Ducks have made an improvement of 21 points in the classification this season, but missed the playoffs for a seventh consecutive year.
Quenneville brings a long record for coach success, who came after a 13 -year career as a NHL defender.
After winning the Stanley Cup as an assistant coach of the Colorado avalanche in 1996, Quenneville became a head coach in Saint-Louis and led the blues to the playoffs in seven of his eight seasons. After being dismissed in 2004, Quenneville returned to Colorado as a chief coach for three seasons.
Quenneville’s greatest success occurred in Chicago. Hired in 2008, he trained the Blackhawks to a Stanley Cup championship in his second season, then again in 2013 and 2015. After the Blackhawks lost in the first round of the series in 2016 and 2017, and missed the playoffs in 2017-2018, Quenneville sparked 15 games in the 2018-19 season. He then moved to the Florida Panthers, with whom he spent three seasons before his resignation in 2021.
(Photo: Jasen Vinlove / Imagn images)
