John Hynes

John Hynes is an American-born professional ice hockey coach who has worked in the American Hockey League (AHL) and the National Hockey League (NHL). Hynes's career started as a player at Boston University from 1994 to 1997, with his most productive season as a player coming in the 1995–1996 season, where he played thirty-four games with a total of 10 points (4 goals and 6 assists). As a coach, Hynes began as an assistant coach for the University of Massachusetts Lowell for the 2000–2001 season, before coaching at the University of Wisconsin as an assistant from the 2002–2003 season to the 2003–2004 season.

From the 2003 through the 2009 seasons, John Hynes spent time coaching the USA Hockey's National Team Development Program. As a head coach with the program, Hynes coached his squads to a 188-131-16-10 overall record. In international play, he led the U.S. team to three medals at the IIHF U18 Men's World Championship, winning gold with the program in 2006, silver in 2004, and bronze in 2008. In 2004, Hynes coached the IIHF World Junior Championship team as an assistant coach to its first gold medal. Similarly, he served as a head coach for the USA team that competed in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Beginning in the 2009–2010 season, John Hynes was given a position with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins as an assistant coach. The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins are the AHL affiliate of the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins. Beginning in the 2010–2011 season, Hynes took over the head coach duties for the AHL Penguins, where he would become the second-fastest coach in AHL history, at the time, to reach 100 career-wins (reaching the mark in 152 games played), and he would become the wins leader as a coach for the AHL Penguins. Similarly, he coached the AHL Penguins to become the first team in AHL history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit in the 2013 Calder Cup Playoffs.

In speaking in an interview on his success with the AHL Penguins, Hynes stated:

As a coach, if you're going to have success, it really comes down to two things: are you provided with the resources you need to win games, and are provided with good players? When you look at the way Wilkes-Barre/Scranton teams have been built, you know they've been filled with high-character people with great work ethic and commitment. That helped me succeed there, and I think it helped the other coaches do well there, also.

Starting in the 2015–2016 season, John Hynes was hired as head coach for the New Jersey Devils of the NHL. In that first season, the team posted a record of 38 wins, 36 losses, and 8 overtime losses, which saw the team out of the playoffs. And the next season would be worse, with the team posting a win percentage of .341. However, in the next season, 2017–2018, the New Jersey Devils improved their record and reached the playoffs, where they lost in the first round after winning only a single game.

However, given that team was rebuilding, reaching the playoffs was impressive. Hynes and the Devils struggled the following season before Hynes would find himself fired as coach of the Devils in December of 2019 after starting the season with a 9-13-4 record through 26 games. Hynes ended his career with the Devils after coaching for the better part of five seasons, and at the time of his departure from the team, he was the fifth-longest-tenured coach in the NHL since his 2015 hiring. During that time, Hynes coached his team to a 150-159-25 record.

Despite the record, Hynes was still a respected coach around the NHL, with the consensus being that the coach had not been given the talent to win in New Jersey. Not only was the team going through a rebuild, but they owned the NHL's worst goaltender through three of Hynes's five seasons as the coach of the Devils. Further, many noted that Hynes did his best work developing the team's young players and getting them to buy into the coach's vision and the way he felt the team needed to play to be successful.

John Hynes would not go unemployed for long, as by January 2020, he was hired by the Nashville Predators. The hiring came after the Predators fired their previous coach, Peter Laviolette, for not meeting the team's expectations. Hynes's hiring was due, in part, to his reputation for developing younger players and motivating veteran players, with the team's general manager, Dave Poile, noting that the Predators believed Hynes could cultivate a winning culture in the team's locker room.

However, only a few years after the hiring, John Hynes would be out the door with the Nashville Predators after the team brought in a new general manager in Barry Trotz, who decided the team needed a new direction and a new voice to guide them through that direction. During his three and a bit seasons with the Predators, Hynes coached the team to 134-95-18 and led the Predators to the playoffs in the first three seasons, while they would miss the post-season in his final season behind Nashville's bench.

Hynes's time with the Predators, although considered more successful than his time with the Devils both in the winning percentage he was able to get the team to, and his record in the post-season with the Predators, was considered doomed by some. This came as the Predators hired Hynes during a period when the team was on the decline, with players aging away from a President's Trophy win in the 2017–2018 season, followed by the various interruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the entire NHL and proved difficult for a coach of a new team. But it would prove to be, in the consideration of some, the lackluster playoff record of Hynes's tenure in Nashville that led to the firing, with the coach pushing his team to a record of 3-11 in that time, considered by most to be not good enough from the coach or the team.