Canada assistant coach Ryan Huska, front centre, runs a Canada practice at the IIHF World Junior Championships hockey action in Calgary on Monday, Jan. 2, 2012. The Calgary Flames have called a press conference and are expected to announce the team's next head coach. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
CALGARY – The Calgary Flames have promoted from within for their next head coach.
Ryan Huska takes over the reins after five years as a Flames assistant.
The 47-year-old from Cranbrook, B.C., replaces Darryl Sutter, who was fired in May.
Calgary has changed head coaches five times in eight years.
The hiring of Huska is new general manager Craig Conroy’s first major move.
Huska previously coached Calgary’s AHL affiliate for four seasons and was behind the bench of the Western Hockey League’s Kelowna Rockets for seven.
The Flames went inside the organization to fill both the GM and head coaching positions.
Conroy was assistant to Brad Treliving, who didn’t sign an extension with Calgary and was named Toronto Maple Leafs GM on May 31, for nine seasons.
Among Huska’s priorities in 2023-24 will be getting more out of Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau.
The Flames signed Kadri as a free agent and Huberdeau arrived in a blockbuster trade with the Florida Panthers last summer that saw Matthew Tkachuk go the other way.
Neither Kadri nor Huberdeau, signed by Calgary for a combined 15 years and US$133 million, meshed well with Sutter, and their production was well below their career highs.
“I completely lost my swagger this year,” Huberdeau said at the end of the season.
Huska coached the Rockets to a WHL title in 2009. Mikael Backlund, the longest-serving Flame with 14 seasons in Calgary, played for Huska that year in Kelowna.
Huska was an assistant coach for Canada’s entries at the world junior hockey championship in both 2011 and 2012.
He won three Memorial Cups with the Kamloops Blazers (1992, 1994, 1995) a player.
The Blackhawks drafted Huska in the third round (76th overall) in 1993. The centre played five seasons of minor pro and appeared in one NHL game for Chicago.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2023.
