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According to reports on TSN late Thursday night, Chicago Wolves head coach John Anderson has been hired as the Atlanta Thrashers new head coach.
Anderson, whose team won the Calder Cup earlier this month, is a former Toronto Maple Leafs winger who played 814 games in the NHL for Toronto, Quebec and Hartford from 1977-89.
Wolves GM Kevin Cheveldayoff spoke last month about the possibility of Anderson moving to the NHL for the first time.
"John obviously had a very good NHL playing career, and a lot of times, NHL playing careers lead right into coaching," Cheveldayoff said. "In John's case, what makes him unique from a lot of other guys that step into the coaching realm is that John so badly wanted to get into coaching that he went right down to the Southern Hockey League, which was at the time the lowest rung of professional hockey. He worked his way up.
"He coached at every single level you can find."
"John relates well to the players. If you had to categorize him as a coach, he's a players' coach. One thing he has is an ability to get a lot of different styles of players to come together and play as a cohesive unit. Not unlike every other team, you have ebbs and flows in the season, but one thing that I think with John — and he talks about it all the time — is he treats the players the way he wanted to be treated as a player. That's the kind of first and foremost characteristic of him. Obviously there's systematic things, there's coaching things... from a style standpoint, I think John does get the players to play for him. And in today's world of free agency and players having to pick and choose where they want to go, that can be a pretty important asset."
Anderson also played junior hockey with current Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau, a long-time minor-league coach who made the jump with great succeess to the NHL.
"We'd be like proud parents if he got the opportunity to go on to coach in the NHL," Cheveldayoff said of Anderson last month. "I know from John's standpoint, he would obviously welcome the opportunity. Like anybody that's at a level below the top level of the game, you want to get there.
"John and Bruce are, literally, best friends. If you check their cellphone records, back and forth, there's probably not a day that goes by that the two of them don't speak with each other. Bruce's story is not unlike John's, and I think the success that Bruce has had, it is a great story because there are a lot of good coaches that work exceptionally hard [in the minors]."
