The Shanghai Dragons, a member of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), have named former NHL bench boss Gerard Gallant as their new head coach.
Gallant last coached in the NHL with the New York Rangers, and sports a career 369-262-70 record to go along with a Jack Adams Award from his time with Vegas. The 61 year old had stints with the Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, and New York Rangers.
The Shanghai Dragons were originally known as the Kunlun Red Star, but will play out of St. Petersburg, Russia until their new home arena is ready next season. According to reports, Gallant signed a two year deal with the club.
As part of the announcement, the club revealed that Gallant’s longtime assistant Mike Kelly would also be joining the club on a 2 year deal.
The newly branded Dragons haven’t made the playoffs since the 2016-17 KHL season, and finished with a 19-34-9-6 record last year. Nevertheless, expectations for the new club are high, as they look to make it back to the postseason for the first time in nearly a decade.
While financial terms of the deal were not made immediately public, it’s widely believed that Shanghai was casting a wide net to attract top coaching talent, and weren’t overly concerned about the price tag that came along with it. Names such as Mike Babcock and John Tortorella were previously linked to the coaching vacancy, though Gallant was ultimately chosen to help usher in the new era.
Photo: Michael Miller. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.