This afternoon, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that assistant coach Guy Boucher will not return to the team’s coaching staff next season.

Boucher, 52, joined the Toronto Maple Leafs ahead of the 2023-24 season and was in charge of the team’s power play last season following a break from coaching after the Ottawa Senators fired him during the 2018-19 season.

He joined Toronto with six years of NHL coaching experience, having been the bench boss for the Tampa Bay Lightning and Ottawa Senators for three years each, and had added coaching experience in the QMJHL with the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, Rimouski Oceanic and Drummondville Voltigeurs as well as with Bern SC in the Swiss-A league from 2013-14 to 2015-16.

As mentioned above and known by now, Boucher oversaw the power play last season, which generated 23.9%, good enough for seventh in the NHL. Although seventh is good, it fell apart in the final couple of months of the regular season and into the playoffs, where the power play ultimately became their kryptonite against the Boston Bruins, having scored just once in 21 attempts, ranking them 15th out of 16 teams.

Here is a chart of Toronto’s power play percentage by month during the 2023-24 season.

Boucher has now become the third Maple Leafs assistant coach to depart from the organization, joining Manny Malhotra, who left to become the Abbotsford Canucks head coach, and Dean Chhynoweth, who was announced following the hiring of Lane Lambert as an associate coach to Berube.

Following the firing of Sheldon Keefe in early May, Brad Treliving and the Maple Leafs have hired a new bench boss, lost three assistant coaches, and hired an associate coach. And with Boucher’s exit, it opens another spot on their bench for someone like Marc Savard, who has been rumoured to be going to Toronto for weeks now.

Brad Lauer is another name to possibly join the coaching staff after Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman name-dropped him on one of his latest episodes of the 32 Thoughts Podcast with Jeff Marek.

(Coaching information from hockeydb.com)