Toronto Maple Leafs: 3 Candidates that Could Replace Paul McFarland
By Kyle Cushman
Candidate #1: Eric Wellwood, Flint Firebirds (Head Coach)
He may be barely 30 years old, but Eric Wellwood already has a strong coaching resume under his belt.
Wellwood was a Philadelphia Flyers prospect back in 2013 when his playing career came to a sudden and gruesome conclusion.
While playing in the AHL, Wellwood suffered a laceration that severed his Achilles tendon, an injury that nearly killed him from blood loss. He was forced to retire a year later, never playing another pro game.
At just 25 years of age and his playing career behind him, Wellwood was hired by former Toronto Maple Leafs assistant D.J. Smith to join the Oshawa Generals staff in 2014-15 as an assistant.
There, he was on the bench for an OHL championship and a Memorial Cup in his first season, before Smith took the aforementioned role with the Leafs.
He remained on the Generals bench for 2015-16 before being hired as an assistant for the Flint Firebirds in 2016-17. This came just after Flint’s owner nightmare, where Rolf Nilsen had fired, re-hired, and re-fired Flint’s coaching staff.
When the OHL took over the search for the new staff, Wellwood and his two successful seasons in Oshawa earned him the new job. In that first year in Flint, head coach Ryan Oulahen and Wellwood led the Firebirds to their best season and a first playoff birth.
Wellwood would then take a season off from coaching to pursue a business opportunity with his brother (yes, former Leaf Kyle Wellwood), before getting back behind the bench with the University of Windsor in 2018.
That was short-lived, however, as in October 2018, the Flint Firebirds came calling looking for a new head coach when Oulahen left for the North Bay Battalion. Wellwood took the gig and has blossomed alongside a resurgent Firebirds team.
His first season was a tough one with a very weak Flint roster. When he took over the team, the Firebirds had lost 11 straight to start the season. They would finish second-worst in the OHL in a season that was over from the get-go, but Wellwood’s job didn’t really start until Year 2.
Given an offseason to truly prepare and build a roster with GM Barclay Branch, Flint emerged as a top contender in the OHL in 2019-20, setting franchise marks in wins, points, and goals scored even with five unplayed games at the cancellation of the OHL season due to the coronavirus.
Adding a 30-year-old with two seasons of head coaching experience to an NHL bench may seem out there, but the Leafs showed just this season that they are not scared of youth and inexperience if they believe in someone as a candidate.
Kyle Dubas and co. replaced Sheldon Keefe with Greg Moore when Keefe was promoted to the Leafs gig. Moore was 35 at the time of the hiring, but notably had just a season and a quarter of experience as a head coach in the USHL with the Chicago Steel.
Wellwood provides a similar resume to Moore as a young, relatively inexperienced but promising coaching prospect.
Given his previous relationship with D.J. Smith, his success with Oshawa, and the incredible job he has done with Flint helping turn them from the laughing stock of the league to one of the contending teams, Eric Wellwood could be a sneaky candidate for the Toronto Maple Leafs available job.