The Toronto Maple Leafs are on the hunt for their next head coach and are now reportedly down to a handful of finalists for the job. Among those finalists is Joe Pavelski, whose head coaching experience equates to one year being behind the bench of his son's U16 team in Wisconsin.
The move to include Pavelski in these conversations and name him a finalist for the job has been a polarizing one in Leafs Nation. He is well-liked across the entire sport and has been heralded as a player that could potentially become a very good coach one day, but the 41-year-old who just hung up his skates a few years ago, is a complete wild card in terms of whether or not he can get this Leafs team to work better than they did under Craig Berube.
Because of this somewhat confusing-but-entertaining move to talk to Pavelski about the job, there has been a whole lot of intrigue about the Leafs' thought process to give him an interview and have him still technically in the running.
Joe Pavelski talks about interviewing for Leafs head coach job
On Thursday though, Pavelski spoke with a couple of reporters in San Jose about whether or not it was true that he was interviewing for the Leafs job and what his thoughts are about him potentially landing the gig.
Joe Pavelski on his interest in the Leafs coaching job: "There's truth to that stuff. We have had discussions.
— Curtis Pashelka (@CurtisPashelka) June 11, 2026
"I'm excited to go through the process and kind of see where it leads."
"There's truth to that stuff," Pavelski said via Sharks reporter Curtis Pashelka. "We have had discussions ... I'm excited to go through the process and kind of see where it leads."
Nothing groundbreaking here, but it is interesting to see Pavelski at least a little bit open to talk about being up for the job in Toronto.
Pavelski is among the final contenders for this position -- along with the likes of, if we want to take all reports into consideration, Dallas Eakins, Jay Woodcroft, Patrick Roy, and Marlies coach John Gruden as an internal option. The list of finalists has not been all put together in a neat and tidy package somewhere, but rather pieced together through several reports, even though some are conflicting with each other.
It's a big mess but we know Pavelski is here and talking and is excited to see where this goes. Is he open for a position as an assistant maybe? No one knows, but it could be an interesting ending to this process.
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