The St. Louis Blues today announced the hiring of\u00a0Greg Cronin\u00a0and\u00a0Vaclav \u201cVinny\u201d Prospal\u00a0as assistant coaches on multi-year contracts for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
In addition, Elliott Mondou\u00a0has been promoted from video coach to assistant to the general manager under\u00a0Alexander Steen\u00a0and\u00a0Jeremy Coupal has signed a multi-year contract to join the Blues as assistant coach \u2013 video.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The additions of Cronin, Prospal, and Coupal round out the coaching staff for Head Coach Jim Montgomery for the 2026-27 season. Returning are David Alexander as director of goaltending and Ryan Stacy as video coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg,\u00a0Vinny, and Jeremy represent elite coaching talent coming to the St. Louis Blues,\u201d said Montgomery. \u201cGreg is a skilled teacher of defensive habits and the penalty kill with experience as a head coach and assistant that will benefit our vets and young elites equally; Vinny brings a creative offensive mind honed by his success as a player on the power play and five-on-five, providing valuable expertise to our forward group and power play. Jeremy is a high-end video coach who we are fortunate to bring back to the NHL with his unique skillset and knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cronin, 63, served as head coach of the AHL\u2019s Iowa Wild last season, posting a 27-36-9 record. The Arlington, Massachusetts, native\u2019s coaching career stretches back almost 40 years, including assistant and head coaching roles in the\u00a0NHL, AHL, and NCAA.\u00a0 Cronin has served as an assistant coach with the New York Islanders (1999-03, 2014-18) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (2011-14), while most recently he served as head coach of the Anaheim Ducks (2023-25).\u00a0 In the AHL, he spent five seasons as head coach of the Colorado Eagles (2018-23), where he led the team to four postseason appearances.\u00a0 He also spent two seasons as head coach of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers (2003-05). Collegiately, Cronin had a six-year stint as head coach at Northeastern University (2005-11) and served two seasons as head coach at the University of Maine (1995-97).\u00a0 He also held an assistant role at Maine, Colorado College, and Colby College.\u00a0 Cronin has had a long association with the United States Developmental Program (USNTDP) and has been a part of Team USA\u2019s staff at several international tournaments, including four World Championships (1997, 1999, 2011, 2012) and two World Junior Championships (1997, 1998).<\/p>\n
Prospal, 51, spent\u00a0the past three seasons as an assistant coach\u00a0with\u00a0the AHL\u2019s Rochester Americans,\u00a0helping the team qualify\u00a0for the postseason in\u00a0each season\u00a0while compiling a 112-76-28 regular-season record. \u00a0As a player, the Ceske Budejovice native enjoyed a 16-year career\u00a0and ranks sixth among Czechia-born players in NHL history with 1,108 career games and seventh with 765 career points.\u00a0\u00a0Prospal also represented Czechia in several international tournaments, including the 2006 Winter Olympics where he led the team to the bronze medal and the 2000 and 2005 World Championships where led them to the gold medal.<\/p>\n
Coupal, 37,\u00a0has spent the past several seasons working as the video coach for Team Canada, including most recently at the 2025 and 2026 Spengler Cups. Prior to his tenure with Hockey Canada, the Mt-St-Hilaire, Quebec, native spent seven seasons as the video coach for the Edmonton Oilers as well as three seasons as the video coordinator for the Nashville Predators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Blues today announced the hiring of\u00a0Greg Cronin\u00a0and\u00a0Vaclav \u201cVinny\u201d Prospal\u00a0as assistant coaches on multi-year contracts for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-738855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}