{"id":792997,"date":"2026-07-11T06:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T06:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/792997\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T06:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T06:46:08","slug":"maple-leafs-name-steve-sullivan-as-ahl-head-coach-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/792997\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs Name Steve Sullivan As AHL Head Coach \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A long-time NHL winger is getting his first professional head coaching opportunity.\u00a0 On Thursday, the AHL\u2019s Toronto Marlies, affiliate of the Maple Leafs, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.marlies.ca\/articles\/steve-sullivan-named-head-coach-of-toronto-marlies\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced<\/a> that Steve Sullivan has been named as their new head coach.\u00a0 He takes the place of John Gruden, who was promoted to an assistant role with the Maple Leafs earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>Sullivan was a veteran of over 1,000 NHL games as a player and got his off-ice career started with the Coyotes, one of the teams he played for.\u00a0 He started as a development coach but eventually moved into the front office, at one point working alongside GM John Chayka before briefly replacing him upon Chayka\u2019s departure from the organization.<\/p>\n<p>Sullivan decided to get back into coaching, joining Toronto\u2019s organization two years ago as an assistant with the Marlies.\u00a0 He started in that role last season before being added to Craig Berube\u2019s staff in the same role in late December.\u00a0 Now, he\u2019ll get a chance to run the bench of the defending Calder Cup champions.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the team also announced that long-time NHL blueliner (himself a veteran of over 1,000 NHL games as well) Mark Giordano has been added as a full-time assistant coach.\u00a0 He started last season as a development coach with the organization but was moved onto the Marlies staff to fill Sullivan\u2019s spot on an interim basis in December.\u00a0 It\u2019s clearly a role that both sides were comfortable with him continuing as he\u2019ll now get set for his first full season of coaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A long-time NHL winger is getting his first professional head coaching opportunity.\u00a0 On Thursday, the AHL\u2019s Toronto Marlies,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[3063,64,63,373289,575,85,373290,2370],"class_list":["post-792997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ahl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mark-giordano","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-steve-sullivan","tag-toronto-maple-leafs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792997","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=792997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}