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Quick Hits: August 9, 2024
1) Hockey Hall of Fame and Flyers Hall of Fame member Mark Recchi has been let go by the Columbus Blue Jackets. General manager Don Waddell has replaced him on new head coach Dean Evason's NHL staff. Cleveland Monsters associate coach Mike Haviland has been hired as an NHL assistant coach, along with Scott Ford. Assistant coach Along with Recchi, now-former assistant coach Josef Boumedienne is not being retained.
Recchi came into the Blue Jacket's dire situation last fall under former head coach Pascal Vincent. The Blue Jackets power play had not finished higher than 24th leaguewide in any of their previous six seasons. Riddled with injuries up and down the roster for much of the season, Recchi was unable to coax improvements. The Blue Jackets finished 31st on the man advantage in 2023-24 (15.1 percent). Only the Flyers (12.2 percent, the worst mark in franchise history) finished behind Columbus.
Also working against Recchi was large-scale turnover in Columbus. The abortive hiring of Mike Babcock (hurriedly replaced by Vincent) as head coach and the firing of general manager Jarmo Kekalainen in favor of Waddell was not conducive to much job security as a stopgap assistant coach.
Recchi was informed roughly six weeks ago that the Blue Jackets were not planning to retain him, but the news only became public this week.
Columbus was Recchi's fourth coaching or Hockey Ops stint since the end of his stellar playing career: senior advisor with the Dallas Stars (2012-13 to 2013-14), development coach (2014-15 to 2016-17) and then assistant coach in charge of forwards and power play (2017-18 to 2019-20) with the Pittsburgh Penguins, assistant coach in charge of forwards and power play with the New Jersey Devils (2021-22 to 2022-23) and then his one season running the power play in Columbus. Since 2007-08, Recchi has been the owner of his former junior hockey team from his own early playing days, the Western Hockey League's Kamloops Blazers.
Recchi will be back in the Philadelphia area from August 16 to 19 as one of the coaches at the 2024 Flyers Alumni Fantasy Camp. He also coached last year, a few weeks before he was announced as a Flyers Hall of Fame inductee .
2) Congratulations to Anthony DiMarco for his new gig with Daily Faceoff. Anthony was recently a guest on the Nasty Knuckles podcast with Derek Settlemyre and Riley Cote, discussing a variety of Flyers-related topics.
3. August 9 Flyers Aumni birthday: Rod Brind'Amour (1970), Andy Brickley (1961), Harvey Bennett (1952).
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