Coyotes making concerted effort to offer job security to coaching staff

As expected, the Arizona Coyotes announced they’d signed assistant coach John Madden to a multi-year contract extension today.

When the initial report of head coach Andre Tourigny’s extension came in from PHNX Sports’ Craig Morgan earlier this week, he expected similar announcements for Tourigny’s assistants to follow in the coming days. Morgan had reported earlier in the summer that Tourigny would not put pen to paper on an extension until agreements were in place for the rest of his staff.

Arizona announced an extension for Mario Duhamel yesterday, so only goalie coach Corey Schwab is left without a deal in place, at least officially. Duhamel, Madden and Schwab are joined on Tourigny’s bench by assistant Blaine Forsythe, who joined the Coyotes earlier this summer after a 16-year stint with the Washington Capitals.

Madden, 50, will continue in his role in the desert as the team’s primary penalty kill coach, an area in which he excelled during his playing days as a four-time Selke Trophy finalist (and winner in 2001). Last season was his first behind the Arizona bench and the team’s 74.6 percent penalty kill success rate managed to escape the league’s bottom five. While not anything impressive, it’s hard to truly judge a team’s defensive metrics during a rebuild.

He’s now entering his seventh year of NHL coaching experience. Madden previously served as an assistant for the Florida Panthers from 2013 to 2016 and an assistant for the San Jose Sharks from 2020 to 2022. In between, Madden took on the head coach role for the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters from 2016 to 2019 in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization.