The Colorado Avalanche have announced the hire of Jussi Ahokas as head coach of the team’s AHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles.
The Eagles were formerly coached by Mark Letestu, who went 41-20-11 and reached the Western Conference Final in his lone campaign coaching the team. Letestu has since been hired as an assistant coach on the staff of Vegas Golden Knights head coach Ryan Craig.
The Avalanche have hired Ahokas, 45, fresh off of his victory in this past spring’s Memorial Cup tournament. The Oulu, Finland native was coach of the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers for the past three seasons, and helped steadily build his team into a junior hockey powerhouse. The Rangers went 41-23-4 in his debut season and won a playoff series, went 47-15-6 in his sophomore campaign, reaching the conference finals, and went 47-14-7 this past season, winning OHL and Memorial Cup titles. Ahokas was named the OHL’s Coach of the Year in 2024-25.
Before he crossed the Atlantic to coach in the OHL, Ahokas served as a head coach for two different franchises in Liiga, the top division of professional hockey in Finland. In 2019-20 and 2020-21, Ahokas coached KooKoo Kouvola, going 74-41-12. He was Liiga’s coach of the year in 2019-20. After KooKoo, Ahokas spent 2021-22 and 2022-23 with TPS Turku, reaching the Liiga finals in 2022. While at Turku, Ahokas got the chance to coach Juraj Slafkovsky, who in his lone season with the team rose from relatively unheralded prospect to eventual No. 1 overall pick.
Before trying his luck as a head coach at the club level, Ahokas coached Finland’s international U18 and U20 teams from 2013-14 to 2018-19. As head coach he won gold at the 2019 World Junior Championships, and gold at the 2016 world under-18s.
Despite being untested at the professional level in North America, Ahokas has an extremely impressive resume, and one that seems particularly well-tailored to the specific demands that are placed on an AHL head coach. AHL head coaches are tasked with fulfilling two distinct objectives: winning as many games as possible, and delivering NHL players to their affiliate. Ahokas has extensive experience as a head coach in development-oriented settings, and has helped develop numerous future NHL players. And, while maintaining that focus on development, Ahokas has been able to consistently win at a high level.
The Eagles have been one of the AHL’s stronger franchises over the past decade, and Ahokas will be expected to keep up the club’s winning ways. But perhaps more importantly, Ahokas will also be tasked with developing as many NHL players as possible from the Avalanche’s sparse prospect pool. For a club intent on winning a second Stanley Cup during the era of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, it’s extremely important to have a healthy pipeline of young talent that is capable of playing in the NHL on cheap entry-level or two-way contracts.
With today’s news, Ahokas will be in charge of that pipeline, and although he won’t be behind the bench for the Avalanche, the impact of his work will undoubtedly be felt in Denver.