{"id":148406,"date":"2025-08-04T20:39:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T20:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/148406\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T20:39:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T20:39:22","slug":"former-leafs-player-joins-capitals-organization-in-surprising-head-coaching-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/148406\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Leafs Player Joins Capitals Organization in Surprising Head Coaching Role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/584772.webp.webp\" style=\"width:100%;\" border=\"0\" alt=\"The Toronto Maple Leafs (left) and Washington Capitals (right) team logos.\" title=\"The Toronto Maple Leafs (left) and Washington Capitals (right) team logos.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: Hockey Patrol<\/p>\n<p>The Hershey Bears announced that former Maple Leafs forward and Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach Derek King is their new head coach for 2025-26.<\/p>\n<p>With teams making a bevy of changes through the NHL offseason, we&#8217;ve see our fair share of coaches come and go, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockeypatrol.com\/nhl\/news\/former-leafs-coach-lane-lambert-breaks-silence-on-team-playoff-collapse\" class=\"lien_marqueur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Lane Lambert being lured away from the Maple Leafs<\/a> to head the Seattle Kraken, and Dan Muse replacing long-time Penguins coach Mike Sullivan.<\/p>\n<p>But the AHL is also in the midst of their offseason and coaching changes are just as bountiful, and the latest head coaching gig is taken by someone with a pretty solid track record.<\/p>\n<p>Hershey Crowns A Regal Head Coach<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, it was a announced that the Hershey Bears, Washington&#8217;s AHL affiliate had hired a new head coach, that being former Maple Leafs forward and Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach Derek King.<\/p>\n<p>King coached the Blackhawks for one season in 2021-22 where he went 27-33-10 after replacing Jeremy Colliton.<\/p>\n<p>Why Hershey Chose Derek King Over Everyone Else<\/p>\n<p>Prior to working with the Blackhawks, King coached for several seasons with the Toronto Marlies, winning several Calder Cups with the team. Prior to his full retirement he was a player-coach for the Grand Rapid Griffins for two seasons.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kingde01.html\" class=\"lien_marqueur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">King<\/a> enjoyed a solid 14-year career spent with the Islanders, Whalers, Maple Leafs, and Blues where he put up 612 points in 830 games and had a 40-goal season back in 1991-92 with New York.<\/p>\n<p>A bit of history buffs will recognize that King has the honor of being the last Maple Leaf player to score a goal at Maple Leaf Gardens before the team moved to the Air Canada Centre.<\/p>\n<p>The Hamilton, Ontario native was drafted 13th overall by the Islanders in 1985, ahead of names like Joe Nieuwendyk, and Mike Richter.<\/p>\n<p>Previously on HockeyPatrol<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo credit: Hockey Patrol The Hershey Bears announced that former Maple Leafs forward and Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[25973,96,11096,979,4301,5,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-148406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-ahl-news","9":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","10":"tag-derek-king","11":"tag-head-coach","12":"tag-hershey-bears","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/114972430525624682","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}