The Maple Leafs and Oilers have been beaten to their top head coach target

Peter Laviolette was being seriously considered for head coaching jobs in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Edmonton this offseason, according to Elliotte Friedman on the FAN Hockey Show Monday.

That's not one team kicking tires. That's three franchises calling the same guy.

Friedman was specific: all three organizations were considering Laviolette "very seriously." That's the kind of language that usually means finalist conversations, not courtesy calls.

Toronto is the obvious headline. The Maple Leafs finished 28th overall this season at 32-36-14, a seven-game losing streak to close the year, and no head coach listed entering the offseason. The bench has been empty for a while now.

That 2-7-1 stretch over their final ten games wasn't a slow fade. It was a collapse, and the kind that forces a front office to go hunting for credibility behind the bench.

Laviolette has won a Cup in Carolina and taken two other franchises deep in the playoffs. In a market that eats coaches alive, that resume is exactly what you look for when you're trying to stabilize a room that's been through the spin cycle too many times.

Why Edmonton and LA add real weight to the Laviolette story

Edmonton also has no head coach on record heading into the summer, and GM Stan Bowman is building something with Connor McDavid that still needs a driver. The Oilers went 41-30-11 but they've been here before, good enough in the regular season and then gone too soon.

Los Angeles is the one that gets complicated. The Kings hired D.J. Smith as recently as March 2026, so if they were also in the room with Laviolette, that's a front-office conversation that Ken Holland is going to need to explain at some point.

Three teams. One name. That kind of demand doesn't happen for a coach who's lost the league's confidence.

What it tells you is that multiple GMs looked at their bench situation this spring and landed on the same answer. The market for proven, championship-tested coaches is thin, and Laviolette sits near the top of it.

Whether he ends up in Toronto, where the pressure is loudest, or somewhere quieter with a better roster underneath him, that decision is going to shape more than just one franchise's direction heading into next season.