Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville will be an assistant coach for Team Canada at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Team Canada’s General Manager Doug Armstrong announced Thursday.
Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock will serve as Team Canada’s head coach, while Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien will join Quenneville in an assistant role.
The 2016 World Cup of Hockey, which hasn’t been held since 2004, is scheduled to take place from Sept. 17 to Oct. 1 of next year at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. The 2016 World Cup will feature national teams from Canada, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic, along with a squad chosen from among the NHL’s top North American players who are 23 and under. The final team will feature players from European countries that are unrepresented, such as Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Norway, Austria, Latvia and Denmark.
Teams in the World Cup will be divided into two groups of four, with each playing three games within its group. The top two finishers in each group will then play in the semi-finals, with the winners advancing to a best-of-three championship round.
The 57-year-old Quenneville has won three Stanley Cups behind the Chicago bench. During that span, the Hawks have gone 64-36 in 100 playoff games and own an NHL-best .649 winning percentage combing both regular and postseason action. Since 2010, Quenneville has guided the Hawks to win 14 of 18 playoff series.
Despite his incredible coaching resume, Quenneville has not received the Jack Adams Award, given to the NHL’s top coach, since his 1999-2000 season with the Blues. Quenneville won’t be the only member of the Hawks’ brass involved in the tournament. General manager Stan Bowman will serve alongside Oilers‘ GM Peter Chiarelli as GMs of Team North America.
Bowman and Chiarelli will be in charge of filling 23 player roster, including three goaltenders. Sixteen players must be named to the rosters by March 1, 2016. Those rosters have to be submitted by June 1.