Ex-Penguins assistant Mark Recchi not out of work long
The Devils fired former Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero in January, but the pipeline of former Penguins moving to New Jersey continues to flow.
The Devils hired Mark Recchi as an assistant coach Tuesday, less than a month after he was let go from the same position with the Penguins.
Recchi was an assistant coach for the Penguins for three seasons. He worked in player development for the Penguins for three seasons before that.
Shero’s replacement as Devils GM is Tom Fitzgerald, who worked in the Penguins front office from 2007-15. Recchi will serve on new head coach Lindy Ruff’s staff alongside Alain Nasreddine, who was an assistant coach with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton from 2010-15.
In the press release announcing Recchi’s hiring. Fitzgerald said his “work with the power play and managing personnel in Pittsburgh are skills that will benefit our group moving forward.”
Under Recchi’s guidance, the Penguins finished first in the league on the power play in 2017-18 (26.2%) and fifth in 2018-19 (24.6%) but slipped to 16th last season (19.9%) and went 3 for 17 in the playoffs against Montreal.
“It’s a goal or two here and that makes a difference in your percentage,” Recchi said. “I thought at times we executed well this year in the playoffs, and there’s times where it just wasn’t quite there. You’ve been off for 4½ months. It was really the first time we had the whole group together. But there’s no excuses. It didn’t go in.”
Jonathan Bombulie is the TribLive assistant sports editor. A Greensburg native, he was a hockey reporter for two decades, covering the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for 17 seasons before joining the Trib in 2015 and covering the Penguins for four seasons, including Stanley Cup championships in 2016-17. He can be reached at jbombulie@triblive.com.
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