Contracts Of Penguins Head Coach Forrest, Assistant Coach Porter Won't Be Renewed

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WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Heading into Saturday afternoon's exit day interviews at the Toyota Sportsplex, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins head coach JD Forrest wasn't sure what the future held for himself following his fourth season as the team's bench boss and eighth year in the organization on the AHL coaching staff.

"We're going to have those conversations moving forward, so I'm not certain where that's going to go," Forrest told InsideAHLHockey.com and local media at the Penguins coach's final media availability before speaking with the team and getting the day started with individual player meetings.

On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Penguins announced that they will not be renewing the contracts of Forrest and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton assistant coach Kevin Porter.

"Today's decisions were not easy and we are grateful to J.D. and Kevin for their dedication and hard work over the past eight and four years, respectively. Both are good coaches and most importantly, excellent people," said Penguins Assistant General Manager Jason Spezza said in the team's release, adding, "These decisions come after taking the season to fully evaluate our minor league and development systems. As we enter into an era where each of those systems operating at an elite level becomes paramount to the future of our entire program, we felt it would be best to take this time to make the changes that our management team deems important to reaching our goal of having Wilkes-Barre become the premiere developer of players and staff that can help the Pittsburgh Penguins win Stanley Cups."

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton finished 39-24-9 in the regular season, good for third in the Atlantic Division and ninth overall in the 32-team AHL. Unfortunately for the Penguins, they were eliminated in the opening round best-of-three series by rival Lehigh Valley Friday night.

In all, the AHL Penguins went 113-102-37 in Forrest's four season as head coach.

There weren't any Calder Cup Playoffs in Forrest's first season as head coach as the 2020-21 campaign was the COVID-shortened/no playoff year, and the Penguins won an opening-round best-of-three series over rival Hershey to begin the 2022 Calder Cup Playoffs, but the team failed to qualify for the postseason last year and didn't win any games in a two-game sweep in the opening round of the postseason this year.

While injuries, callups and a lack of depth ultimately derailed the 2022-23 Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, this year's team had some more depth and had several players rise to the occasion throughout the year in different moments when the organization's injuries depleted the lineup of its regular contributors.

That is why the general theme of Saturday's exit day and final media interviews of the season was that of shock, still in disbelief and disappointed that THAT group won't be able to play together anymore in a postseason run that ended nowhere near where anyone within the organization expected.

"I can say, for myself and my staff, that we're just really proud of our team. We hate how it ended. Obviously, we wanted more in that regard. But from where the guys started and where we finished off, just in the regular season, I think there's some things that you can point out to be pretty proud of. And (assistant coach) Kevin (Porter), (assistant coach) Sheldon (Brookbank) and (video coach) Nick (Biamonte) did a great job working with guys. It was a fun year. It just stinks that it ends this way," Forrest said when asked by InsideAHLHockey what the future held for him and his staff.

The search for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins' next head coach is already underway and will be led by Spezza according to the team's release with additional changes to the coaching staff to be announced when a new head coach is named.