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Report: Pens to interview Crawford, Wilson for head coaching gig

marccrawfordmad

James O’Brien

TSN’s Darren Dreger with the latest from Pittsburgh’s search for a new bench boss:

Last tweeted didn’t go thru. Penguins scheduled to talk to Marc Crawford and Ron Wilson about coaching vacancy in Pitt.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) June 17, 2014


Wilson and Crawford have been out of the mix for a while -- the former hasn’t worked since being fired by Toronto two years ago, the latter hasn’t since getting turfed by Dallas in 2011 -- but both recently resurfaced as part of Florida’s head coaching search. Wilson interviewed with the Panthers but is reportedly no longer in consideration; Crawford spoke with GM Dale Tallon is well and believed to be one of the remaining five candidates.

As for other interviewees in Pittsburgh, only one has been identified by new GM Jim Rutherford thus far -- AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton head coach John Hynes. Given he’s only been on the job for 11 days, it’s clear Rutherford’s head coach search is still something of a work in progress, which he explained to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently.

When he was hired June 6, Rutherford said he had two “short lists” — one bearing six names, the other three — of attractive candidates for the job, and reiterated Sunday that he believes Bylsma’s replacement will come from one of them.

“I’m still zeroing in on my original short list,” he said.

Still, Rutherford acknowledged that the pool of coaching candidates has expanded in the past week or so.

“My list of names has grown because I get more and more calls from associates who are recommending people or the coaches themselves contacting me,” he said.

As for timeline, Rutherford said he’d like to have a coach in place either prior to the 2014 NHL Entry Draft (June 27-28) or the start of free agency (July 1), but noted that he wouldn’t rush the hiring process just to have someone in place.