The Colorado Eagles have turned to Jussi Ahokas to lead the bench, making him the third head coach in three seasons for the Avalanche’s AHL affiliate. For a team that had enjoyed relative stability since moving up from the ECHL in 2018-19, the recent run of turnover has been hard to miss.
Ahokas is only the fourth head coach in franchise history, but the Eagles have watched a familiar pattern unfold: Western Conference rivals keep coming after their coaches. Greg Cronin coached Colorado from 2018 to 2023 before the Anaheim Ducks hired him away.
Aaron Schneekloth, who had previously coached the Eagles in their ECHL days, returned for two seasons before the Seattle Kraken brought him in last summer. That opened the door for Mark Letestu, who helped guide Colorado to the Western Conference Finals this past season before the Vegas Golden Knights lured him away on June 30.
Ahokas arrives with a résumé that stands out. The 45-year-old from Oulu, Finland, is coming off a championship run with the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League.
Kitchener won the OHL and then captured the Memorial Cup in 2026, the top prize in Canadian major junior hockey. Ahokas spent three seasons with the Rangers from 2023-24 through 2025-26, and the team improved every year under his watch.
They topped 40 wins in all three 68-game seasons, he was named OHL Coach of the Year in his second year, and the Rangers advanced a little farther each postseason before finishing the job in 2026.
That kind of steady climb matters. A coach who can keep a young group moving forward year after year usually knows how to connect, and that should resonate in Colorado’s system.
Ahokas also brings experience from Finland, where he coached four seasons in the SM-Liiga, the country’s top pro league. He was named coach of the year in 2019-20, and his Turku TPS team finished second in the Liiga in 2021-22.
His international background is just as deep. Ahokas has coached Finland at the under-18 and under-20 levels and collected multiple medals there. He also worked with Finland’s women’s national club staff and helped the program win an Olympic bronze.
There’s another layer to the hire, too. Kitchener has long been a familiar hockey stop for Avalanche fans because Gabriel Landeskog played for the Rangers. Landeskog’s coach there was Steve Spott, now an assistant with the Bruins, and Spott had taken over the job from Peter DeBoer.
The Eagles came within one game of a championship themselves last season, falling in Game 7 of the Western Finals to the Chicago Wolves. Getting back to that stage will not be simple, especially with what looks like a major AHL roster reset. Colorado’s coaching staff has been getting poached, but the lineup is in flux too.
That may leave Ahokas with time to make his mark before the roster settles. If he translates his track record to the AHL, Colorado could have another coach worth keeping close.
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Jordan Staal later called the stretch awkward and unusual, a fair description for a player of Rantanens stature changing teams twice in such short order. The Hurricanes did land Logan Stankoven and a pile of draft capital in the second deal, and the organization wound up lifting the Stanley Cup the next season, which only adds another layer to a saga that still stands out as one of the oddest in recent memory. [Read more 🡒]
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Avalanche Still Have A Real Reason To Watch Zakhar Bardakov
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Colorado also still holds Bardakovs NHL rights through a qualifying offer, which keeps the door open if he decides he is ready to come back. For the Avalanche, that means this is not just a lost prospect story, but a situation worth tracking closely as Bardakov works through his year in Russia and looks ahead to another shot in the NHL. [Read more 🡒]