Ray Bennett Joins Patrick Roy on Islanders Staff

It didn’t take long for Ray Bennett to find another assistant coach position in the NHL.

Just over a month after being let go by the Avalanche, Bennett was hired by a former Avs coach on Long Island. Bennett, along with Bob Boughner, are joining Patrick Roy’s staff with the New York Islanders.

Bennett did not work under Roy in Colorado — he was hired a year after Roy stepped down by current head coach Jared Bednar. The Avalanche fired Bennett a few days after the Game 7 loss to the Dallas Stars in the first round after the power play, which Bennett is responsible for, went 3-for-23 in the series.

Colorado has not yet hired a replacement for Bennett on Bednar’s staff. Both Bennett and the Avs’ other assistant coach, Nolan Pratt, have been staples of Bednar’s staff for nearly a decade. Pratt was a holdover from the Roy years.

In the eight years that Bennett handled the Avs’ power play, Colorado finished in the top-10 in PP efficiency in the regular season seven times. They were as high as fifth place in 2023-24 and as low as eighth place in both 2020-2021 and 2017-18. The Avalanche finished seventh on the PP the year they won the Stanley Cup.

The only poor result came in 2019-20, where they ranked 19th on the man advantage before the pandemic ended the regular season in March.

In the playoffs, only the Edmonton Oilers, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers have been more successful on the PP since 2018.

The series against the Stars was the second time in three years that the team has had a poor power play percentage in the postseason. They scored on 13% of their chances, which was better than the 11.1% efficiency in a seven-game series loss to Seattle in 2023. Coincidentally, the year in between, Colorado was the best team on the man-advantage, operating at 36.7 percent in 2024.