Avalanche organization loses assistant coach and former champion to Tampa Bay

Dan Hinote, the associate head coach for the Colorado Eagles and a former Stanley Cup Champion with the Colorado Avalanche, was hired as an assistant to the Tampa Bay staff on Friday

BY TRENT FINNEGAN

Jun 6, 2025, 10:17 AM Updated: 10:19 am

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The Colorado Avalanche organization lost an assistant coach to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday as Dan Hinote was announced as a the newest edition to Jon Cooper’s staff down in Florida. Hinote has spent plenty of years with Colorado throughout his long hockey career, and was a contributor on the 2001 team that won the Stanley Cup.

We've hired Stanley Cup Champion and former NHL forward Dan Hinote as an assistant coach!

Welcome to Tampa ⚡️

📝: https://t.co/s5qmo71vUA pic.twitter.com/7P3hjX8yCY

— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) June 6, 2025

Hinote, 48, was the associate head coach for the Colorado Eagles up in Loveland, the AHL affiliate of the Avalanche, for the 2024-25 season. It was his 15th year of coaching as he helped lead the Eagles to the Pacific Division Finals, the equivalent of the quarterfinal round. The Eagles lost the best-of-five series to the Abbotsford Canucks in five games, and were blown out 5-0 at home in the winner-take-all Game 5.

In the regular season, the Eagles finished with 94 points in 72 games, which was the best total in the division and tied for the third-best mark in the entire AHL. The team saw a lot of great moments throughout the regular season, highlighted by the comeback of Gabriel Landeskog towards the end, and put together a campaign that Avalanche fans should love to see from their minor league club.

For Hinote, the 2024-25 season wasn’t his first rodeo within the Avalanche organization, as he played for the team from 1999-2004, and again in the 2005-06 season. The right winger played 353 games in the burgundy and blue, tallying 65 points (27G, 38A). In the Stanley Cup Playoffs, he put up 15 points (6G, 9A) in 69 games for Colorado, with his best run from a production standpoint coming during the Stanley Cup run in 2001. In the Cup Final, he had one goal and three assists over the seven game series, including an assist on the opening goal in the winner-take-all Game 7 against the New Jersey Devils.

Hinote is joining a staff with championship aspirations and nothing shorter after the Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cups at the start of the decade, and will be working with one of the top coaches in the league in Cooper.

This is the second coaching shuffle in the Avalanche organization this offseason, as the team fired its power play coach, Ray Bennett, back in May.