Today’s announcement that Ron Wilson will coach the Toronto Maple Leafs means the musical chairs game has begun. It’s a two-sided game: Some coaches will be left without jobs, and some franchises will be left without a coach they might have wanted.

There are still five NHL teams with openings (Thrashers, Panthers, Sharks, Lightning, Senators), and to some extent they’re competing over the same candidates and the candidates are competing for more than one potential job. But the teams are different, and they’re looking for different things, and they have different rosters and different amounts of money they’re willing to pay. They also have different GMs.

I asked Thrashers general manager Don Waddell about that last part. How will his situation affect whom he can hire? “It doesn’t affect it at all,” he said. Despite what you might have read or heard elsewhere, Waddell said, he isn’t going to be kicked upstairs. He’s not “giving up the general manager title or responsibilities.”

“I’m free to hire whoever I want to hire,” he said, and “the term of the contract is wide open.” The length will be whatever is appropriate for the coach being hired and won’t be limited because of any upcoming changes in the GM position, he said.

Back to Ron Wilson for a second. Wilson and Waddell have strong ties, but I think it’s a leap to extrapolate from that the idea the Thrashers could have hired Wilson. I don’t know all the financial numbers, but Toronto ranked fifth in the league in attendance, and the Thrashers ranked 22nd. Toronto is the NHL’s wealthiest team by ticket revenue, according to a story in The Star, which also says the Thrashers are among the poorest. And Wilson was born in Windsor, not Marietta.

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