With the 2025-26 NHL regular season well into its second half, it’s time to look at the betting favorites for the coach of the year award. That award, named after longtime coach and general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, Jack Adams, is awarded “to the coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.” The Jack Adams Award has been handed out since 1973-74 when Fred Shero of the Philadelphia Flyers was honored.
Last year, Spencer Carbery of the Washington Capitals won the Jack Adams Award, beating out Scott Arniel of the Winnipeg Jets and Martin St. Louis of the Montreal Canadiens. None of those three coaches is among the betting favorites to win coach of the year honors in 2026, which is not a surprise since only one NHL coach has won the Jack Adams in back-to-back years. That coach was Jacques Demers of the Detroit Red Wings in 1987 and 1988. Pat Burns is the only coach to win the award three times, doing so with three different teams.
The three betting favorites to win the 2026 Jack Adams, Lindy Ruff, Jon Cooper, and Jared Bednar have one coach of the year nod between them. Ruff won the award in 2006 while coaching the Buffalo Sabres. The vote that year was the closest ever, with Ruff edging out Peter Laviolette of the Carolina Hurricanes by a single vote. The Hurricanes went on to win the Stanley Cup that year, while Philadelphia eliminated Buffalo in the first round.
Before we look at the betting odds, picks, and predictions to win the 2026 Jack Adams Award, check out our betting picks to win the 2026 Hart Trophy for NHL MVP.
Lindy Ruff is in his second stint behind the bench for the Buffalo Sabres. Ruff, who coached the team between 1980 and 1989, returned to Buffalo after the 2024 season, replacing Don Granato, who took the club to a 39-37-6 record and sixth place in the division in 2024. In his first season back in Buffalo, Ruff led the Sabres to a 36-39-7 record, which put them in seventh place in the Atlantic Division.
Ruff has improved the Sabres a great deal in 2025-26. With 60 games played, Buffalo is 35-19-6, putting them in third place in the Eastern Conference. The Sabres are likely to make the playoffs for the first time since 2011, when they lost to the Philadelphia Flyers in the conference quarterfinals in seven games.
The Sabres fired GM Kevyn Adams on December 15 and replaced him with Jarmo Kekäläinen. The team is 21-5-2 since then. Buffalo ranks seventh in the NHL in goals per game (3.38) with 22 games left in the season.
The longest tenured coach in the NHL, Jon Cooper, took over behind the bench of the Tampa Bay Lightning on March 25, 2013. He has taken the Lightning to Stanley Cup wins in 2020 and 2021, and to the Cup Final in 2015 and 2022. Cooper has never won the Jack Adams Award, but he was a finalist in 2014 and 2019. He placed third in voting in 2014 behind Patrick Roy and Mike Babcock. In 2019, Cooper was the runner-up to Barry Trotz.
The Lightning finished the 2025 season in second place in the Atlantic Division with a 47-27-8 record. With 58 games played in 2026, Cooper has Tampa Bay in first place in the division with a 38-16-4 record. The team should cruise into the playoffs for a ninth straight season.
Tampa Bay is second in the NHL in goals per game (3.53) and goals against per game (2.60). Since December 20, Tampa Bay has a 20-3-1 record. The Lightning are second in the league in goal differential at plus 56.
Jared Bednar has been the coach of the Colorado Avalanche since August 25. 2016. Since then, he has led the team to the Stanley Cup Final in 2022, when they fell to the Lightning in six games. The Avalanche have made the playoffs every year since 2018.
Bednar was a finalist for the 2018 Jack Adams Award. He finished third that year to Gerard Gallant and Bruce Cassidy.
Last year, the Avalanche finished with a 49-29-4 record, placing the club in third place in the Central Division. With 59 games played this year, Colorado has the best record in the NHL at 40-10-9, with an outstanding home mark of 22-4-4. The team is also first in the league with 2.42 goals against and 3.80 goals for per game. No club has a better goal differential than the Avalanche’s plus-77.
The Avalanche had a great run from October 28 through January 3, losing only four games, with three of those setbacks coming in overtime. However, Colorado has come down to Earth since then. The club’s record since January 4 is 9-8-2.
Had this vote taken place at the midpoint of the 2025-26 NHL season, Bednar would have most likely been the winner of the Jack Adams. With Colorado playing good, but not great since the calendar flipped to 2026, Bednar’s betting odds have gotten a lot longer to win the Adams.
If the Tampa Bay Lightning stay on the same course, Jon Cooper looks like he will finally win the Adams.
The betting pick is Jon Cooper to win the 2025-26 Jack Adams Award.
Before making any bets on the NHL, check out the current NHL online Las Vegas odds, and make sure to look at our Vegas odds for the 2026 Stanley Cup.
