Sergei Brylin’s long run in the New Jersey Devils organization is over. The team announced Saturday that Brylin has been named head coach of the KHL’s Dinamo Minsk, a move first detailed stateside by Pro Hockey Rumors’ Ethan Hetu. It is the 52-year-old’s first head-coaching job at any professional level.
Few names run deeper in franchise history. Brylin won all three of New Jersey’s Stanley Cups as a player — 1995, 2000 and 2003 — across a career spent entirely in a Devils sweater, and the club inducted him into its Ring of Honor in 2023. He returned in 2013 as an assistant with AHL Albany and spent nearly a decade coaching in the minors through the Albany, Binghamton and Utica years, teaching the fast-support puck game this organization has always prized, before Lindy Ruff promoted him to the NHL staff in 2022-23.
Brylin spent four seasons on the big-league bench under Ruff and then Sheldon Keefe, with two playoff appearances in that span — including the 2023 first-round upset of the Rangers. His path out of New Jersey began in May, when the team said he would step away from Keefe’s staff to take an unnamed new role amid the organizational overhaul that brought in general manager Sunny Mehta. That role never materialized. Instead, the bench spot he vacated was filled last week when the club completed Keefe’s staff with Ted Donato and AJ MacLean.
In Minsk, Brylin replaces Dmitri Kvartalnov, who left for Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. He inherits a roster with familiar names for Devils fans: 2017 first-round pick Ty Smith and former NHL goaltending prospect Zachary Fucale, a KHL All-Star each of the last two seasons, are both under contract. Brylin knows the league — he played nearly 200 KHL games late in his career. Dinamo has lost in the KHL quarterfinals in each of the past two seasons.
For fantasy purposes, there is no direct impact — Brylin effectively left the bench in May, and the deployment questions that matter for 2026-27, including who runs the power play, now belong to Donato and MacLean under Keefe. The name worth filing away is Ty Smith, whose path back to North America would run through whatever showcase season Brylin gives him in Minsk.
