VOORHEES, N.J. — His chances of becoming the next head coach of the Flyers might be as slim as those of any of well-known, veteran, recycled NHL head coaches who have had the same job over the decade or so.
Either way, that doesn’t mean that career assistant coach Brad Shaw wouldn’t want to give it a shot.
“I have interest, sure,” Shaw, who played interim Flyers head coach over yet another awful season’s last nine games, said in a media interview Friday. “I know I’m meeting with Danny at the start of next week at some point, not sure which day exactly. I was told they’d be part of the process of the hiring of the full-time head coach, and so I assume that, you know, at some point we’ll talk about that.”
It’s likely to go something like, thanks for everything, Brad, and see you later.
Shaw might harbor ambitions to be a head coach, and hey, why not? Pays better, even if it comes with the guarantee of being dismissed, and often before you even have a chance to break in the new office chair.
Then again, how many new head coaching chairs are stuck in storage over there at the Skate Zone, anyway?
Since Mike Keenan was fired 13 days short of completing a fourth full year as a Flyers coach in May of 1988, only Ken Hitchcock’s four years and five months tenure was longer. Most were in and around the three-year length (which recently fired John Tortorella almost managed), more than a handful only had a year or less.
Like Shaw will be (though nine games is an especially short tenure), a few of those were interim hires only. Before Shaw, Mike Yeo, an experienced league head coach, served as interim Flyers head coach after Alain Vigneault was dismissed on Dec. 6, 2021. Yeo was done after that season.
Not long before, long-serving Phantoms head coach Scott Gordon had been elevated to Flyers interim head coach in Dec. of 2018, after Dave Hakstol was shown the door. He managed a 25-22-4 record with an aging non-playoff club, and promptly was fired at season’s end on April 15, 2019, as Vigneault had already been lined up for the job.
As the fortunes of the franchise have continued to fail in recent years, the Flyers have missed the playoffs five straight times, the worse stretch they’ve had since 1989-90 through 1993-94. Of course, they were generally closer to making it during that stretch than these five most recent teams were, and were in the process of developing Eric Lindros into a superstar at the time.
Now they have Matvei Michkov and a lot of crossed fingers.
Those early 1990s teams also had years of success before their swoon.
Not so now. Not only have the Flyers missed five straight postseasons, they’ve only made the playoffs four times in the last 13 seasons. And in those four playoff seasons, they won a series only once.
But why pay so much attention to so little success when there is the future to look forward to (keep those fingers crossed, fans)?
“It’s no secret that last year we probably overachieved from what the expectations were,” said general manager Danny Briere, whose playing career here ended with that 2012-13 non-playoff season that started this long, lousy run of Flyers hockey.
“This year, we underachieved, but I still feel that we’re a much better team and much closer than where we finished in the standings. I’ve always saidthe players would kind of dictate that. There are guys that really took a big step forward. … I think we’re at a stage now where we’re going to shift a little bit from subtracting from the roster into trying to start to add and help the team.”
What, so soon?
Brad Shaw, who worked three seasons under Tortorella here except for those nine games as interim coach, kind of agreed with Briere’s assessment, also saying he didn’t think the Flyers were “far off.”
But far off from what? True, under Shaw, the Flyers finished up 5-3-1 in their last nine games. Of course, a few of those games might have included opposing players resting up for the playoffs.
It’s been repeatedly reported that team president Keith Jones and Briere might be targeting just-turned 61-year-old Rick Tocchet as the next head coach, but there’s no guarantee Vancouver is going to let him go. The Canucks own an option season on Tocchet’s contract which they might insist on, because, why not?
Either way, Briere says he hasn’t even begun making up a list of potential head coaching candidates, and, oh yeah, maybe Shaw will be on it.
But as they stand now, coming off a season in which they finished tied with the Bruins for the fourth-worst record out of 32 NHL teams … it would be nice to say give 61-year-old coaching soldier Shaw a fair shot at the job.
After all, whoever gets hired is just going to get fired a couple or few years or so down the road anyway, right?
No. Wrong.
Briere said Job No. 1 is to find a head coach. Fine. But he should turn the heat up on himself and couch that job as being one for a long-term head coach. This search should be for a head coach in complete control of developing young players like Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Owen Tippett and even size-challenged Bobby Brink and Jamie Drysdale.
Shaw, a longtime minor league and NHL defender in his day, said he’d like to at least talk about the head coaching job. He also said the other day that he wouldn’t mind staying in the assistant’s role he’s been invested in for the past three seasons. That should be up to the new head coach, one with a track record of not only quick turnarounds at the NHL level, but a prolonged interest in developing players while driving toward real contention.
Yes, the NHL recycles coaches more than every other major pro sports league out there. But just as former Flyers star Tocchet would fit that candidate’s description well, so would former Flyers coach Peter Laviolette, the kid of the bunch at 60, who last year had the Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals, and this year was fired after they missed the playoffs.
Isn’t that always the way in this league?
Contact Rob Parent at rparent@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont
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