For some, the quiet lull that is the Philadelphia Flyers’ coaching search has become infuriating especially considering all the venerable names currently available. When the Flyers initially dismissed Mike Yeo of his interim duties, the coaching pool was shallow with a few names like John Tortorella, Rikard Gronborg, and Rick Tocchet at their beck and call. However, in the weeks that followed, names like Barry Trotz, Peter DeBoer, Jim Montgomery, Kirk Muller, and Mike Vellucci have entered the fray and the Flyers have interviewed or have had interest in most of the names mentioned.
On Monday night, the Boston Bruins surprisingly fired head coach Bruce Cassidy after 14 years with the organization and 6 as a head coach. The Bruins have qualified for the playoffs in all 6 seasons with Cassidy at the helm but have only advanced past the second round once, which was the 2019 season when they lost to the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Final. Nevertheless, the firing comes as a shock due to his relative success during the regular season and having to grind through an embattled roster at times, however the pedigree of the Boston Bruins seemingly isn’t just about making the playoffs as it’s also about winning. So now with the Bruins looking for a new head coach, that helps but also hinders the Flyers chances at nailing down the big fish. However, the addition of Bruce Cassidy makes all the patience worthwhile.
The big fish is still Barry Trotz and it seems like the coaching dominoes will fall the moment he chooses his next destination, which begs the question on whether or not the Boston Bruins are a more attractive destination than the Flyers? Right off the hop, the answer would be a defiant yes, but when you look little deeper into their issues, it’s not that much more attractive than people think. For starters, 5-time Selke winner Patrice Bergeron’s future is up in the air and there’s some who believe he could retire, then you add in the mass amount of injuries to 3 key players in Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy, and Matt Grzelcyk who are on the mend for the next 5-6 months, Jake DeBrusk’s future isn’t all that certain either as he did request a trade earlier in the season, and the secondary scoring has always been somewhat of a hindrance but was masked by the Perfection Line – who could be without 2 of their 3 stalwarts.
Still, the Bruins always seem to find ways to win hockey games through their grit and determination, the silver lining to their injury woes is that Marchand, McAvoy, and Grzelcyk will miss somewhere around the first 2 months of the season instead of 4-5, and they still have David Pastrnak, Taylor Hall, and Hampus Lindholm but due to the latter, the Bruins don’t have a first round pick this season or a second round pick in 2023 and 2024. They will have to rely on players like Charlie Coyle, Oskar Steen, Trent Frederic, and Jack Studnicka to step up in the meantime.
if the Bruins aren’t the most attractive destination, there’s still Vegas and Winnipeg who are in dire need of a head coach. Vegas’ roster is built for a championship window now, unlike the Bruins whose window may be shutting down soon. The Golden Knights are in a little bit of a cap crunch and we witnessed part of that during the season when they started to juggle key players between LTIR and their NHL roster. Nevertheless they still have players like Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty, Alex Pietrangelo, and Shea Theodore under contract, as well as Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson, Alec Martinez, and Robin Lehner. They currently have $200,000 in open cap space, but still with almost every key player signed through at least next season.
They will most likely revisit the idea of trading Evegnii Dadonov, who was seemingly an Anaheim Duck at the trade deadline but the trade became void when it was announced that Anaheim was on Dadonov’s no-trade list. His $5 million contract is an obstacle to overcome but we’ve seen players on expiring contracts get traded to rebuilding teams every summer. As long as the Golden Knights remain healthy, they are by far the most attractive destination.
In relation to Trotz, the Winnipeg Jets are a big player because of the hometown familiarity. Trotz is a Winnipeg native and there’s never been a better time for the Jets to land a coach of his status, especially after Paul Maurice walked away midseason. The Jets have Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Blake Wheeler, Nikolaj Ehlers, Josh Morrissey, and Connor Hellebuyck under contract in terms of their showstoppers. They currently have around $18 million in open cap space, their defensive core of Morrissey, Nate Schmidt, Neal Pionk, Brendan Dillion, and Dylan DeMelo are signed through for at least another 2 seasons, and in terms of key players needing a new contract it’s really only Pierre-Luc Dubois; the prize of the Patrik Laine trade. The Jets made the playoffs for 4 consecutive seasons before 2021-22, being eliminated in the Conference Finals, the First Round, the Qualifying Round, and the Second Round most recently. Once again, another team that has the upper hand on the Trotz sweepstakes over the Flyers and they carry 2 first round picks in their own and the New York Rangers’ selection as well.
Now, that’s not to say that the Flyers are a terrible destination but after the last 4 years and even dating back to 2013, the Flyers have nothing to really show for. In the last four seasons alone, the Flyers failed to qualify for the playoffs in 2018-19, they played 2 really good months of hockey before the COVID-pause and then fell in the Second Round in the COVID-bubble, struggled in 2020-21, and then struggled even more in 2021-22. Going back to 2012-13, the Flyers have qualified for the playoffs 4 times in a span of 10 seasons, which is arguably their worst stretch in franchise history outside of the 5 years between 1989-90 to 1993-94 where they failed to qualify for the playoffs. This is a team that has failed to qualify for the playoffs only 8 times between 1967-68 all the way to 2011-12; including the 5 straight previously mentioned. The moniker of success has shifted in the last decade and the Flyers management is in such a flux that simply making the playoffs has become their primary goal. They do possess players like Sean Couturier, Ryan Ellis, Ivan Provorov, Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, and Carter Hart, who very well compose the new core of the team, give or take a few other names. They also have the 5th overall pick during the upcoming NHL Entry Draft that is scheduled for July, they have some exciting prospects in Bobby Brink, Tyson Foerster, and Cam York, and they possess a front office that isn’t afraid to pay a pretty penny for a head coach or marquee free agents. If money is the ultimate goal, than the Flyers should become one of the favourites to land a venerable head coach.
Now enters Bruce Cassidy. He was the head coach of the Washington Capitals during the 2002-03 season and for 25 games during the 2003-04 season, where he accumulated a record of 47-45-9, losing in the first round in 2002-03, but more importantly was fired 25 games into the next season because the Capitals had dropped to a 8-16-1 record. More prominently, he became the head coach of the Providence Bruins of the AHL in 2011-12 all the way to 2015-16, before becoming an assistant coach for the Boston Bruins and then incidentally head coach after Claude Julien was fired in February of the 2016-17 season.
In the AHL, he went 207-128-45 in 380 games, qualifying for the playoffs in his final 4 seasons. At the NHL level, he turned the season around in 2016-17, finishing 18-8-1 before bowing out in the first round. In the next 5 seasons he led the Bruins to the tune of 227-100-45, winning 50 games twice, coming close a third time with a 49-win season, losing more than 25 games in regulation only once (2 seasons were shortened but the Bruins were 44-14-12 at the COVID-pause), and winning the Jack Adams Award in 2019-20.
The Flyers have faced off against Cassidy’s Bruins 20 times in the last 5 seasons, finishing 8-10-2, including the 2020-21 season where they faced off 8 times with the Flyers only picking up two wins. The Flyers were always involved in tight-checking, gritty, tough-to-play-against Bruins teams under Cassidy, they have up-close and personal knowledge of his head coaching, and they need to really consider his services all things considered. Even if Trotz is still their guy, Cassidy is the perfect safety net to fall on if Trotz decides to coach elsewhere. He’s a Jack Adams Award winner, and would have been involved at the international level as an assistant coach if the NHL opted in for the Olympic Games in Beijing. The Flyers have been linked to Jim Montgomery for some time now as well and ever since the season came to an end for the St. Louis Blues, things have been suspiciously quiet on that front, but the Flyers have made mention that they intend to keep things under wraps and they will be doing their due diligence over the period of 4-6 weeks that started when their season came to a crashing end.
Bruce Cassidy would be a fantastic choice for the Flyers and maybe their patience and persistence paid off, at least for the time being. They will be battling the likes of Vegas, Winnipeg, Detroit, and now Boston for several head coaches but if they sniff for even a second that Trotz doesn’t desire Philadelphia as his next destination, the Flyers better punt on that idea and look at Cassidy before someone else scoops him up.
The Flyers need a venerable coach, one who isn’t afraid of playing the youth in big opportunities, and one who can command the locker room and expedite results in quick order. His system that he quickly implemented in Boston worked instantly and yes, they possessed players of the ilk of Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, and Tuukka Rask, but he still got a lot out of his secondary players and his defensemen, which the Flyers desperately need help with.
