Ranking the Best Candidates to Replace Craig Berube as Flyers Head Coach

On Friday, the Philadelphia Flyers made the unsurprising decision to fire head coach Craig Berube.

Berube, who was originally hired three games into last season after the Peter Laviolette-led Flyers went 0-3 to start the year, had a strong debut campaign with the club but was much less successful as a sophomore. Philadelphia posted a 33-31-18 record and missed the playoffs. 

How much of that was really Berube's fault is highly debatable, but the one thing we know for sure is that it's not his problem any more. A Flyers team hamstrung by years of mismanagement on the cap side and with both some exceptional talent and some decidedly weak points on the roster will now be handed to a different coach in the hopes that somebody else can get more out of the team.

Who should that somebody else be? That's the question we'll try to answer in this slideshow. We've limited ourselves to 10 possibilities (though naturally there are other plausible candidates not on this list). Given the way the NHL works, we have placed an emphasis on candidates with ties to Hextall or the Flyers organization. 

Brief biography: An incredibly experienced coach, John Tortorella has paid his dues both in the AHL and as an NHL assistant coach. He won a Calder Cup in 1996 while coaching Rochester, and more impressively he won the Stanley Cup in 2004 with Vincent Lecavalier's Tampa Bay Lightning. He's had long stints with both the Lightning and the New York Rangers and most recently coached the Vancouver Canucks. 

Biggest advantage: There is a long body of work showing that Tortorella can coach and coach well at the NHL level.

Biggest disadvantage: Tortorella's time in Vancouver was a total disaster, and it's going to take time to forget it. 

Brief biography: After a 300-game NHL career (including time in Philadelphia), Terry Murray moved into coaching and in 30 years he's done it all. He's coached four different NHL clubs, including the Flyers, and was most recently seen in Los Angeles where he ran the Kings bench. He's also been an NHL assistant in multiple cities (he rejoined Philadelphia in that role a decade after leaving as head coach) and a minor league head coach (he currently runs the Flyers' AHL affiliate). 

Biggest advantage: He's an internal candidate. He knows the players in the system, the players on the team and he has long ties with most of the key decision-makers. If Philadelphia is looking for a seamless fit, this is as good as it gets. 

Biggest disadvantage: There's a "yesterday's man" feel to Murray. Despite a long and solid career he hasn't worked in the NHL since leaving the Kings in 2011-12, in large part because Darryl Sutter's work there makes his predecessor look bad by comparison. 

Brief biography: Andy Murray has dropped off the radar a bit, having spent the last four years as a head coach at Western Michigan University. However, the man who has nearly 40 years of coaching experience under his belt is still an interesting candidate. He had decent runs under trying circumstances as a head coach in L.A. and St. Louis and has an incredible breadth of coaching experience that included two years as an assistant coach to Paul Holmgren in Philadelphia, during which time Ron Hextall was on the roster.  

Biggest advantage: Murray has done it all, coaching overseas, coaching national teams, coaching amateur teams at many different levels. He's virtually unrivaled on this list in terms of experience.

Biggest disadvantage: Does the 64-year-old Murray want to return to the major league fray? 

Brief biography: A tough, skilled winger in his playing days, Kevin Dineen collected 760 points and 2,200-odd penalty minutes over 1,188 games in the NHL, a career which included parts of five seasons in Philadelphia. He had six solid years as a head coach in the AHL before landing his first NHL job with Florida; he proved incapable of fixing what ailed the club and lasted a little less than three seasons. He's currently an assistant coach in Chicago. 

Biggest advantage: Dineen is a proven commodity at the AHL level, and his current position in Chicago sees him working under one of the most respected head coaches in hockey. 

Biggest disadvantage: His run with the Panthers wasn't terribly convincing, going 56-62-28 over three seasons, and while much of that is undoubtedly on the roster, it's not the kind of experience that looks good on a resume. 

Brief biography: A minor league journeyman who found his way into 120 NHL games, Dallas Eakins moved into coaching shortly after retiring. He did some strong work as the head coach of Toronto's AHL affiliate and was highly regarded when the Edmonton Oilers hired him as head coach in 2013. A poor roster failed to produce wins under his watch, and despite improved shot metrics in 2014-15 his club couldn't overcome lousy shooting and save percentages. 

Biggest advantage: Eakins is seen as a progressive coach, eager to embrace anything that will give him an edge. That includes analytics, but he's also spent a lot of time in the summers learning from coaches in other leagues and organizations. 

Biggest disadvantage: It's awfully hard to hire a coach with a career 36-63-14 record, regardless of the mitigating factors. 

Brief biography: A hard-as-nails defenceman who amassed more than 2,000 penalty minutes in a 1,400-odd game NHL career, these days Luke Richardson is a rising coaching star. He retired into an assistant coaching job with Ottawa, where he stayed three years, and over the past three seasons has had good success running the team's minor league affiliate in Binghamton. The obvious Philadelphia tie is a half-decade stint he spent with the team around the turn of the millennium.  

Biggest advantage: He's an up-and-coming young coach with a solid track record and strong Flyers ties. 

Biggest disadvantage: He has a reasonable amount of experience for a first-time NHL head coach, but he's still a bit of a risk in that he hasn't been doing this as long as many others on this list. There's also a decent chance that the Flyers will be competing with Buffalo for his services, as Sabres general Tim Murray knows him from their time together in Canada's capital.  

Brief biography: A spectacularly successful junior and minor league coach, Guy Boucher had impressive early results with the Tampa Bay Lightning but saw the team step backward over time, resulting in his dismissal and the hiring of John Cooper. It's worth noting that his starting goalies over the latter stretch were Anders Lindback and Mathieu Garon, so it's well worth questioning to what degree coaching was at fault. He's presently coaching in Switzerland's top league. 

Biggest advantage: He was a highly regarded young coach, and it's probable he's a better coach today than he was the day the Lightning hired him. His accomplishments at pretty much every level have been impressive. 

Biggest disadvantage: Boucher has no obvious Flyers ties. He also has a reputation for being a taskmaster, which may not be what the team is looking for.  

Brief biography: By NHL standards, Dan Bylsma was a marginally talented player, but he managed to carve out a 400-plus game career, rising from the ECHL thanks to high levels of focus and dedication. His first four years as a coach saw him bounce around between three organizations in various assistant capacities; in his fifth year he became first the Penguins' AHL coach and then their NHL head coach, guiding Pittsburgh to a Stanley Cup that season. He somewhat surprisingly spent all of 2014-15 on the sidelines, but the Pens' struggles this season may help make him more attractive as a candidate.

Biggest advantage: He's clearly at least a competent head coach, and early on in Pittsburgh he had some decidedly brilliant moments.

Biggest disadvantage: Bylsma's excellent career numbers get downplayed because he had Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for five seasons after winning it all in 2009 and never really got close again. 

Brief biography: After a brief playing career that included five NHL games, Todd McLellan got into coaching and has put together an enviable resume over the last 20 years. He was already a successful WHL and AHL coach (he guided Houston to the Calder Cup in 2002-03) when Mike Babcock hired him as an assistant in Detroit in 2005-06, where he spent three years. After winning a Cup with the Red Wings in 2008, McLellan joined the Sharks, who he has been coaching ever since. 

Biggest advantage: McLellan is pretty clearly a quality NHL head coach; at worst he's going to be highly competent, and that's not a bad guy to hire.

Biggest disadvantage: McLellan may or may not be available, and if he is available he's going to have plenty of options. 

Brief biography: Mike Babcock is a career coach who rose from the WHL to the AHL and finally the NHL, taking the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to the Stanley Cup Finals in his debut season. Of course, he's best known for his decade with the Detroit Red Wings, during which he has kept the team consistently competitive and has offered stability after some shaky years post-Scotty Bowman. 

Biggest advantage: He is universally praised as the best coach (potentially) on the market, and the Flyers, like everyone else, would be lucky to land him.

Biggest disadvantage: He may not leave Detroit, and if he does there's no compelling reason to believe he wants to join a Philadelphia team with a shoddy defence and sharply limited financial maneuverability.