In this Coaching Benchmarks series, we will look back at what happened to the former coaches of the Flyers after they stepped out from behind the bench in Philadelphia. The Discard Pile Group consists mostly of coaches with no post-Flyers career, plus Paul Holmgren.
Brad Shaw (Interim 2025-?) and John Tortorella (2022-25)
The Flyers never made the playoffs in the Tortorella era, repeatedly hindering themselves by falling out of a playoff position or failing upwards out of a top draft lottery spot.
After Tortorella was let go, Shaw’s team experienced an adrenaline rush and began winning games during the period many fans accepted as a tankathon.
Post-Flyers history has yet to be written for these two coaches. Brad Shaw will likely stay behind the bench in Philly, either as an assistant or as the head coach. John Tortorella may just go play with his horses and enjoy life off the ice.
Paul Holmgren (1988-91)
After coaching in Philadelphia, he had an unremarkable stint behind the Hartford Whalers’ bench, which, for some reason, resulted in him being promoted to GM. Look, I’m not saying it’s Holmgren’s fault, but the team had to move to Carolina after his time there.
Philadelphia brought him back into the fold in 1995, where he held various positions before being named General Manager of the Flyers in 2006 and then President of the Flyers in 2014. As a coach, the team he inherited made it to the Conference Finals in 1989, and he has not coached a playoff team since. Since he became President, the Flyers missed the playoffs eight times, lost in the first round three times, and made it out of the first round once.
Paul Holmgren has continued to fail upward throughout his career, leaving nothing but a trail of scorched earth behind him. While his fingerprints may not be on every bad move made by the Flyers, he was somewhere in the vicinity at the time.
Vic Stasiuk (1969-71)
Stasiuk was the second head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. He was behind the bench for the 1970 and 1971 seasons. The former left winger had a long professional career, playing 745 NHL games, a bulk of which were with the Bruins. His coaching tenure was much shorter and unremarkable. He spent four seasons as an NHL coach, two of which were in Philadelphia. His lone postseason appearance was with the Flyers, where they were swept by the Chicago Blackhawks.
After leaving Philadelphia, he found himself behind the bench of the lackluster California Golden Seals, finishing the 1971-72 season 21-38-16. He spent the 1972-73 season in Vancouver, coaching the Canucks to a 22-47-9 record, an impressively low .340 points percentage. From there, he floundered around the junior leagues as a coach for a few years.
Vic Stasiuk was never really an NHL coach. Even in the junior and minor leagues, he only had a few winning seasons.
Alain Vigneault (2019-21)
Vigneault had a long coaching career that spanned three decades, 12 playoff appearances, and a 2007 Jack Adams Award. A couple of years with the Flyers was all it took for him to bow out of hockey altogether. He announced his retirement a year after being fired from the Flyers in 2022.
Vigneault was the last coach to take the Flyers to the postseason. In the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season, the Flyers finished second in the Metropolitan Division. The playoff format was altered due to the abbreviated season and involved a seeding round. The Flyers beat the Boston Bruins, Washington Capitals, and Tampa Bay Lightning in three games, landing the top seed in the Eastern Conference. They knocked off the Montreal Canadiens in six games but were then defeated by the New York Islanders in a seven-game second-round series.
Let’s blame COVID for killing the Flyers playoff hopes and Alain Vigneault’s career.