Mike Sielski: Danny Briere and the Flyers have to get the timing right on hiring a new coach

PHILADELPHIA — Danny Briere, the Flyers’ general manager, spent some time Saturday morning making a list. This was very relatable and reassuring. It was good to know that a National Hockey League general manager makes lists just like the rest of us conscientious adults do. Made me feel nice and solid inside. Except my lists usually are titled “GROCERIES” or “ERRANDS” or “REASONS NOT TO BOOK GUYS TRIP” and include items like “printer ink at Staples” or “granola bars from Target” or “wife might check 529 account balance.” Briere didn’t say what the title of his list was, but it definitely wasn’t a list like that.

Briere’s list comprised several of the youngest, most promising players in the Flyers’ organization. There were six forwards: Jett Luchanko, Alex Bump, Karsen Dorwart, Devin Kaplan, Denver Barkey and Nikita Grebenkin. There were also five defensemen: Adam Ginning, Emil Andrae, Helge Grans, Hunter McDonald and Oliver Bonk. Some of those players have suited up for the Flyers already. Some haven’t. All of them, at least for the moment, have a chance to be big parts of the Flyers’ future, which means all of them have a chance to be coached by the Flyers’ next head coach. If he’s really good. Or lucky. Or both.

Briere will have to be all those things, too, if he wants someday to be able to call his first coaching hire a success. The Flyers are in an interesting and challenging place as they search for John Tortorella’s successor. They just finished a season in which they had the fourth-worst record in the NHL, yet they feel better about what’s ahead for them, based on the presence and development of Matvei Michkov, Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Tyson Foerster and those prospects on Briere’s list. They are rebuilding, sure, but they are making it clear that they are eager to commence with the most important part of that process, the most important syllable in that loaded word. They want to build. Briere said it again Saturday:

“The last two years, there was a lot of trying to figure out what we had under our belt. Where were we moving forward? … We’re at a stage now where we’re going to shift a little bit from subtracting from the roster to trying to start to add and help the team.”

OK, so does that goal indicate anything about who might be coaching the team? Briere insisted that he hasn’t set a deadline for a decision or started interviewing candidates or “even making a short list” yet. (Hey, a GM can set aside only so much time for list-making, as valuable as it is.) But it is important, when it comes to this hire, that Briere, team president Keith Jones, and franchise chairman get the timing right. I don’t mean timing in that they need to pick a coach by a certain date. I mean timing in that they need to pick a coach whose profile will align with the franchise’s timeline for growth and improvement. Consider two familiar examples where the timing (in this sense) of a particular hire didn’t align.

Tortorella is the more obvious one. He was a taskmaster whose previous experience in the league suggested that he would have a quick expiration date here. As it turned out, he lasted nearly three years, which was longer than one might have first thought he would and is just about standard for any NHL head coach these days. (Of the league’s 32 head coaches entering Saturday — the New York Rangers fired Peter Laviolette early in the afternoon — 28 had been on the job for less than three years. Coaching in the NHL is like working in a fast-food restaurant or Donald Trump’s cabinet. The turnover rate is high.)

That said, if he could have better handled the losing that was always going to accompany the Flyers’ rebuild, and if he could have better handled some of his players (e.g. Sean Couturier, Cam York), Tortorella might still be here. His stint was shorter than it might have been.

Now, think back to 2015, when the Flyers hired Dave Hakstol. Hakstol had been an elite college coach at North Dakota, arguably the best college coach in North America, but he had no NHL experience at all when then-GM Ron Hextall tapped him to replace Craig Berube. He needed — and he admitted as much before his third season with the Flyers — time to learn the league and the ins and outs of coaching in it. That development curve and his relative lack of credibility cost him with a team that at the time required a firmer hand from a more established figure behind the bench.

It’s a good bet that the Flyers’ next coach will have to go through at least some growth, too. They will be young for a while, and a recycled coach, a guy who already has ricocheted from job to job, seems unlikely to deliver the fresh start that the franchise is looking for.

“Communication and teaching are probably two things that will be at the forefront of our next coach,” Briere said. “When you have a young team in place, I really think those two attributes are extremely important.”

Still, a team that wants to take a step forward next season can wait only so long for a new coach to get up to speed, which is why you have to figure that Briere and the Flyers will prioritize previous NHL coaching experience among their possible candidates. One, Western Michigan’s Pat Ferschweiler, has some. He was an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings for four years. One, Denver’s David Carle, doesn’t. Organize your list accordingly.