Flyers name Alain Vigneault head coach

[Paulie Walnutz]

I’ll give it 2 years before he’s gone. Flyers fans are going to hate his turn the other cheek philosophy. Be forewarned Flyers fans, he’s going to make you pull your hair out. And his only offensive strategy is long stretch passes and plays off the rush. He also never makes adjustments during a game and he’s very arrogant and stubborn.

 

[JT Kreider]

AV made horrendous personnel decisions in that Ottawa series and as a result single handedly lost that series and I still can't get over that to this day.

The Rangers also had massive lack of killer instinct under AV. So many blown leads. So many playoff series where they win Game 1 or have a chance to take a commanding lead in a series only to let the opponent get right back in it.

The Canucks had the same problems under AV. They did it twice in the 2011 Cup run. Took a 3-1 lead against the Hawks but let them take it all the way to Game 7. And in that Game 7 they nearly blew that game too with Toews tying it in the final minute before OT.

And then they take a commanding 2-0 lead into Boston and then they let the Bruins kick their ****ing teeth down their throat. And of course laid a massive stinker in Game 6 with a chance to win the Cup and did exactly what the Rangers let the Senators do with their lack of killer instinct and handed them a series they had won 5 times over. Yet somehow found a way to lose.

 

[KingDeathMetal]

AV is a great coach, his teams are perpetual winners in the regular season and go deep in the playoffs, but he does better with rosters of established players. He won't be bad for young players who are already good, but as for prospects who still need to develop, it's questionable whether they'll advance much under him. But I don't doubt that AV will have the Flyers near the top of the standings in short order if their front office commits to winning right now. If not, buckle up because he isn't a great development coach.

 

[Ace of Hades]

Good choice by the Flyers, hes a perfect fit for them.

 

[C0DITH]

I love all the fans saying we are going to hate our lives with AV........were you unaware of the gong show we had with a inexperienced college guy that our former GM held onto like f***ing Gollum from Lord of the rings?

 

[Fixxer]

My only concern is what people say, poor in developing young players. I believe Hart can get back with a fresh start and hopefully a guy like Provorov can prove this season was a slump and that he'll be out of it by camp.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Honest question because I don’t know, what’s bad about him?

Nobody can really articulate that because none of us has any clue beyond armchair spectating as to what goes on behind the bench.

 

[Lobodomy]

This won't end well

 

[haveandare]

HF posters are all future NHL-coaches-in-waiting who could easily have steered the 2014 New York Rangers to a Stanley Cup victory.

Or we actually watched this guy coach hundreds of games for our team and know his issues pretty well.

Nah, can't be that. Must be some exaggerated thing where we're all delusional about our qualifications.

Good luck. You guys are going to need it.

 

[haveandare]

Nobody can really articulate that because none of us has any clue beyond armchair spectating as to what goes on behind the bench.

It was confirmed the he literally didn't speak to some players. Buchnevich reported that AV didn't communicate with him at all.

And you don't need to know what is "going on" behind the bench to judge the effects coaching decisions have on the ice when you see that happen.

 

[JT Kreider]

Nobody can really articulate that because none of us has any clue beyond armchair spectating as to what goes on behind the bench.

Except he himself let the cat out of the bag when he said he lost Skjei and Smith on the bench in Ottawa Game 2 in favor of Staal and Holden who were on the ice for the majority of the goals against in the Habs in the previous series and continued that horrid play all the way up to Pageau's OT winner.

 

[DutchNYR]

RIP Philly

 

[Gardner McKay]

He’s a good coach. He just gets too hung up on certain players.

This. I think he will do very well in Philadelphia. He is the kind of guy to take you from good to great, not the guy who you want behind the bench when you are dropping off a cliff and beginning a rebuild (as we were in 2017).

The one issue I have is his defense. He employs a man to man coverage whether he has a mobile enough defense to support it or not.

 

[deckercky]

Good hire considering personnel on the Flyers. Hopefully AV coaches with the more uptempo style he adopted in 2009-2011 rather than the defence first approach that he errs towards when things aren't going well.

 

[WesMcCauley]

AV made horrendous personnel decisions in that Ottawa series and as a result single handedly lost that series and I still can't get over that to this day.

The Rangers also had massive lack of killer instinct under AV. So many blown leads. So many playoff series where they win Game 1 or have a chance to take a commanding lead in a series only to let the opponent get right back in it.

The Canucks had the same problems under AV. They did it twice in the 2011 Cup run. Took a 3-1 lead against the Hawks but let them take it all the way to Game 7. And in that Game 7 they nearly blew that game too with Toews tying it in the final minute before OT.

And then they take a commanding 2-0 lead into Boston and then they let the Bruins kick their ****ing teeth down their throat. And of course laid a massive stinker in Game 6 with a chance to win the Cup and did exactly what the Rangers let the Senators do with their lack of killer instinct and handed them a series they had won 5 times over. Yet somehow found a way to lose.

AV f***ed up in that Ottawa series no doubt, that group was also a declining team which is why we now are rebuilding. He won a lot of series with our group the years prior against Pens, Caps, Habs etc in his time in NY and we didnt have a better team than them on paper imo.

We lacked high end talent badly on the teams AV had and the fact that we got as far as we did a couple times was very impressive. He has his flaws but all coaches do, he is better than the average NHL coach. Almost all fan bases complain about their coach, rightfully so at times but the grass isnt always greener on the other side.

 

[YEM]

Philly, you get what you deserve with this one.

haven't we had enough of what we deserve?
bout 45 years without a Cup here!
& we gave the world Gritty!

 

[MMC]

 

[serp]

5 years is quite a commitment .

 

[Bologna 1]

gets a lot of flack, but his track record speaks for itself. hes been a successful guy behind the bench.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Or we actually watched this guy coach hundreds of games for our team and know his issues pretty well.

Nah, can't be that. Must be some exaggerated thing where we're all delusional about our qualifications.

Good luck. You guys are going to need it.

It can be both. You can have legitimate complaints that also turn into absolute fatal flaws if you spend enough time in an HF echo chamber (every team board here). You can also correctly identify some major problems while minimizing or ignoring context or other positives. Not everything is black-and-white, but on the internet, it is.

From the outside, I was usually pretty impressed with how good the Rangers were with how messy their roster was. Fans tend to overvalue their decent players and undervalue everything else. The Rangers from that era were infuriating and outside of the crease there wasn't really a star player in the whole roster. A bunch of very good ones, no doubt, but those teams were always the sum of those parts.

Failure to make adjustments in the playoffs can be very frustrating, particularly in the later rounds. Failure to make the playoffs at all when you have a Claude Giroux on your team is even more frustrating. We'll burn that other bridge when we get to it.

 

[DrewGl]

Yeah 5 years seems a bit much.

 

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

This made me laugh, didn't expect to see this.

 

[deckercky]

Coaches who are good at making adjustments in the playoffs generally are just the coaches that have better, deeper rosters.

 

[The Burdened]

given the options available, I'm cool with it

 

[justafan22]

5 years is quite a commitment .

it is, but with non cap moves, it's the term, not the money that matters here.

They only turfed Hakstol with 1 1/2 years left on his deal.

I'd expect AV to be the coach for at least the next 3 seasons barring a disaster