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If any two bench bosses in this year's Stanley Cup playoffs already have a colorful coaching "history" against each other -- even though they have never met in NHL post season play before -- they are John Stevens of the Philadelphia Flyers and Michel Therrien of the Pittsburgh Penguins. They may respect each other, but there is certainly no love lost between them...or as one senior NHL team executive who knows them both says: "If you want to screw up either man's game of golf, just call out the other's name as his rival is about to make a shot."
The roads that the Flyers and Penguins have traveled over the past three seasons which have brought them to meeting each other in the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs are quite remarkable indeed. When the two clubs returned to the ice after the lockout year with the rest of the NHL in October, 2005, they did so sitting very much at the opposite ends of the scales of success. The Pens had finished their last season before the lockout with just 23 wins and a league worst 58 points in 2003-04 while the Flyers had won the Atlantic Division with 101 points and then pushed the eventual Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning to a seventh game in the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals.
Despite the year off in 2004-05, the first season back did not start out any better for the Pens who were sitting at 8-17-6 after just 31 games when they fired head coach Eddie Olczyk and replaced him with Michel Therrien, then coach of the Pens' Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins farm club in the AHL. Still the team again finished with just 58 points (one more than the St. Louis Blues league worst 57) while the Flyers once again topped the century mark under Ken Hitchcock with 101.
The 2006-07 season, however, saw the fates of both clubs make drastic reversals.
The Penguins, in their first full season under Therrien's hand, rocketed from 58 points to 105 while the Flyers would unexpectedly plummet from 101 points to a league worst 56. After a devastating loss in Buffalo on October 17th in which the Flyers gave up eight goals in less than fifteen minutes of playing time, longtime GM Bob Clarke resigned, head coach Ken Hitchcock was fired, Paul Holmgren stepped up from Assistant GM to "Interim" GM, and former AHL Philadelphia Phantoms' head coach John Stevens -- who had guided the AHL club to a Calder Cup title in 2005 -- was promoted from his just started position as a Flyers' assistant coach to head coach of the NHL club just eight games into the season.
Therrien and the Penguins would not make things easy for Stevens as they swept all eight meetings in 2006-07. Despite the one sidedness of the series, however, the games were always passionate due in no small part to the intense personal competition between the men behind the benches -- John Stevens and Michel Therrien -- who were well familiar with each other from their years competing against one another in the AHL going back to 1986-87 when Stevens was a 20-year old defenseman with the Hershey Bears and Therrien was a 23-year old blueliner for Hershey's bitterest rival, the Baltimore Skipjacks.
The coaching rivalry between the two began in 2003-04 when Therrien, a former coach of the Montreal Canadiens, took over the AHL Penguins and Stevens who had already been coaching the Phantoms since the 2000-01 season. As AHL East Division rivals the two clubs met ten times that year and six more times in the second round of the Calder Cup playoffs which the Penguins won, four-games-to-two, on their way to the play-off finals. After another ten regular season meetings in 2004-05, the two clubs and coaches again faced off in the second round of the playoffs in what would produce perhaps the most distressing and embarrassing loss in Therrien's coaching career. (I'll have more about that in a minute.)
Things were a good bit different for the Flyers in 2007-08 -- especially against the Penguins -- as the revampted and new look club won the first four penalty filled meetings between the two squads and finished the year with a 5-3 record over Pittsburgh. (The eight game series also featured 13 fights.) Still all was not perfect as the Flyers did suffer one quite ugly 7-1 loss in Pittsburgh on March 16th on an NBC Game of the Week. With only nine games remaining in the season after that loss, it appeared that the Flyers were in considerable jeopardy of missing the play-offs if Stevens and the Flyers could not right their ship immediately....but that they did finishing as the sixth seed when they shut-out the Pens, 2-0, on the final day of the season.
In the month that followed, the Flyers beat the Washington Capitals in seven games and then took out the top team in the East, the Montreal Canadiens, in five. Meanwhile the Penguins swept aside the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers to set up the all-Pennsylvania Eastern Conference final. It is also just the fourth ever post season meeting with their cross state rivals in forty years, and the first since 2000. (The Flyers won the previous three series in 1989, 1997, and 2000 with a 12-6 overall record in 18 games..)
While Therrien and the Penguins beat Stevens' Phantoms in 2004, it was the Phantoms that took the second round set between the two in 2005 and then went on to capturing their second Calder Cup a month later when they defeated the Chicago Wolves before an SRO crowd of 20,103 at the Wachovia Center. As thrilling as that was for the hockey starved fans of Philadelphia with no NHL hockey because of the lockout, it was the fifth and final game between the Phantoms and Penguins that Therrien and Stevens may well be thinking of as they stand behind the same two benches in Philadelphia next Tuesday, May 13th, which will be the third anniversary of that game. In addition to Stevens and Therrien, a number of the players sitting on their NHL benches were there as AHL'ers that night too including Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Riley Cote, R.J. Umberger, and Antero Niittymaki for the Phantoms, and Marc-Andre Fleury, Dany Sabourin, Ryan Whitney, Tomas Surovy, Rob Scuderi, Kris Beech, and Maxime Talbot for the Pens. (Pens' assistant coach Mike Yeo was also Therrien's assistant in the AHL.)
The Phantoms had a three-games-to-one lead in the series when the two clubs took to the ice for game five on May 13, 2005. Although Fleury, then a rookie pro, had played in 54 games for Wilkes Barre during the regular season (26-19-4; 2.52; .901) his playoff performances had not been good losing his only two starts and mopping up in another loss for starter Andy Chiodo leaving him with a goals against average of 4.36. Chiodo, a seventh round pick of the Pens in 2003, thus got the start in the fifth game and played well enough to be holding on to a 4-1 lead approaching then midway point of the third period. With it looking as if the Pens had the game wrapped up to set up a sixth game the next night in Wilkes Barre, Stevens pulled Niittymaki to rest him up and inserted veteran netminder Neil Little, now a Phantom coach and the goaltender who led the club to its first Calder Cup title in 1998 when Stevens was the captain.
And then something remarkable happened as Therrien's team suffered a meltdown of truly Biblical proportions.
It all began at 8:37 of the final period when Josh Gratton -- who was far better known for scoring with his fists than in the net -- beat Chiodo to close the score to 4-2. Just over three minutes later recent junior hockey graduate Jeff Carter -- who would go on to be the leading scorer in the AHL playoffs -- narrowed the deficit again to 4-3 with a power play goal at 11:45, and then John Sim tied it at 4-4 just over a minute later at 12:49. Left wing Ryan Ready then gave the Phantoms a 5-4 lead at 13:56 which chased Penguins' netminder Chiodo in favor of Marc-Andre Fleury who quickly gave up a goal to Jeff Carter at 17:20. Winger Jon Sim finished off the six goals in a dozen minutes outburst with an empty netter with just under four seconds remaining to cap the miraculous rally and give Stevens and his club a 7-4 series clinching victory.
“Once the momentum changed, it was hard to get it stopped,” said Stevens. "I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like it.
“That was the best comeback that I’ve ever seen or been a part of,” said Richards. “When Gratton scored that goal, it just lifted the bench and everyone got excited. Even though we were still behind a couple of goals, when Gratton scored, you could sense the confidence on the bench that we could do this.”
Therrien, on the other hand, had a different view of the evening's events.
"It is performances like that," he said, "that can cost some players their careers."
Since 2004 John Stevens and Michel Therrien have faced each other from behind opposite benches almost fifty times in the AHL and NHL and know each other well. When this Eastern Conference final ends sometime in the next two weeks one of these two coaches -- who within the last four years have each been both to an AHL Calder Cup final, and ended an NHL season dead last in the league -- will be going on to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time.
And for the other one -- well it will be golf.
But please, if you happen see him on the course, don't call out the name of the other coach when he's ready to take a swing!
"The Ultimate Prize"
The roads that the Flyers and Penguins have traveled over the past three seasons which have brought them to meeting each other in the 2008 Eastern Conference Finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs are quite remarkable indeed. When the two clubs returned to the ice after the lockout year with the rest of the NHL in October, 2005, they did so sitting very much at the opposite ends of the scales of success. The Pens had finished their last season before the lockout with just 23 wins and a league worst 58 points in 2003-04 while the Flyers had won the Atlantic Division with 101 points and then pushed the eventual Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning to a seventh game in the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals.
Despite the year off in 2004-05, the first season back did not start out any better for the Pens who were sitting at 8-17-6 after just 31 games when they fired head coach Eddie Olczyk and replaced him with Michel Therrien, then coach of the Pens' Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins farm club in the AHL. Still the team again finished with just 58 points (one more than the St. Louis Blues league worst 57) while the Flyers once again topped the century mark under Ken Hitchcock with 101.
The 2006-07 season, however, saw the fates of both clubs make drastic reversals.
The Penguins, in their first full season under Therrien's hand, rocketed from 58 points to 105 while the Flyers would unexpectedly plummet from 101 points to a league worst 56. After a devastating loss in Buffalo on October 17th in which the Flyers gave up eight goals in less than fifteen minutes of playing time, longtime GM Bob Clarke resigned, head coach Ken Hitchcock was fired, Paul Holmgren stepped up from Assistant GM to "Interim" GM, and former AHL Philadelphia Phantoms' head coach John Stevens -- who had guided the AHL club to a Calder Cup title in 2005 -- was promoted from his just started position as a Flyers' assistant coach to head coach of the NHL club just eight games into the season.
Therrien and the Penguins would not make things easy for Stevens as they swept all eight meetings in 2006-07. Despite the one sidedness of the series, however, the games were always passionate due in no small part to the intense personal competition between the men behind the benches -- John Stevens and Michel Therrien -- who were well familiar with each other from their years competing against one another in the AHL going back to 1986-87 when Stevens was a 20-year old defenseman with the Hershey Bears and Therrien was a 23-year old blueliner for Hershey's bitterest rival, the Baltimore Skipjacks.
The coaching rivalry between the two began in 2003-04 when Therrien, a former coach of the Montreal Canadiens, took over the AHL Penguins and Stevens who had already been coaching the Phantoms since the 2000-01 season. As AHL East Division rivals the two clubs met ten times that year and six more times in the second round of the Calder Cup playoffs which the Penguins won, four-games-to-two, on their way to the play-off finals. After another ten regular season meetings in 2004-05, the two clubs and coaches again faced off in the second round of the playoffs in what would produce perhaps the most distressing and embarrassing loss in Therrien's coaching career. (I'll have more about that in a minute.)
Things were a good bit different for the Flyers in 2007-08 -- especially against the Penguins -- as the revampted and new look club won the first four penalty filled meetings between the two squads and finished the year with a 5-3 record over Pittsburgh. (The eight game series also featured 13 fights.) Still all was not perfect as the Flyers did suffer one quite ugly 7-1 loss in Pittsburgh on March 16th on an NBC Game of the Week. With only nine games remaining in the season after that loss, it appeared that the Flyers were in considerable jeopardy of missing the play-offs if Stevens and the Flyers could not right their ship immediately....but that they did finishing as the sixth seed when they shut-out the Pens, 2-0, on the final day of the season.
In the month that followed, the Flyers beat the Washington Capitals in seven games and then took out the top team in the East, the Montreal Canadiens, in five. Meanwhile the Penguins swept aside the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers to set up the all-Pennsylvania Eastern Conference final. It is also just the fourth ever post season meeting with their cross state rivals in forty years, and the first since 2000. (The Flyers won the previous three series in 1989, 1997, and 2000 with a 12-6 overall record in 18 games..)
While Therrien and the Penguins beat Stevens' Phantoms in 2004, it was the Phantoms that took the second round set between the two in 2005 and then went on to capturing their second Calder Cup a month later when they defeated the Chicago Wolves before an SRO crowd of 20,103 at the Wachovia Center. As thrilling as that was for the hockey starved fans of Philadelphia with no NHL hockey because of the lockout, it was the fifth and final game between the Phantoms and Penguins that Therrien and Stevens may well be thinking of as they stand behind the same two benches in Philadelphia next Tuesday, May 13th, which will be the third anniversary of that game. In addition to Stevens and Therrien, a number of the players sitting on their NHL benches were there as AHL'ers that night too including Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Riley Cote, R.J. Umberger, and Antero Niittymaki for the Phantoms, and Marc-Andre Fleury, Dany Sabourin, Ryan Whitney, Tomas Surovy, Rob Scuderi, Kris Beech, and Maxime Talbot for the Pens. (Pens' assistant coach Mike Yeo was also Therrien's assistant in the AHL.)
The Phantoms had a three-games-to-one lead in the series when the two clubs took to the ice for game five on May 13, 2005. Although Fleury, then a rookie pro, had played in 54 games for Wilkes Barre during the regular season (26-19-4; 2.52; .901) his playoff performances had not been good losing his only two starts and mopping up in another loss for starter Andy Chiodo leaving him with a goals against average of 4.36. Chiodo, a seventh round pick of the Pens in 2003, thus got the start in the fifth game and played well enough to be holding on to a 4-1 lead approaching then midway point of the third period. With it looking as if the Pens had the game wrapped up to set up a sixth game the next night in Wilkes Barre, Stevens pulled Niittymaki to rest him up and inserted veteran netminder Neil Little, now a Phantom coach and the goaltender who led the club to its first Calder Cup title in 1998 when Stevens was the captain.
And then something remarkable happened as Therrien's team suffered a meltdown of truly Biblical proportions.
It all began at 8:37 of the final period when Josh Gratton -- who was far better known for scoring with his fists than in the net -- beat Chiodo to close the score to 4-2. Just over three minutes later recent junior hockey graduate Jeff Carter -- who would go on to be the leading scorer in the AHL playoffs -- narrowed the deficit again to 4-3 with a power play goal at 11:45, and then John Sim tied it at 4-4 just over a minute later at 12:49. Left wing Ryan Ready then gave the Phantoms a 5-4 lead at 13:56 which chased Penguins' netminder Chiodo in favor of Marc-Andre Fleury who quickly gave up a goal to Jeff Carter at 17:20. Winger Jon Sim finished off the six goals in a dozen minutes outburst with an empty netter with just under four seconds remaining to cap the miraculous rally and give Stevens and his club a 7-4 series clinching victory.
“Once the momentum changed, it was hard to get it stopped,” said Stevens. "I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like it.
“That was the best comeback that I’ve ever seen or been a part of,” said Richards. “When Gratton scored that goal, it just lifted the bench and everyone got excited. Even though we were still behind a couple of goals, when Gratton scored, you could sense the confidence on the bench that we could do this.”
Therrien, on the other hand, had a different view of the evening's events.
"It is performances like that," he said, "that can cost some players their careers."
Since 2004 John Stevens and Michel Therrien have faced each other from behind opposite benches almost fifty times in the AHL and NHL and know each other well. When this Eastern Conference final ends sometime in the next two weeks one of these two coaches -- who within the last four years have each been both to an AHL Calder Cup final, and ended an NHL season dead last in the league -- will be going on to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time.
And for the other one -- well it will be golf.
But please, if you happen see him on the course, don't call out the name of the other coach when he's ready to take a swing!
"The Ultimate Prize"
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