Flyers’ Briere gives details on head coach search

Flyers general manager Danny Briere said Saturday the process to find the new fulltime head coach hasn’t started yet. But the search for the new coach and finding the best candidates will begin this week.

“To be honest we haven’t started yet interviewing or really even making a short list yet,” Briere said. “The last couple of days I’ve met with the players, went through the year-end interviews with the players. That’s been my work the last day and a half. I haven’t met with the coaching staff yet, I haven’t met with the rest of the staff. But there’s no doubt the coaching search will be an important one.”

Ideally Briere joked he’d love to have a coach for 25 years which would make things for him so much easier. He seems keen on interviewing a myriad of candidates, from experienced coaches to newcomers and those with different points of view. “We’ll decide who make more sense for us,” he said. “We have a younger team that is just starting to come together and explore just how good they can be.”

While not revealing whether players offered their perspectives or opinions on who the next head coach should be, Briere said he thinks he and President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones have a good sense of the dressing room. And they know what type of coach the team needs moving forward. “You go a little bit more indirectly to try and find out what they feel would work best for the team that we have,” Briere said . “Not specifically for them. I don’t think that’s fair to the players.” 

The two biggest aspects Briere said the coach coming in has to have is being a great teacher and a great communicator. “First of all I think communication is important, so that’s going to be something we look into,” he said. “I mentioned the same day we let go of Torts, someone that can come in and teach will be an important one as well. I think communication and teaching are probably two things that will be at the forefront of our next coach. When you have a young team in place, I really think those two attributes are extremely important.”

A lot of names have been tossed out for the position, with University of Denver coach David Carle and other NCAA head coaches being mentioned. Briere said he wouldn’t be averse to exploring that option but is looking for a coach that seemingly can hit the ground running with this current Flyers roster. As for Brad Shaw, Briere felt he did a good job down the stretch following a hectic string of events in late March that resulted in Tortorella being fired.

“As far as Shaw goes he did a really good job coming in, kind of a different approach than obviously Torts had,” Briere said. “Some guys really stepped up and seemed like they were a little freer. Shaw will be in the running. We’ll consider him, he’s done a good job. We’ve been impressed with him since he was here, even under Torts. He’ll be in the running.”

Given how controversial former coach John Tortorella was with treating some of the Flyers players (too many to mention), Briere jokingly said it would be “tough to find somebody like Torts” to fill the role. But that toughness isn’t exactly the key factor in the search.

“I don’t think there are going to be very many options who are going to be as demanding as Torts,” Briere said with a smile. “So in that regard our guys are pretty sturdy, they learned the hard way under Torts. Anyone who comes in will seem a lot milder than Torts I would expect. It’s definitely going to be someone who’s less vocal, hard than Torts.”

The ending was messy, but Briere said Tortorella did a lot of good things for the Flyers in his time. “I really like what Torts did to be honest the last few years with this group,” he said. “He made them accountable. He was hard but he demanded a lot. The accountability part I think is really going to leave something good for the next coach that comes into place. Now it’s finding a coach that can take it to another level. But at the same time maybe give a little bit more freedom to the players to try things and to let their talent come out. We saw a little bit of that with Shaw.”

What’s clear is the Flyers will not rush to fill the void. Briere said unlike the hiring of John Tortorella, the team is not going outside to hire an independent firm in the search. The organization will do the search themselves. It sounds as if no stone will be unturned, although some might feel all Briere has to do is remove the interim tag from Shaw’s name.

“It depends on who’s available,” Briere said. “I’ll have a better gauge of this when I have a short list. Hopefully you find the coach that can do it all. Most coaches can tell you they can do it all but some have, some have not. If it’s a rookie coach I’ll guess we’ll learn along the way. It’s going to be tough to tell. But at this point I don’t know yet. I don’t have that short list to decide that.”