The Philadelphia Flyers were in a pretty bad place when they hired John Stevens to be their head coach early in the 2006-07 season after a slow start. Things only continued to get worse, leading to the team’s worst record in franchise history. With it being their first time missing the playoffs since the 1993-94 season, a winning culture was zapped from the team.
Related: Philadelphia Flyers’ Coaching History
Led by Stevens, the Flyers were able to make a historic turnaround from bottom feeder into Stanley Cup contender. He was one of the sparks necessary to make a winning culture find its return to Philadelphia.
Cataclysmic 2006-07 Season
The Flyers were in hot water in their 2006-07 season, which happened to be the 40th anniversary of the franchise. Following a 2005-06 campaign where the team went 45-26-11, they regressed significantly. The now-Hockey Hall of Fame head coach, Ken Hitchcock, was fired after eight games when he held a 1-6-1 record to start. That made the direness of the situation apparent, as he had 19 playoff wins under his belt with the Flyers in just his first three seasons as the coach.
Hitchcock’s replacement was Stevens, the Flyers’ coach of their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, then known as the Philadelphia Phantoms. The young coach had no NHL experience, yet had to take over for a Flyers team that had only missed the playoffs seven times in their entire history. He managed to stop some of the bleeding, but the Flyers finished with a franchise-worst 22-48-12 record with him behind the bench. What’s worse, they were not able to land the first-overall pick of the 2007 NHL Draft, even though they had the worst record in the entire NHL.
The Flyers’ 2006-07 campaign was arguably the lowest point of the franchise, yet Stevens was brought back as the Flyers’ head coach for their 2007-08 season. Giving him another chance proved to be the correct decision, and one that helped the Flyers make a swift U-turn into a contender.
Flyers’ Quick Return to Relevance
General manager (GM) Paul Holmgren had an aggressive offseason to try and get his team back to winning hockey games. His first move was a pretty massive one, where he gave up the 23rd-overall selection in the 2007 NHL Draft to the Nashville Predators in exchange for defenseman Kimmo Timonen and forward Scott Hartnell.
Both had expiring contracts, but they were quickly given relatively big deals for the time period. Timonen, 32, was given a six-year contract worth $6.33…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Hockey Writers…