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When Florida Gators Head Coach Billy Donovan left Gainesville for the rigors of the NBA and the Oklahoma City Thunder,the timeless question of how coaches who bolt college sports for the pro ranks fare was re-opened. Countless college football and basketball coaches have left the NCAA for the NFL and NBA and many — Steve Spurrier and Rick Pitino come to mind — fail miserably and end up back in college. The NHL has never really sought college coaches as the majority of NHL Head Coaches come from the junior ranks where team structure bears more similarities to pro hockey. The Philadelphia Flyers decided to buck that trend when they hired former North Dakota Fighting Sioux Head Coach Dave Hakstol to join what’s become a bit of a coaching carousel in the City of Brotherly Love in recent years.
Only three other coaches in the history of the NHL have ever gone right from a college campus to “the Show” — Ned Harkness, Bob Johnson and Herb Brooks of Miracle on Ice fame. Of the three, Johnson was by far the most successful in the pros as he coached a star-laden Pittsburgh Penguins team to the Stanley Cup in 1991 and likely would have had even more success had he not died of brain cancer that same year. Given that it’s been over thirty years since Johnson bolted from the University of Wisconsin for the NHL, Hakstol is in so many ways a trailblazer.
Hakstol can’t walk into the Flyers’ locker room and expect to garner the same level of respect from day one that he got at Dakota. For starters, the players’ lives couldn’t be more different — going from an environment where the first line center is worried about a chemistry final to one where Claude Giroux is making over $8 million is going to be eye-opening at first. Having said that, Hakstol’s coached enough great players — Jonathan Toews and T.J. Oshie come to mind — that he’ll find a way to get the best out of Giroux and the rest of the team.
Hakstol’s tenure at Dakota was marked with plenty of success, though no championships — sort of like the Flyers of the last few decades. Even with the high expectations every year, the pressure of coaching in Grand Forks is nothing to compared to Philly. While the media can be tough, the fans are a unique breed of passionate and crazy — Eagles fans once threw snowballs at Santa Claus — but they love and appreciate a winner. Hakstol will look to bring them just that, and the only thing thrown at him will be confetti at a Stanley Cup parade to quench the almost four decade Cup drought in Philly.
