Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are we're
looking at the absolute highest individual honor
a head coach can receive in the National Hockey
League. Right. The Jack Adams Award. Exactly.
The Jack Adams. And we're going to unpack the
entire voting history today. The anomalies. The.
the undeniable patterns that have really emerged
since the award was first handed out. Yeah, and
it's a fascinating paper trail. It really is.
Because ultimately, we want to figure out what
the hockey world actually values when it measures
leadership. We want to see if the data aligns
with what you, the listener, or really anyone
considers to be true coaching greatness. Well,
it's a complex topic, right? Because evaluating
a head coach is just, it's an inherently subjective
exercise. It's entirely. I mean, you can easily
quantify a player's impact. You just look at
the goals. the assists or save percentages for
goalies. But trying to isolate a coach's direct
impact from the raw talent of their roster, that
is incredibly difficult. But the historical data
for the Jack Adams Award provides this really
distinct, decades -long record of how the league
attempts to solve that exact problem. Right.
And let's start with the namesake himself, because
you have to know where this comes from. Jack
Adams is a foundational figure in the sport.
Absolutely. He was a Hall of Fame player, spent
time with the Toronto Arenas, the St. Patrick's,
the Vancouver Millionaires, and the original
Ottawa Senators. But his legacy was really cemented
off the ice. Yeah, as the longtime coach and...
general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. So
when the league introduced this award at the
end of the 1973 -1974 season, handing the very
first one to Fred Shiro of the Flyers, by the
way, they established a very specific criteria.
And the wording is so important here. It is.
The winner is the coach, and I quote, a judge
to have contributed the most to his team's success.
That phrasing is critical to understand. It does
not say the coach of the team with the most points.
Right. It says the coach who contributed the
most to whatever success the team achieved, which,
you know, leaves massive room for interpretation.
And I'd argue the most fascinating part of this
award isn't just that criteria, but who actually
makes that judgment. Because it's not the general
managers. Nope. And it's not the writers either.
The Jack Adams is voted on by the NHL Broadcasters
Association at the end of the regular season.
Which completely shifts the lens of the award.
I mean, broadcasters have a totally unique vantage
point. They're right in the mix. Exactly. They
travel on the team planes. They're at the morning
skates. They call every single shift from the
booth. So they see the micro adjustments and
the locker room body language in a way that,
say, national writers might just completely miss.
But hold on. Doesn't that also mean they're highly
susceptible to narrative? Oh, for sure. I mean,
broadcasters are literally in the business of
telling stories. If I'm looking at the voting
history, it feels like they often pass over a
tactically brilliant coach who just quietly manages
a juggernaut in favor of a guy who drags a scrappy
underdog to the playoffs. Yeah, becomes a story.
Right. It feels like the most improved team award
just as often as it is the best coach award.
There's definitely truth to that. But I'd counter
by saying that dragging a mediocre roster to
the postseason often requires more active, tangible
coaching than just, you know, rolling four lines
of superstars. That's fair. You have to manufacture
offense, you have to strictly implement a defensive
structure, and you really have to keep morale
high when the talent deficit is obvious to everyone
in the room. The broadcasters are rewarding that
heavy lifting. Okay, let's test that theory by
looking at the absolute gold standard of this
award. When you break down the historical winners,
One name sits alone at the very top. Pat Burns.
Pat Burns. He is the only coach to win the Jack
Adams three times. But the truly staggering part
is that he did it with three completely different
franchises. Which is wild. He won it with Montreal
in 1988 -89, with Toronto in 1992 -93, and with
Boston in 1997 -98. It's the ultimate stress
test of a coaching philosophy. Think about it.
Taking your system, walking into three distinctly
different locker rooms in three absolutely massive
high pressure markets and getting immediate award
winning buy in. And look at the specific markets.
You're talking about the Canadians, the Leafs
and the Bruins. He essentially coached the three
points of the most bitter historic hate triangle
in the sport. Yeah. The rivalries there are.
Intense. To be able to cross those lines, inherit
totally different rosters, and instantly command
that level of respect is wild. Is it the system
he brought or just an allied ability to read
a room? It has to be a master class in adaptability.
Because you can't run the exact same breakout
or neutral zone trap if you don't have the personnel
for it. Right. You just get crushed. Exactly.
Burns clearly knew how to look at a roster and
optimize exactly what he had. And while he's
the only one with three, there is an elite group
of five coaches who have pulled off the two franchise
feet. See you. Jacques Lemaire, Pat Quinn, Scotty
Bowman, Barry Trotz, and John Tortorella. Okay,
I'll play devil's advocate here, though. If you
are a generational coaching talent, why are you
bouncing around enough to win it with multiple
teams? Doesn't the ultimate coach build the dynasty
in one spot and stay there for two decades? That's
a fair point. But you have to factor in the reality
of modern hockey. The shelf life of a coach's
voice in a single locker room is notoriously
short. Yeah, they tune them out. Players notoriously
tune out even the sharpest tacticians after four
or five years of hearing the exact same speeches
and running the exact same drills. So the fact
that these guys could get fired or, you know,
mutually part ways and then immediately turn
another franchise into a powerhouse is arguably
a bigger testament to their skill than just staying
put. with a great GM feeding you top draft picks.
Okay, that brings up a massive anomaly in the
data then. If a coach's voice has a shelf life,
how do we explain Jacques Demers? Back to back.
Yeah. Out of 51 awards handed out, Demers is
the only coach in NHL history to win the Jack
Adams in consecutive seasons. He did it with
Detroit in 1986 -87 and again in 87 -88. Why
is going back to back so incredibly rare? Because
the Jack Adams, as we touched on earlier, is
fundamentally an expectations game. In year one,
you take over a struggling team, you implement
your system, and you overachieve. The broadcasters
love the turnaround story, and boom, you win
the award. But year two? In year two, that overachievement
becomes your new baseline. You are no longer
the underdog story, you are the favorite. Right.
If you jump from 70 points to 100 points, you're
a genius. If you get 100 points again the next
year, you just met expectations. The narrative
is totally gone. Exactly. To win it back to back,
you essentially have to pull off a miracle and
then follow it up with an even bigger miracle
the very next year. Which is almost impossible.
It's mathematically and narratively exhausting,
which is why Demers stands entirely alone in
that category. Let's shift gears to another weird
corner of this data. I was looking through the
list of winners and noticed three specific names.
Bill Barber, Bruce Boudreaux, and Ken Hitchcock.
Oh, midseason guys? Yeah. What ties them together
is that they didn't even start the season as
head coaches. They were midseason replacements
who came in and still managed to win Coach of
the Year. It's crazy. Barber replaced Craig Ramsey
in Philly during the 0 -0 -0 -1 season. Boudreaux
stepped in for Glenn Hanlon a month into Washington's
0 -7 -0 -8 season. And Hitchcock took over for
Davis Payne in St. Louis during the 11 -12 season.
How is that even possible? You don't get a training
camp. You don't get preseason games to test your
line combinations. Nothing. You are handed a
roster that is actively underperforming, usually
dealing with really low morale, and you have
to fix the airplane while it's in the air. It
proves how much of NHL coaching is purely psychological.
Because when a team fires a coach a month into
the season, it's rarely because the defensive
structure is completely broken. It's usually
a vibe thing. Exactly. It's usually because the
locker room has gone completely flat. A midseason
replacement comes in and provides an immediate
emotional jolt. They reset the internal hierarchy.
They change the ice time distribution. And suddenly
guys who were coasting are playing for their
jobs again. Famous new coach bump. Right. And
the broadcasters voting on the award are sitting
right there watching this visceral night and
day transformation of the team's energy. It's
a very easy narrative to get behind, which explains
how a guy like Boudreaux can walk in midstream
and walk out with the hardware. But the voting
isn't always that clear cut. The data highlights
the 2006 race as the closest in the history of
the award. Oh, that was a nail biter. Lindy Ruff
of the Buffalo Sabres ended up winning it. But
he beat out Peter LaViolette by one single point.
Think about the mechanics of that. You have dozens
of broadcasters across the league casting their
ballots, ranking their choices. And after all
the points are tallied, the margin between being
immortalized as the coach of the year and just
being a runner up is a single vote. It's razor
thin. It perfectly illustrates how thin the line
is between two highly successful regular seasons.
And speaking of different types of seasons, we
have to look at how the award is handled when
the league goes off script. The records track
several shortened seasons. Yeah, the lockouts
and the pandemic. Exactly. You had lockouts in
1994 -95 where Mark Crawford won and 2012 -13
where Paul McLean won. The 2004 -05 season was
canceled entirely, so no award there. And then
the pandemic shortened seasons where Bruce Cassidy
won in 1920 and Rod Brindamore won in 2021. Coaching
a 48 game or 56 game season requires a completely
different tactical approach than a full 82 game
marathon. How so? You simply cannot afford a
slow start. A five game losing streak in November
during a normal year usually just means you shuffle
your lines. But a five game losing streak in
a shortened season can mathematically eliminate
you from playoff contention. You're in a hole
you can't climb out of. The intensity is dialed
up from opening night. Which means the margin
for error in player deployment and load management
is practically zero. You're coaching Game 7 hockey
in Week 2, so winning the Jack Adams in those
specific sprint -like conditions is a very distinct
achievement. Absolutely. But that actually leads
me to the most controversial aspect of this data.
We need to talk about the playoffs. Oh, man.
The footnotes on this list are incredibly telling.
They really are. The voting happens at the end
of the regular season before the playoffs start.
And if you look at how often the Jack Adams winner
goes on to actually win the Stanley Cup that
same year, the list is shockingly short. It's
what, five guys? Five guys in over 50 years.
Fred Shiro did it in the awards inaugural year.
Scotty Bowman in 77. John Tortorella in 2004.
Bruce Cassidy in 2020. And Jim Montgomery in
2023. It creates a fascinating dissonance. I
mean, the league officially crowns you the coach
who contributed the most to your team's success.
And then a few weeks later, you are shaking hands
on the handshake line after getting eliminated.
Doesn't that suggest the voters are fundamentally
getting it wrong? I mean, if your coach of the
year is routinely getting bounced in the second
round, maybe their regular season success was
a mirage built on an unsustainable power play
or a hot goalie rather than true tactical superiority.
I'd push back heavily on that. You can't conflate
regular season coaching with playoff coaching.
You don't think they're the same? They're two
entirely different skill sets. The regular season
is about managing an 82 -game grind. It's dealing
with travel fatigue, integrating call -ups, maintaining
consistency against 31 different opponents. And
the playoffs. The playoffs are about making hyper
-specific, game -to -game micro -adjustments
against the exact same opponent seven times in
a row. So you're saying a great regular season
coach isn't necessarily a great playoff coach.
Not inherently. And the data shows us the heartbreak
of that reality. Look at the coaches who won
the Jack Adams, navigated the playoffs all the
way to the Stanley Cup finals, and then lost.
Yeah. Pat Quinn in 1980, Mike Keenan in 1985,
Pat Burns in 1989, and Gerard Gallant in 2018.
Gallant in 2018 with the Vegas Golden Knights
is the ultimate example of this. I've got a doubt.
Taking an expansion team to the Stanley Cup final
in their very first year of existence is undeniably
one of the greatest coaching feats in sports
history. The fact that they lost to Washington
in the final doesn't invalidate his regular season
masterpiece. Exactly. That Jack Adams captures
the magic of the regular season journey. And
we see that reflected in the correlation with
the president's trophy. Right. Since 1985, 86,
that trophy goes to the team with the best regular
season record. And quite a few Jack Adams winners
pulled off that double. Yeah. Scotty Bowman did
it twice with Montreal and Detroit. Al Arbor
with the Islanders. Glenn Sather with Edmonton.
Quenville with St. Louis, Vigneault with Vancouver,
Trotz with Washington, and both Cassidy and Montgomery
with Boston. So there is clearly a baseline of
respect for absolute dominance. If you engineer
a 115 -point season, you are going to be on the
ballot. But it's not a guarantee. No. Which brings
us right back to our earlier point about expectations.
If you are handed a roster with three future
Hall of Famers in their prime, the broadcasters
expect you to win the president's trophy. You're
just doing your job at that point. If you do,
you did your job. If you don't, you failed. It's
a brutal standard. Let's zoom out and look at
the franchise level before we wrap up. Certain
organizations just seem to have a knack for hiring
the right guy at the right time. When you tally
up the winners by team, there is a clear upper
tier. The heavyweights. Yeah. The Washington
Capitals, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Detroit
Red Wings, and the Boston Bruins all have four
Jack Adams winners in their history. It's a list
of heavyweights for sure, but there's a fifth
franchise tied at the top of that list with four
winners, and it's a bit of a geographical nomad.
The Coyotes. Yes. The Coyotes franchise claims
four, but you have to trace their lineage back
to the original Winnipeg Jets. Tom Watt and Bob
Murdoch won it in Winnipeg in 81 -82 and 89 -90.
Then Bobby Francis and Dave Tippett won it after
the relocation to Phoenix in 01 -02 and 09 -10.
That's a great piece of trivia. And speaking
of adding to those totals, the most recent winner
in the historical data is Spencer Carberry, who
took it home for the Washington Capitals in the
2024 -25 season. Right. That keeps Washington
right there in that multi -way tie for the most
decorated coaching history in the league. When
you look at the names across this entire list,
from Don Cherry and Red Berenson in the 70s and
80s to Brian Sutter, Ted Nolan, Patrick Roy and
Daryl Sutter, it's a literal who's who. of hockey
minds. It really is. Every distinct era of the
NHL from the high flying 80s to the dead puck
era of the late 90s to the speed driven modern
game requires a different type of leader. This
list serves as a timeline of how the game has
evolved tactically. It really does. You can track
the shift from the old school motivators to the
modern tactical system guys just by looking at
who the broadcasters decided to reward in any
given decade. Well, we've covered a lot of ground
today. We have. We've dissected Pat Burns' incredible
three -city run, debated the curse of the back
-to -back, and really unpacked why regular season
dominance so rarely translates into Stanley Cup
rings for these coaches. It all comes back to
the subjective nature of the award. You can hand
a coach a playbook, but you can't hand them the
intuition to know when to bench a star player
or when to bag skate a team or when to just back
off and let the room police itself. It's an art.
The Jack Adams is the league's best attempt to
put a trophy on that. intangible instinct. And
it leaves us with an incredibly compelling question
to walk away with for you, the listener. If the
Jack Adams is strictly a regular season award,
and we've established that the playoffs require
a completely different, arguably much more difficult
style of coaching, does the NHL actually have
a blind spot? That is the question. I want you
to think about this. Does the league need a separate
postseason award specifically for coaching excellence?
the way players have the consmith? Or is the
Stanley Cup itself the only recognition a coach
should ever need once the playoffs begin? It's
a great debate, because right now, the ultimate
tactical masterclass of a seven -game series
goes officially unrecorded in the individual
record books. Something to argue about during
the next intermission. Thank you for joining
us on this deep dive. Keep questioning the consensus,
keep looking at the data behind the narratives,
and we will catch you on the next deep dive.