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EXCLUSIVE! Daniel Brière has a Quebecer at the top of his list to replace John Tortorella

Originally posted on Dose.ca | Last updated Apr 23, 2025 1:11 PM ET

Daniel Brière and the Flyers fired John Tortorella on March 27. We all remember because 1. It was John Tortorella and 2. The Canadiens were playing the Flyers that day.

And it lost its game to the men of Bradley Shaw, the Flyers’ interim head coach.

One month later, what’s going on with the Flyers? Daniel Brière won’t be able to sit on his hands for several months, as several coaches have also lost their jobs throughout the Bettman circuit. He’s got competition on the job market.

According to a source well-versed in Flyers affairs, Ian Laperrière is at the top of Daniel Brière’s list of potential candidates.

Laperrière is in his fourth season as head coach of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, the Flyers’ school club. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach with the Flyers for nine seasons.

And before that, he was a right-handed center in the NHL (1083 games), notably for the Philadelphia Flyers in his last regular season. He had a certain Daniel Brière as a teammate..

I’m told that the Flyers will go through a proper hiring process, but that in the end, Ian Laperrière would already have been placed ahead of the other candidates. He’d have more of a job to lose than to gain, I’m told.

Will a francophone hire another francophone to coach the Broad Street Bullies Flyers 2025-26?

Ian Laperrière and Daniel Brière have known each other for a long time. (Credit: Getty Images)

Ian Laperrière is not on leave
Laperrière had a (relatively) good season as head coach of the Panthoms: 36-28-8 record. Tonight, he begins a two-of-three season against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

It’s safe to assume that he won’t be involved in any formal NHL hiring process as long as his Phantoms are alive.

It will be interesting to follow the progress of John Tortorella’s successor over the coming weeks. Ian Laperrière has a proven track record coaching a younger team in the AHL. He hasn’t skipped a step, and he’s paid his dues.

Note that Renaud Lavoie confided a few days ago that he saw Pascal Vincent as a high-quality candidate to succeed Torts. He, too, has just proved that he is good at coaching young adults. And the Flyers are likely to have to go through a reset or a rebuild..

They’re not about to win the Stanley Cup!

More exclusives
I don’t know what happened yesterday afternoon, but I don’t think Jean Trudel and I have ever been so unleashed on an episode – special or otherwise – of Stanley25.

Of course, we talked about the Canadiens vs. Capitals series, but we also talked about the upcoming contract of a Hughes belonging to the Montreal organization(lol), Sidney Crosby’s “vacation”, the expression “playing guilty” used by NHL players, Ivan Demidov’s sticks(a.k.a. Yanni Kaldis), Gaston Therrien’s future at RDS, Carbo and Vincent Damphousse’s salaries, an anecdote involving Lou “Control Freak ” Lamoriello and Mathew Barzal, and a bedtime story featuring an RDS big name.

The episode is exclusively available to our Patreon subscribers, but I’m making an exception and dropping it here for you, dear DLC readers: