Who is the winningest coach for every NHL franchise?

Carlyle came out of the gate with gusto, winning the Stanley Cup in his second year with the Ducks. Things went well for a while, but then he went to Toronto and tried to be the guy to get the Maple Leafs over the hump. Yeah, didn’t happen. Carlyle returned to Anaheim for a couple more seasons, making him comfortably the franchise’s most prolific coach. He’s doubled up his next closest competitor in games coached, and his 384 wins are way ahead of the pack.

Art Ross, of trophy fame, coached the Bruins for 17 seasons, but because seasons were so much shorter then, he barely coached more games than Julien did over 10 seasons. Julien’s Bruins teams won at a higher rate as well, and they took home a Cup. He tallied 419 wins with Boston, while Ross topped out at 387.

Ruff is currently coaching the Sabres…for now. We say “for now” because he was brought back as a franchise legend with the hopes that maybe he could help end the franchise’s interminable postseason drought. With the way things are going, it’s more likely he is fired before the end of the 2025-26 season than it is that he ends the playoff drought. However, Ruff has 607 wins with the Sabres, and nobody else has more than 210. He’s a franchise legend for a reason.

Terry Crisp coached the Flames to their 1989 Stanley Cup, but that was one of only three seasons he coached. He had quite the winning percentage, but that’s not what this is about. Sutter, of the famous hockey family, was an NHL journeyman, but nobody has coached the Flames for all that long. His 404 regular-season games are the most, as are his 210 wins.

If Maurice is more associated with another franchise in your mind, well, spoiler alert, but he’s going to show up again. First, though, we must acknowledge the future Hall of Famer’s run with the Hurricanes. He actually began his tenure with the Hartford Whalers and more with the franchise, getting them to the finals in 2002. He wasn’t coaching the team in 2006 when it won the title, but he returned later for another brief run. His 384 wins are ahead of Rod Brind’Amour for now, but it’ll only take a couple more seasons in charge for Brind’Amour to take over the leaderboard.

We’ll admit that this is the first instance on this list of a name that made us say, “Wait, who?” Reay is no coaching legend, and his tenure in Chicago ran from the 1963-64 season until the 1976-77 season. Those were the early days of what would become a lengthy title drought for the Blackhawks. Since Reay coached 1,012 games, though, he picked up 516 wins, so he is atop this group.

Bednar took over an Avalanche team in dark times, and also after Patrick Roy had taken his ball (puck?) and gone home. The front office stuck it out with him, though, and it has all panned out. Bednar is now a Cup winner, and he will become the first Avalanche head coach to have over 400 wins.

Torts shows up, he makes your franchise better, and then he burns out everybody involved, and you move on. Columbus, a franchise that floundered for years after expansion, needed that Tortorella boost. It’s not just that he won 227 regular-season games. Torts won 13 playoff games with the Jackets. All other Columbus head coaches have combined to coach 10 playoff games.

Speaking of the Jackets, even Hitchcock couldn’t get them to the playoffs. What he could do, though, is lead the Flyers and Blues to deep playoff runs, and also win a Cup with the Stars. To date, that is the only Cup in franchise history. Hitchcock picked up 319 regular-season wins with Dallas, and since Dallas did what every team does that employs Pete DeBoer, i.e., fire him even though he has nothing but success, nobody is going to threaten his record.

Three different coaches have won over 400 games with the Red Wings. Scotty Bowman took them to three Cups, but he coached 85 fewer games than Babcock, so he is behind him. Jack Adams is literally the guy they named the coach of the year award after, but the Wings were all over the place in his era, so he topped out at 413 wins with a record barely above .500. We mention both of them because Wings fans and the Wings organization would really prefer not to see Babcock atop the list. He had a ton of success in terms of team record, but Babcock is one of the only people to ever be considered too insufferable to be an NHL coach. Some people who played for him have literally called him the worst person they have ever met. But, hey, a lot of wins!

The coach with the most wins in Oilers history? Yeah, it’s the guy who coached during the Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier era. Yes, Sather had some great players to work with, but he also got the most out of them. He won 464 out of 842 games and won four Cups. That’s Hall of Fame worthy, even if you got to coach the Great One.

Paul Maurice is back! He will forever be synonymous with the Panthers, and he is now one of the defining faces in franchise history. It’s funny because when Maurice was hired by Florida, he was trying to regain his reputation after things went pear-shaped with the Jets. Well, he’s coached three full seasons to date, the Panthers have made the finals every time, and they’ve hoisted two Cups. At this point, he may be able to coach the Panthers until he retires. That would make sense. After all, he’s already in South Florida.

That’s right, Sutter is back as well! He’s the winningest head coach for both the Flames and the Kings. Nobody has coached Los Angeles for more than six seasons, and Sutter is one of those coaches who made it to season six. His 225 wins barely beat the 215 of Andy Murray, but Sutter also has two Cups with the Kings.

Getting future Hall of Famer Lemaire as the franchise’s inaugural head coach was a real coup for the Wild. Sure, he was one of the most prolific proponents of the neutral-zone trap, which wasn’t any fun, but he helped the Wild find its footing faster than other expansion teams did. Lemaire leads the franchise with 293 wins, and he has also coached the most postseason games in franchise history.

The Canadiens also have three 400-win coaches. Oh, and for them, Scotty Bowman is also one of them. Good coach, that Scotty Bowman. Dick Irvin had a ton of success with the Habs, but then Blake took over and surpassed him. Blake won 500 games on the dot, and the Canadiens also managed to win the Cup in every single season for his first five seasons in charge. Then they added three more later for good measure.

The Predators have only had four head coaches, in part because their first head coach stuck around forever. Trotz was the coach of the Predators for the first 15 seasons of their existence. Obviously, it wasn’t always easy. He picked up 479 regulation losses, and 100 more in overtime. However, he also won a whopping 557 games with the franchise. Now, he’s back and running the front office.

We mentioned Lemaire and the neutral-zone trap, and the peak of that came with the Devils. They made hockey a slog, but the success was undeniable. He won 276 games out of 509, and the team won a Cup as well.

You win four Cups in a row, you pick up a lot of wins along the way. Arbour is as synonymous with the Islanders as any coach is with any franchise. He coached 1,500 regular-season games over 20 seasons. That includes a whopping 740 wins. A lot of these coaches, franchise leaders in wins, haven’t even coached 740 games in their careers. Plus, Arbour has those four Cups.

The Rangers famously didn’t win a Cup from 1940 until 1994 (and also famously, Mike Keenan only coached the 1993-94 season because he is a crazy person). Francis won a lot of regular-season games in his decade in charge of the Rangers, obviously. He coached from the mid-‘60s through the mid-‘70s, amassing 342 wins. He’s also the franchise leader with 34 playoff wins, though the team never appeared in the finals on his watch.

Martin more than doubles any other Senators coach in games as well as wins. He wasn’t the franchise’s first coach, but he was the first to have any success. Martin got them into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, for example. Also, he did the franchise a solid by returning during the 2023-24 season at 71, after a decade out of coaching. He picked up 26 wins, bringing his total to 367 with the franchise.

The Flyers became the first expansion franchise to win a Cup under Shero’s stewardship, doing it back-to-back years in the ‘70s. He coached the “Broad Street Bullies” for 7 seasons and compiled 308 wins. Nobody else has topped even 200 with the franchise.

Sullivan had a two-year run with the Bruins, featuring one good season and one bad, and it took another decade for a franchise to give him a chance. That paid off for the Penguins. He won 409 games, including two Cups. Sure, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin helped, but Sullivan may end up in the Hall if he coaches long enough. Of course, he’s now with the Rangers.

Quenneville is one of the winningest coaches in NHL history. Although that, and his tenure winning three Cups with the Blackhawks, are tainted with controversy. He started his coaching career with the Blues, though, a team he led for eight seasons. Quenneville won 307 games before making a move to Colorado.

The Sharks are rebuilding, but they used to be one of the NHL’s better teams. McLellan made the playoffs in each of his first six seasons in charge with San Jose. He didn’t in the seventh season, though, and that was that. McLellan won 311 games with the Sharks, and he’s bopped around the NHL since.

Patience has not been the name of the game for the Kraken. The franchise is in its fifth season and has had three head coaches. Hakstol got three seasons, though, so his 107 wins are tops for now. Somebody will likely beat that someday.

Long tenures for head coaches in the new millennium have been rare. Cooper is one of the last of a dying breed. He’s been in charge of the Lightning ever since taking over late in the 2012-13 season. Cooper has won two Cups and should surpass 1,000 games and 600 wins with the franchise.

Behold, the last Maple Leafs coach to make anybody happy! It’s probably worth noting that he hasn’t coached the team since 1969, so that’s pretty bleak. However, Imlach won 370 games, and he also won four Cups. That includes the 1967 Cup, which is the last in franchise history.

Utah Mammoth history technically started when the franchise moved to Utah. Thus, the Mammoth have had a single head coach in Tourigny. If you are curious, though, the winningest coach in Coyotes history was Tippett, who had 282 victories.

Vigneault’s tenure was quite successful, but not quite successful enough. The team won 313 of the 540 games he coached and reached the Stanley Cup Finals. However, they didn’t win the franchise’s first title. History repeated itself when Vigneault moved to the Rangers, as they also made the finals but fell short.

Like Seattle, Vegas has had three coaches. The difference is Vegas has been around for almost a decade, with every coach getting at least two seasons. Cassidy, the current coach, is in his fourth season. He also led them to a Cup, so he’s probably golden for now.

It’s a little surprising that the winningest coach in Capitals history never coached Alex Ovechkin. That’s in part because, during the Ovechkin era, the franchise was also looking for every ounce of leverage to try and win a Cup. That wasn’t the case for Murray, who took over during the 1981-82 season and coached into the 1989-90 season. He won 343 games, though, and nobody else has even gotten over 300.

That’s right, Maurice makes this list three times. We mentioned that his Jets tenure ended poorly, which it did. The team never got over the hump in the playoffs. They let Maurice stick around to coach 600 games, though, so he got to 315 wins.