Vigneault Finishes 2nd in Jack Adams Award Vote
A five-time finalist for the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year, Flyers head coach was denied his second victory as he finished second to Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy in the voting for the 2019-20 award. Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella finished third.
The Jack Adams Award is voted upon by the members of the NHL Broadcasters Association. As with all NHL awards except for the Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP), the vote is conducted at the end of the regular season.
Cassidy tallied 288 points (including 37 first place votes, 29 for 2nd place and 16 for 3rd place). Vigneault had 252 points (32 votes for first place, 23 for 2nd, 23 for 3rd). Tortorella had 198 points (28 votes for first, 12 for 2nd, 22 for 3rd).
Cassidy's Bruins, a Stanley Cup finalist last year, won the President's Trophy this season and were the only team during the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season to reach 100 points. Craig Berube, the head coach of last year's Stanley Cup champion and 2019-20 regular season Western Conference champion St. Louis Blues (94 points), finished fourth in the 2019-20 Jack Adams Award voting.
The central facets of the argument in favor of Vigneault winning the award this year boiled down to the following:
1) Even though the Covid-19 pandemic shortened the Flyers' 2019-20 regular season by 13 games, the team under first-year head coach Vigneault already had four more wins and seven more points across 69 games than it did over 82 games in 2018-19. The team's winning percentage jumped to .645 this season, which would prorate to 106 points over a normal 82 game season.
2) Despite playing an extremely grueling schedule in November -- 16 games in 30 days -- Vigneault's Flyers enjoyed the league's best record that month (10-2-4, 24 points). Later, over the final 26 games before the NHL's schedule pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Flyers tied the Boston Bruins for the NHL's best record (19-6-1, 39 points, .750 points percentage).
3) The Flyers boasted the NHL's best home record this season at the time of the pause (25-6-4, 54 points, 771 points percentage). The team improved modestly on the road this season (.488 points percentage in 2018-19, .515 this season).
4) Last season, the Flyers were saddled with the NHL's 29th-ranked goals against average (3.41). This season, the team has vaulted to being tied with Tampa Bay for the seventh-best GAA (2.77).
5) Regular season shot suppression: Under Vigneault, the Flyers have become the NHL's stingiest team in permitting opposing shots on goal. The 28.7 shots per game allowed on average in 2019-20 was the best in the entire league. Last year, Philadelphia ranked 27th.
6) Improved offense during the regular season: The Flyers ranked 18th last season with an average 2.94 goals scored per game. This season,the team has jumped up 11 spots to rank 7th with a 3.29 goals per game average. Balanced scoring has been the key, as the Flyers did not have a single player ranked in the top 30 of the Art Ross Trophy race for the NHL's leading individual scorer.
7) Player buy-in to systems: Vigneault has gotten his players, across the board, to buy in to his system, which requires a high-tempo pace, and 200-foot attention to detail to execute. One telling indicator of the buy-in: shorter shifts. Almost to a man, Flyers players have bought in to skating shorter shifts. The average shift time per player is down roughly 3 seconds this season. Multiplied out over entire games, it has amounted to having fresheer troops in the third period of games.
8) Close-outs: When leading a game after two periods this season, the Flyers posted a 29-0-2 record. Only two other teams -- the defending Stanley Cup champion Blues (27-0-6) and the Florida Panthers (26-0-1) -- did not lose a single game in regulation this season when leading after two periods.
A strong case also could have been made for Tortorella. The hard-driving coach got the absolute most he could muster from a team that lost Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky and Matt Duchene to unrestricted free agency last summer. The Blue Jackets were right in the mix for a top-three spot in the Metro Division.
Ultimately, Columbus was besieged by a slew of injuries as the stretch drive approached, most notably to Seth Jones and Cam Atkinson. The bottom dropped out although the team still scraped out a win here and a regulation tie or two there to stay at least in the thick of wildcard contention at the time of the stoppage. Prior to Jones' injury and the Blue Jackets' slide, many considered Tortorella the favorite to win this year.
Rounding out the top five in the balloting after Cassidy, Vigneault, Tortorella and Berube was Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar (96 voting points). A total of 11 of the league's 31 head coaches received at least one first-place vote and 17 of the 31 coached received at least one third-place vote or higher.
*************
Quick Hits: September 10, 2020
1) The winner of the 2019-20 Selke Trophy will be announced tonight. Flyers center Sean Couturier, a second-time finalist, is widely considered the favorite to win it for the first time. He faces very tough competition, however, from perennial finalist Patrice Bergeron (a four-time winner) and Ryan O'Reilly (last year's winner).
2) In today's edition of Flyers Daily on the Flyers Broadcast Network, Jason Myrtetus and I discuss the Jack Adams Award voting and also discuss the widespread fan sentiment in favor of trading Jakub Voracek. To listen to the podcast,
click here.
My own view is that no one should be considered untouchable, but Voracek is a better -- and harder-to-replace in the lineup -- player than some seem to feel. He is not a sniper, and never has been a prolific goal scorer. He's a playmaker with both size and mobility, who ranks 6th in the NHL among all forwards in assists over the past seven years, and whose 0.85 points per game average in that span is right in the same ballpark -- sometimes even slightly better -- than an array of notable players leaguewide, including Vladimir Tarasenko (0.87), Mathew Barzal (0.88), Phil Kessel (0.86), Bergeron (0.85), Sebastian Aho (0.85), Aleksander Barkov (0.85), Jonathan Huberdeau (0.83), Joe Pavelski (0.83), Patrik Laine (0.81), and Evgeny Kuznetov (0.81).
3) Without much attention being paid to it, Voracek worked hard on his two-way game this season and had a good season overall in that department. He'll never have the reputation as a stellar defensive forward and he's not infallible (such as the absence of weak-side coverage on the Andy Greene goal that put the Islanders ahead, 2-0, in Game 7 of the Second Round series), but he sacrificed some points this year to help without the puck and shortened his shifts to buy in during the regular season to what Vigneault wanted from his team.
I asked Voracek about that early this season, and he gave a characteristically shoot-from-the-hip response.
"If I play good defense, nobody is going to see that because I don’t produce offensively. If I produce offensively and I still make a couple of mistakes, they’re going to say I’m shitty defensively. It’s a no-win situation," he said.
4) Later today, at roughly 1 p.m., Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher will hold his remote Exit Day media availability. We'll have coverage today on the Flyers official website and via social media on the Flyers' official Twitter as well as my own. Tomorrow on HockeyBuzz, I will post the full transcript of Fletcher's statements.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»