It takes toughness to work in the NHL, and a handful of coaches in The Show brought that as former pro hockey players who piled up the penalty minutes.
It says a lot about the mettle that's required to manage an NHL bench that so many of today's coaches struck fear into the hearts of opponents during their playing days.
Even those who didn't come up through the hockey ranks have some tough traits. Jon Cooper may be better known for his background as a lawyer — a career that requires a certain toughness in its own right. Also, Cooper played lacrosse as an undergrad at Hofstra University on Long Island — a full-contact sport that's not for the faint of heart.
The idea of narrowing down today's NHL coaches to a list of five or so would brush over many other fascinating paths and numbers. Instead, let's divide them into three tiers based on the length of their careers, where they played and their propensity for dropping the gloves.
The Gruesome Twosome
Among today's NHL coaches, Craig Berube and Rick Tocchet are in a class of their own regarding the toughness they showed during their playing days.
Berube rarely took a night off in his 17-year career, averaging nearly three penalty minutes a game over 1,054 games. His total of 3,149 penalty minutes is the seventh-most of all time.
That number included 251 majors — second only to Tie Domi (273). And according to hockeyfights.com, 94 of Berube's 231 fights came with the Philadelphia Flyers. Fitting.
Tocchet sits 10th on the all-time list, with 2,970 minutes over 1,144 games. But he wasn't as much of a fighter at the Blues' bench boss: the Canucks' coach "only" took 166 majors, good for 30th place on that list.
Interestingly, though, Tocchet also scrapped more for the Flyers than any of his other teams — by a wide margin. He actually has Berube beat there, as 102 of his 156 NHL fights came while he was in a Philadelphia uniform.
In November 2021, Tocchet was inducted into the Philadelphia Flyers Hall of Fame. There's another active coach on that list as well — we'll get to him in a moment.
But first, a quick acknowledgment of the former coach of the Washington Capitals, Dale Hunter. Though he hasn't been behind an NHL bench in more than a decade, he is still coaching the London Knights of the OHL — and his stats are too fearsome to ignore. Over 19 years and 1,407 games, Hunter amassed 3,565 total penalty minutes, good for second all-time behind only Dave 'Tiger' Williams.
Hunter also took an NHL-record 1,141 minor penalties, over 100 more than second-place Pat Verbeek (1,008). With 155 majors, Hunter lands all the way down at tied for No. 38 in that category, one spot behind current NHL player safety head George Parros.
A couple of other current coaches also have top-tier toughness.
Edmonton Oilers assistant Dave Manson ranks 13th overall with 2,792 total penalty minutes. And Ian Laperriere didn't quite reach 2,000 penalty minutes during his 16-year career, but he's another former Flyer, who's currently running the bench of their AHL affiliate in Lehigh Valley, and his 204 majors are 12th-most, sandwiched between Joey Kocur and Kelly Buchberger.
Mid-Tier Maulers
This next group is comprised of coaches who were either more well-rounded players back in the day or who had shorter NHL careers.
Let's start with Luke Richardson of the Chicago Blackhawks, who's this close to making the top category. He played 1,417 games over 21 seasons and finished with 2,055 penalty minutes. That's good for 51st place overall, but Richardson's long career means he averaged a mere 1:27 of penalty time per game. His 123 total majors are also a little lower than the players in Tier 1.
Richardson, of course, also spent 387 games with the Flyers — and the next coach on the list, Rod Brind'Amour, spent nine years and 633 games in Philadelphia as part of his 20-year, 1,484-game career. He's the other Flyers Hall of Famer on this list — and while he was never afraid to throw down, Brind'Amour was ultimately more appreciated for his 1,184 career points and his Selke-winning two-way play than he was for his scrapping. He had 28 majors in his career.
Next up: Lindy Ruff. Injuries limited the New Jersey Devils' coach to just 691 career games over 12 seasons, but the big defender accumulated a whopping 1,266 penalty minutes during that time. And Ruff wasn't messing around: nearly one-third of those minutes came off his 80 major penalties.
You can still see the intensity in Dean Evason's eyes behind the bench of the Minnesota Wild. Dressing for 803 games with five teams over a 13-year career, the fifth-round draft pick cracked 100 PIMs four times and logged 21 of his 33 career fights during seven seasons with his second team, the Hartford Whalers.
Minor-League Maniacs
While fans won't see as many pretty goals or sensational saves in the minor leagues, fighting is very much a transferable skill — and something players can do to try to get themselves noticed and possibly earn more ice time or that elusive call-up.
D.J. Smith managed just 45 NHL games over seven years between 1996 and 2003. But he earned a late second-round selection by the New York Islanders in 1995 after a ferocious draft season with the Windsor Spitfires that saw him put up 201 penalty minutes. The following year, he was on his way to 260 minutes when his rights were dealt to the Maple Leafs along with Wendel Clark and Mathieu Schneider.
Smith's rough-and-tumble approach to the game continued while he was in Toronto's system. In 218 AHL games over three seasons between 1997 and 2000, he logged 650 penalty minutes — very close to that three-minutes-a-game mark.
Jared Bednar, also a defenseman, was on the Leafs' farm team in St. John's one year before Smith's arrival, playing 55 games and posting 151 penalty minutes in the 1996-97 season. Before and after that, he mostly bounced around teams in the ECHL and IHL.
Bednar didn't crack the NHL until he was hired as the coach of the Avalanche, but he gave it everything he had as a player. He regularly broke the 100-minute mark in penalties and topped out at 220 in 74 games when the Grand Rapids Griffins were part of the IHL in 1998-99.
Washington's new coach, Spencer Carbery, went the college route but never rose above the minor leagues. Patrolling left wing, he had three seasons in triple-digits, peaking at 157 penalty minutes with the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League in 2006-07.
More than 20 years earlier, Winnipeg Jets coach Rick Bowness also brought toughness to the Tulsa lineup. The professional playing career of the 68-year-old lasted from 1975 to 1984 and included 173 NHL games with four teams, including the original Jets. But Bowness spent the most time in the penalty box during his CHL days, logging 160 minutes with Tulsa in the 1975-76 season and 201 minutes in 1981-82, a year in which he also peaked offensively as a center, with 87 points.
As for John Tortorella? His temper is legendary, but his bark has generally been bigger than his bite. He put some gaudy point totals during his four seasons in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League (ACHL) in the mid-'80s. In his last year in 1985-86, he led the Virginia Lancers in scoring with 96 points in 60 games while also posting a career-high 153 penalty minutes.
Torts' playing career ended with a bang — 60 penalty minutes in five playoff games with the Lancers. The following season, at age 28, he stepped behind the Lancers' bench and immediately led them to a championship, kicking off a coaching career that also included a Calder Cup with the AHL Rochester Americans in 1996 before he won his Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2004.