Will Joel Quenneville's Experience Edge over Bruce Boudreau Decide West Final?

Superficially, it certainly looks like the Chicago Blackhawks have the advantage over the Anaheim Ducks in the coaching department.

Joel Quenneville has been a coach for more than 20 years. He became an NHL head coach in 1996-97, stepping in midseason for St. Louis. He’s been Chicago’s coach since 2008-09, winning 14 playoff series and two Stanley Cups in that span. That’s as many series wins as the Ducks have in the history of their franchise.

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Bruce Boudreau is a contemporary of Quenneville, stepping behind an IHL bench as head coach for the first time the year that his opponent did the same in the AHL. He spent more than a decade longer stuck in the minors, however, taking on his first NHL head coaching job midway through 2007-08, less than a calendar year before Quenneville took over the ‘Hawks.

He’s been pilloried as a playoff failure, winning just three rounds prior to this season. The 2015 playoffs mark the first time he has directed an NHL club to the third round.

Framed that way, Quenneville looks like a consummate winner, while Boudreau is a consistent loser.

It’s a ridiculous way to frame the comparison.

Let’s go back to the nearly 15-year span we aren’t talking about for these coaches, the years that Boudreau spent in the minors while Quenneville learned his trade first as an NHL assistant and then in stops with the St. Louis Blues and Colorado Avalanche.

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The first point worth noting is that Boudreau had some pretty successful postseason runs in the minors. In 13 years as a head coach, he guided the club under his watch to the final on four separate occasions. He went to the league final in the IHL in 1994, won an ECHL championship in 1999 and then went to the AHL final with Hershey in both 2006 and 2007, winning the Calder Cup in the first of those back-to-back appearances. It’s a small wonder that the Washington Capitals decided to take a chance on the veteran minor-league coach in 2007-08.

The second point worth noting is that while Quenneville has been a fantastic fit in Chicago, for years, he, too, endured the stigma of having failed in the postseason.

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When Quenneville took over the Blues, he ascended to the helm of a team that had made the playoffs for 17 straight seasons but had only once reached the conference final in that span. Over parts of eight seasons with the team, Quenneville and a loaded St. Louis club (which featured a defence anchored by Al MacInnis and Chris Pronger) would achieve a lot, including a Presidents’ Trophy.

Here’s how Jim Suhr of the Associated Press (h/t USA Today) summarized Quenneville’s tenure when he was fired during the 2003-04 season:

"

Quenneville took over as Blues coach on Jan. 6, 1997, and has led St. Louis to at least 40 wins in five of his six full seasons with the team. The Blues won 307 regular-season games during his tenure, but went just 34-34 in the postseason, including a trip to the 2001 Western Conference finals — where they lost to Colorado in five games.

"

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Quenneville’s next stop was a three-year stint with the Colorado Avalanche, during which time the team was a cumulative plus-59. His team never advanced past the second round, getting swept in both conference semifinal appearances.

AP’s Pat Graham (h/t USA Today) didn’t put all of that on the coach when Quenneville was let go at the end of the 2007-08 campaign:

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Joel Quenneville and the Avalanche mutually decided to end their relationship Friday, a week after Colorado was swept out of the playoffs by the Detroit Red Wings. Quenneville was 131-92-23 in three seasons with Colorado, but just 2-2 in playoff series after inheriting a team that was on the slide after a decade of dominance in the NHL.

"

When the Blackhawks hired Quenneville, he had a 0.522 winning percentage over 800-odd career regular-season games and an ugly 0.483 winning percentage over nearly 100 postseason contests. In more than a decade at the helm of two remarkably good teams, he’d managed to notch just one win after the second round.  

Chicago hired him anyway. In his first year, the Blackhawks went to the Western Conference final before falling to the defending-champion Detroit Red Wings. In his second year, they won the Stanley Cup.

Boudreau, who is 200-odd games shy of where Quenneville was when he joined the Blackhawks, hasn’t managed to lead a team on a deep playoff run yet. It would be a mistake to read too much into that.

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Boudreau’s no fool and he doesn’t lack for experience. He’s been a head coach for more professional games than Quenneville, he’s won his share of championships at other levels and, as Quenneville himself proves, an excellent coach can go a long time before leading a team to NHL postseason glory.

Given the quality of the two coaches involved here, it’s highly unlikely that Quenneville will prove capable of bamboozling Boudreau. That’s not to say the Blackhawks won’t win, but if they do, the series is more likely to be determined by the relative strength of their roster than massive superiority in the coaching department.

Statistics courtesy of HockeyDB.com.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.