The 10 Worst Coaches in NHL History

Good coaching is something that is absolutely necessary to the success of any great team. While the talent of the team may be there, it's up to the coach to help those players find the chemistry and buy into the system.

With a coach who knows how to push the right buttons, a good team can be transformed into a great team.

On the other side of things, with a coach who seems to just push all of the wrong buttons, a great team can be turned into a very mediocre group.

The following list is some of the guys who did the best job at making their teams mediocre.

Honorable Mention: Mike Keenan

Mike Keenan gets an honorable mention not because he wasn't a successful coach. Mike Keenan found a great amount of success in the NHL, but they were always with certain types of teams.

Keenan's career record was 672-531-147 and he did win a Stanley Cup while he was coaching the New York Rangers.

The reason I bring Keenan as an honorable mention is because as successful as he was with some teams, he was equally bad, if not worse with many of his other teams.

Keenan lasted three seasons or fewer with every single team he coached after the New York Rangers.  He was okay in St. Louis, horrendous in Vancouver, Boston, Florida and Calgary.

Wherever Keenan goes, controversies with players no doubt followed. 

Keenan was more adept at locker room cancer-causing than any player could be, and just couldn't seem to help alienating players.

Still, he found success, so he isn't the one of the worst ever, but he does deserve an honorable mention.

Honorable Mention: Wayne Gretzky

The Great One was easily the greatest player of all time, but he was far from that on the bench.

Gretzky took the helm of the Phoenix Coyotes in 2005, coached for four seasons and finished with a record over .500 just once.

His overall record as a coach was 143-161-24, missing the playoffs in every single year of his time as coach.

Gretzky could probably find his way onto other lists, but the fact that he recognized that coaching was not his thing keeps him off of my list.

We want to keep our memories of Gretzky very fond, and coaching could hurt that. Wayne knows that he had nothing left to prove, so after things didn't work out, he just called it good.

Tony Granato

Tony Granato is easily the worst coach in the history of the Colorado Avalanche and has to make the 10 worst coaches ever because of the way he had some seriously talented teams under-perform.

This guy had Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Paul Kariya, Teemu Selanne, Rob Blake, Chris Drury, Milan Hejduk and Adam Foote on a team and couldn't even win his division.

After being demoted in favor of Joel Quenneville, the Avalanche later saw it fit for him to let a whole other group of players under-perform.

After finishing in the bottom of the Western Conference, Granato was finally fired for good from the Avalanche in favor of Joe Sacco.

Granato was at the helm for the decline of the once-powerful Colorado Avalanche.

Barry Melrose

Barry Melrose found success in coaching at the very beginning of his career through juniors and in the AHL.

He even had a good run once he made the jump to the NHL, taking the L.A. Kings to the Stanley Cup Finals in his first year behind the bench.

After his Kings lost to the Montreal Canadiens and proceeded to bottom feed for the next couple of seasons, people began to wonder if the immediate success wasn't due more to Wayne Gretzky's presence than his coaching ability.

He was later given another chance with the Tampa Bay Lightning. He lasted 16 games into the season before being shown the door.

I like watching Melrose on ESPN, but he definitely has earned a spot amongst the worst coaches ever.

Mario Tremblay

Mario Tremblay wasn't a terrible coach; you could even argue that he was actually a pretty respectable coach.

Still, the one thing that Tremblay allowed to happen that will never be forgiven was how he managed to coach Patrick Roy right out of Montreal.

Tremblay wasn't a horrible coach, but when you chase the single greatest goalie of all time off your team, thereby dooming a once-powerful franchise to mediocrity, you have to be included as one of the worst coaches out there.

Milt Schmidt

Milt Schmidt was another one of those Hall of Fame players who tried their hand at coaching and really didn't have any success.

Schmidt spent most of his coaching time with the Boston Bruins, but he also coached the Washington Capitals for a couple of years in the '70s.

Schmidt's overall record was 250-394-126. He coached for a grand total of 13 seasons and only managed to tally two winning seasons.

That's definitely not a very good percentage of winning years, and it really makes you wonder how he stuck around for as long as he did.

Mike Milbury

Mike Milbury currently resides on Versus as everybody's favorite announcer to dislike, but he can also be remembered as one of the worst coaches of all time.

Milbury had some early success while he was coach of the Boston Bruins, even taking them to the Stanley Cup Finals only to lose to the powerhouse Edmonton Oilers, but much of this could have been the team he had.

As soon as Milbury went over to the New York Islanders, it appeared as if he lost his coaching touch.

On the island, Milbury never won more than 22 games as a coach yet somehow managed to swing the GM position there.

Just ask Islanders fans how great a job he did there. Exactly how many superstars did Milbury trade away? I'm sure there will be an Islanders fan or two who could tell us in the comments section.

Paul Holmgren

Paul Holmgren had an eight-year coaching career with two teams (the Philadelphia Flyers and the Hartford Whalers), and he had success with neither team.

He did make the playoffs with the Flyers in his first year of coaching, but he actually finished that season at an even .500.

After that, Holmgren never again saw the playoffs, and never actually had a winning season.

His coaching numbers are actually quite interesting to look at because it appears that he was fired multiple times in consecutive years by the same team, very strange.

His final numbers as a coach were 161-219-45. Not very good, and without a single winning season to his name, an easy choice for this list.

Jim Anderson

Jim Anderson was the first coach in the history of the Washington Capitals.

It's hard to include the guy who coached an expansion team on this list, but the expansion team fired him after one year; that's how bad he was.

In fact, he didn't even get through the whole first season.

He coached the Capitals to the worst record in the history of the NHL.

His record as coach of the Caps was 4-45-5.  Ouch.

Anderson never coached in the NHL again after that, and for good reason.

Larry Regan

Larry Regan coached the Los Angeles Kings in the early '70s with very little success.

After a dismal first season (25-40-13), Regan was given a chance to turn it around at the start of the following season.

Sadly, he wasn't able to make the best of this opportunity and was fired after the first 10 games where his team went 2-7-1.

Regan was a failed investment that the Kings quickly realized and simply cut their losses.

Ebbie Goodfellow

Ebbie Goodfellow might qualify as the worst coach in the history of the Chicago Blackhawks and definitely deserves a spot on this list.

Goodfellow spent his playing career with the Detroit Red Wings and seemed to want to continue to help his former team out while he coached their rivals in Chicago.

Goodfellow only coached for two seasons in Chicago and won a grand total of of 30 games. He lost 91 games and saw his team tie 19 times for a .282 winning percentage. Pretty pathetic.

I'm sure that most Detroit fans and players thought that he was a great coach as pretty much everybody was able to beat the Blackhawks during his time as coach there.

Ned Harkness

I found a really hilarious story about Ned Harkness on Bleacher Report while researching this article. You can have a look at it here.

Long story short, Harkness saw a great amount of success coaching in the college ranks, but it didn't transfer over to the pro game.

According to the article I just referenced, the players even signed a petition saying that they wouldn't play for Harkness anymore, in the middle of a game!

The other part of that story in that article that I loved was at the bottom of his slide.

"

Defenseman Gary Bergman recalled years later that the moment he met Harkness, he knew the team was in trouble.

"He showed up at my house that summer," Bergie said, "and he starts rearranging the furniture in my front room, using them as hockey players. He was trying to sell me on his hockey theories. My wife peeked in, saw the state of the room, and shook her head.

"I knew we were in trouble."

Boy, were they!

"

If you've got the player's wives shaking their heads at your hockey theories, as he said, you know that you're in trouble.

Your Thoughts?

This is a list that can be made a ton of different ways by a ton of different people.

I certainly hope you will all feel free to add your thoughts on any of the names listed here and add any ones that you think deserve a spot.

Kevin Goff is a Featured Columnist for the Colorado Avalanche and NHL on Bleacher Report. For more NHL news and discussion,