Who are the best Chicago Blackhawks coaches of all time?

Mike Keenan is one of the more controversial and perhaps one of the most disliked head coaches in NHL history.

After all, he didn’t get his nickname, “Iron Mike” for nothing. Despite his somewhat rocky reputation, Keenan still led the Blackhawks through a period in which they saw a decent amount of success.

While his first season as head coach in Chicago saw an abysmal 27 wins, Keenan was able to consistently pick up the pace year after year beyond that. Just two years later, in 1991, the Blackhawks posted a .663 points percentage and were just one win shy of 50 victories on the season. The next year, Keenan led the team to their first Stanley Cup Final since 1973, though they were quickly swept by Mario Lemieux and the mighty Pittsburgh Penguins.

In general, Keenan is seen as one of the more consequential coaches in the history of the Blackhawks. While his contribution in terms of championships may never have come to fruition, Keenan still took the team to a place that they hadn’t been in a long time and is still considered one of the best to ever step behind the bench in Chicago.

While he may have never been what the Blackhawks wanted him to be, they still have plenty of reasons to be thankful that Iron Mike was one of their head coaches.

In terms of the greatest coaches of all time, Billy Reay is not a name that comes up that often.

However, his contributions to the Chicago Blackhawks are absolutely monumental, and Reay helped to mold the 60’s era team into what they were.

Reay was behind the bench in Chicago for an astounding 14 years, a benchmark that is still a Blackhawks record. He is the Hawks’ all-time leader in games coached, guiding Chicago for 1012 games from 1963 to 1977. Even more astounding, the Blackhawks only missed the playoffs 2 out of those 14 years.

Reay would also lead the Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup Finals three times, including a 49-win season in 1971 that saw them lead the Western Conference with 107 points. Sadly, the Hawks were unable to capture the Cup in any of these three trips. However, the mark that he left on the team was undeniable.

The late, great Stan Mikita reflected on Reay in 2012, and talked about the great respect that he had for his former head coach:

He let players play and demanded only that you give your best. Ask the guys who played for him. Billy Reay was a terrific coach and a good man. A real good man.

While he will always be considered one of the best of all time, Billy Reay falls just short of the best Hawks coach ever.

Forgot about being the best Blackhawks head coach of all time. That is a given. The case could be made that Joel Quenneville is one of the best coaches in NHL history.

Coach Q took a team that had been wallowing in the basement for years, and brought them to the top of the mountain within a year, winning the team’s first Stanley Cup in 49 years in 2010.

Quenneville would go on and lead the Blackhawks to become a modern-day hockey dynasty that sent a shockwave through the National Hockey League. Perhaps Q’s most impressive outing was the 2013 season, a shortened 48 game season in which the Hawks won 36 games and embarked on a 21-0-3 winning streak en-route to the Stanley Cup.

Under Coach Q, the Blackhawks would win their third Cup in 6 seasons in 2015, a feat that would cement Quenneville as one of the best coaches in the history of the game. While the Blackhawks struggled during the last two years of his tenure, there is no doubt that Coach Q was a very large reason for the team’s success during the 2010s.

He was loved by the players and the fans, and firing him in 2018 was a move that I (and many others) still wish had never happened. While the team had their issues under Q, as all teams do, there is no doubt that Joel Quenneville remains the greatest coach in the history of the Chicago Blackhawks.