from Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inguirer,

If the Flyers fire Craig Berube this week - and the drumbeat emanating from Ice Station Groundhog is certainly familiar - the lucky new coach, whomever he is, will be the team's 10th in the last 20 years.

It's quite a list, traveling all the way from Terry Murray to Berube, with station stops at Wayne Cashman, Roger Neilson, Craig Ramsay, Bill Barber, Ken Hitchcock, John Stevens and Peter Laviolette.

Here's the funny thing about the coaches on that list, and it tells you more about the nature of the franchise than it does about the respective abilities of the coaches or the quality of the teams with which they were entrusted.

None of them left with a losing record.

Think about that for a moment. If general manager Ron Hextell holds to tradition - and there is no tradition like Flyers tradition - he is going to fire Berube and the team will have parted ways with nine straight coaches who were .500 or better on points percentage. I would challenge anyone to find another franchise in professional sports that went through as many coaches in a 20-year span and never fired a loser.

Well, Ed Snider always said he wanted the franchise to make history. This record will stand for a while.

If Hextall really wants to send a message to the players and the entire organization, he will stand in front of the microphones Wednesday at his season-ending news conference and give Berube a contract extension. Berube isn't the problem. The problem is believing that a little tinkering with the roster and a new coach will fix things.

continued

from Frank Seravalli of the Philadelphia Daily News,