Ranking the top 5 greatest coaches in NHL history

The Sporting News, established in 1886, is celebrating its 140th birthday with a year-long series honoring the greatest moments, teams and players from the last 140 years. We’ve also released SN’s entire archive for free, empowering hockey fans to download iconic print covers of Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe or explore endless rabbit holes to read how your favorite teams were covered in the moment. 

The hockey portion of our 140 celebration continues with our picks for the top-five greatest NHL coaches of all time. 

5. Joel Quenneville

We could’ve made a good case for Tampa Bay Lightning fixture Jon Cooper in fifth place on this list, as Cooper has won two Stanley Cups, four Stanley Cup finals appearances, and the 4 Nations Face-Off championship. He was also named AHL coach of the year and took home a Calder Cup prior to joining the Lightning. However, we’re giving the nod to Quenneville, who won three Cups in six years with the Chicago Blackhawks. 

While the Blackhawks’ core stayed the same over the course of their run as a dynasty, there were significant differences between those three Hawks teams, and Quenneville deserves his due for finding ways to make it all work spectacularly. Quenneville will eventually be a Hall-of-Famer when he’s done coaching, but as we see in his current work with the Anaheim Ducks, Quenneville has a lot left to give – and his stock could go even higher if he wins another Cup.

MORE: Ranking the top 5 greatest NHL dynasties of all time

4. Jack Adams

When you get the NHL’s award for best coach named after you, you have to be a massive influence on the coaching profession, and that’s true of Adams, who was a Detroit hockey icon who led the Red Wings to three Cups. Adams also won Cups as a player and a GM, but his lasting influence behind Detroit’s bench stands out most.

Adams won 413 NHL games as a coach – a number that made him the Wings’ franchise-leader in that department until Mike Babcock passed him earlier this century. But Adams will always be associated with the impact he had on the coaching business. He was a passionate coach, just as he was a passionate player and a passionate GM. He’s one of the few people in hockey history to have an NHL award named in his honor.

MORE: Ranking the 5 greatest NHL Stanley Cup Playoff moments of all time

3. Al Arbour

In the early 1980s, Arbor guided the New York Islanders to four consecutive Cup wins, but it wasn’t just that Arbor’s Isles team won championships – it was the dominant way they won them that set Arbor’s teams apart.

To wit: the Islanders reeled off a record-19-consecutive playoff series wins through 1984, and his 740 career wins with the Isles is the most for a coach with one team in league history. 

Arbor coached an amazing 1,500 career games, and while he won four Cups as a player, Arbor is most remembered as the genius behind championship wins on Long Island. Arbor is also a Hall-of-Famer, but he’s most famous for his coaching success.

2. Toe Blake

In the Montreal Canadiens’ storied history, Blake holds a special place as an icon who coached the Habs for 13 years and won the Cup an astonishing eight times. Now, that’s in part a function of Blake coaching in the Original Six era, but his accomplishment is all the more impressive when you realize he won five straight Cups from 1955 through 1960 – and that those five years were his first five years as Montreal’s coach. 

Blake’s 500 career regular-season wins are still the best total in Canadiens team history, and while he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1968 as a player, his coaching history is just as outstanding. No coach earned more Cups with the same team than Blake did, and he is revered in Montreal for his elite efforts on and off the ice.

MORE: Ranking the top 5 Hockey Hall of Fame classes of all-time

1. Scotty Bowman

It isn’t that Bowman did scores of great things as the NHL’s pre-eminent bench boss – it’s basically a case of ‘what didn’t he do’. Bowman holds the NHL record for most wins by a coach, with 1,244 regular-season wins and 223 playoff wins. He also has 14 Cup wins to his credit, including a record nine Cup wins as a coach. Bowman pulled off that feat in an NHL that had dozens of teams battling for the Cup year-in and year-out.

By the time he retired in 2002, Bowman had coached the Red Wings, Canadiens, and Pittsburgh Penguins to championships, and he coached a stunning 2,141 regular-season games, making him a lock for the Hall of Fame.

Thus, Bowman is the undisputed king of coaching, and it will be a long time before anyone even comes close to achieving what Bowman achieved.

More NHL News

• 2026 NHL mock draft: Maple Leafs, Sharks win big in draft lottery
• 5 items Maple Leafs GM John Chayka must address this summer
• 3 winners and losers of the 2026 NHL draft lottery
• Following a slew of bad news, the NHL draft lottery win is a shift in momentum for the Maple Leafs
• A coach built for the moment: John Tortorella and the Golden Knights’ playoff rise