Trace the roots of all 30 NHL head coaches back to the men who launched their coaching careers and you'll find that just 5 men are responsible for the careers of 18 NHL head coaches. The largest tree belongs to Mike Keenan with 5 bench bosses in his coaching lineage while Patrick Roy is a first-year coach with no tree at all.
I've only included active branches of the tree in the chart below.
*Click to enlarge the chart below. Get the full-sized chart here.
- In total, active coaches and the men in their coaching trees have won 14 Stanley Cups.
- Two trees have three Stanley Cups each - Harry Neale's tree: Joel Quenneville (2), Marc Crawford (1) and Bob Johnson's tree: Johnson (1), Darryl Sutter (1), Randy Carlyle (1),
- Mike Keenan's tree has two Stanley Cups - Keenan (1), Peter Laviolette (1) as does Rick Dudley's tree: John Tortorella (1), Dan Bylsma (1)
- Mike Babcock: Babcock (1), Bruce Bullard: Claude Julien (1), Dick Todd: Bob Hartley (1) and Ken Hitchcock: Hitchcock (1) each have one Stanley Cup.
- Active coaches and the men in their trees have finished as runner-up 17 times.
- Mike Keenan's tree has finished second six times: Keenan (3), Peter Laviolette (1), Paul Maurice (1), Peter DeBoer (1), well ahead of any other, giving his tree eight appearances in the Finals overall.
- Bob Johnson's tree - Johnson (1), Darryl Sutter (1) has lost in the Finals twice, as has Roger Neilson's tree - Neilson (1), Lindy Ruff (1) and Mike Babcock's tree - Babcock (2).
- Five other trees have one finalist each: Harry Neale - Alain Vigneault (1), Bryan Murray - Murray (1), Bruce Bullard - Claude Julien (1), Michel Therrien - Therrien (1) and Ken Hitchcock - Hitchcock (1).