On Tuesday morning, the struggling Boston Bruins made a move as they fired head coach Claude Julien, and with his ouster, Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville has ascended to a unique position within the league.
With Julien’s firing, Quenneville is now the longest-tenured head coach in the NHL. He was hired in Oct. 2008 after the Blackhawks fired Denis Savard just five games into the regular season, and since then he has been arguably the league’s most successful coach and has arguably been the best coach in Blackhawks history.
In nine seasons in Chicago, Quenneville’s squad has made the playoffs in every single season, winning three Stanley Cup championships and reaching the conference final on five total occasions. Over that time, Quenneville’s team has won 395 regular season games and racked up 76 more postseason wins, the latter of which is an all-time record for the franchise.
With Julien out of the job, Quenneville is now one of only four NHL head coaches that have won a Stanley Cup with their current team, with Kings boss Darryl Sutter (2012, 2014), Randy Carlyle (Anaheim 2007) and Mike Sullivan (Penguins 2016) joining him in that club.
