John Stevens was fired on Friday by the Flyers. In four seasons behind the Flyers bench, Stevens was 120-109-34 and his playoff record was 11-12. True, these numbers aren’t stellar but they aren’t terrible either. Stevens took over in ’06 with a team that was historically awful, posting a record of 21-42-11. In his next two seasons he took the team to the playoffs, reaching the Conference Finals in ’07-’08 and getting bounced last year in the first round by the eventual champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

His replacement is the fiery Peter Laviolette, most recently of Versus TV coverage fame. The upside to this hiring is that Laviolette has a Stanley Cup under his belt (2006 Carolina Hurricanes) and his career winning percentage is 21 points higher than Stevens’ (.562-.541). And maybe most importantly he’s known to be a hot-tempered coach with lots of personality, something Stevens lacked in the way Andy Reid lacks a clear throat.

While Laviolette has 7 years of coaching under his belt, the only season he won a playoff series was the year the ‘Canes went all the way. His teams missed the playoffs in 4 of his 7 years and he was bounced in the 1st round twice while with the Islanders.

The bottom line for the Flyers is that they’re not as good as 9 other Eastern Conference teams right now. Their scoring has cooled: they’ve scored 8 goals in their last 5 games and have been shutout twice during that stretch. And their goaltending is, once again, in flux: of the 9 teams ahead of the Flyers, 7 of them have starting goalies with lower GAAs than Ray Emery (the Islanders’ Dwayne Roloson and the Senators’ Pascal Leclaire are worse) and 7 of them have goaltenders with better save percentages than Emery (only Leclaire and Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury are worse).

If the players continue playing below their collective ability, the Flyers won’t be any better off with Laviolette. Of course, merely the act of changing leadership often times is enough to turn it around. With rumors swirling that Mike Richards will lose his captaincy to Chris Pronger, there’s a lot more than simply the head coaching that needs to improve if this team is going to realize its potential.