By Rob Riches, Sports Talk Philly contributor 
Throughout the 50-year history of the Flyers, 19 men have all held the title of head coach. Some helped make Flyers hockey fun to watch, while others couldn't have been canned quick enough.
Of those 19, five coaches have presided over a run to the Stanley Cup Final, and of those five, only one has claimed the Stanley Cup. That, of course, was the late Fred Shero, who is still remembered to this day as one of hockey's great innovators. Not only was he the first coach to utilize a full-time assistant coach (Mike Nykoluk), his 308 wins behind the Flyers bench still stand as the franchise record.
Shero, a bit of a philosopher, was always there to provide a motivational quote on the chalkboard before games as a way to motivate players and get them thinking — the most notable being the "Win today, and we walk together forever" from the 1974 Finals against Boston. Eric Duhatschek over at The Globe and Mail authored an excellent piece on how coaching has changed since the days of the Original 6, and goes in depth as to how Shero would spark his team.
When Terry Crisp retired as a player two games into the 1976-77 season and transitioned behind the bench on Shero's staff, he went to Shero in search of the method to his madness. He got a little more than he bargained for, though:
His coaching career began as an assistant on Shero’s staff in Philadelphia, along with Pat Quinn. On his first day on the job, he roared into Shero’s office with a question.
“I said: ‘Freddie, now that I’m officially an assistant coach in the league, I want the book.’ ‘What book?’ asks Freddie. I say: ‘The book – the book of quotes. I now am entitled to them because I’m an assistant coach.’ He says: ‘There’s no book.’ I say: ‘What do you mean there’s no book? There has to be a book.’
“He looks at me and says, ‘Crispy, do you drink tea?’ ‘Tea? Sure, sometimes I drink tea.’ He says: ‘What kind? Red Rose tea?’ He says: ‘If you drink Red Rose tea, you’ll know there’s a little string attached to the tea bag, and at the end of the string there’s a little piece of cardboard with a saying, like a fortune cookie.’
“Everyone thought Freddie was this motivational genius and he had it all written down in a book. That’s where he got his motivational sayings – from the end of a Red Rose tea bag.”
Turns out one of the keys to the Flyers' success in the Broad Street Bullies era was Red Rose tea. Surely a bit unconventional, but Shero wouldn't have done it any other way. It did lead to two Stanley Cups and enshrinement into the Hockey Hall of Fame, though, so no complaints here.
[Hockey's biggest shift: Fifty years of evolution in NHL coaching]
