The Coaches, yes, baseball calls them managers ...

Belichick
Francona
Rivers
Julien

Who's the best? How do you define Best?

Belichick has 3 and the lead, but is it him or is it Brady?

Tito has two, but how much is him and how much is the players?

Rivers has one, with a Big Three. Julien has one, without Crosby.

Who's the best coach? Who makes the most difference? Who benefited most from having good players and or being in the right place at the right time?

My ranking, based on roster and competition:

Julien
Rivers
Francona
Belichick


What's yours?

1st belichick-he wins a lot of games and has done rebuilding with lower draft picks 2nd doc,look at this season,incredible job 3rd tito history and winning lots of games,the collapse tranished him a little 4th julien too early to move him with the other 3,if the bruins adnce deep or win it again its a whole new order

Belichick has done it for a decade in a league devoted to parity, while playing a significant role in personnel decisions (and rebuilding on the fly more than once), changing strategies from week-to-week and season-to-season to capitalize on strengths, mask weaknesses, and exploit the flaws in opponents.

Tom Brady or not (and Matt Cassel has never won more games than he did in New England during the one season of "not"), I don't think there's any way Belichick can be ranked lower than #1 on that list.

But the other three...that's a tough call.

Claude Julien hasn't had the same ego management challenges as Doc and Tito. Obviously that is part of any coach's job, but the Bruins don't have a Manny, or a Pedro, or a Schilling. They don't have a KG or Ray Allen coming to a new team with Hall of Fame credentials.

Tito didn't have to change the culture of the team that he inherited nearly as much as Doc and Claude did. The Idiots were already Cowboying Up in 2003 under Grady Little. The foundation was there both on and off the field, Francona just had to build on it.

Doc spent his first three years in Boston guiding the Celtics backwards (45 wins his first year, then 33, then 24) before KG and Ray Allen came to town. Not that he was a bad coach in those years, but of the 4 he's the one whose career in Boston is the most obvious example of "the players make the coach."

I don't know.

I think there are some common elements in all of their success, though:

1. Team-first mentality (the Red Sox clearly had it in the good years, and when they lost it, they lost)

2. Put players in roles where they can succeed, and don't expect those players to be something that they are not

3. They aren't the same in how they deal with the media, but in all cases what happens behind closed doors stays there, and (take note, Bobby) while they might be critical of a player at times, they don't communicate with their players through the media.

I'm not a football fan or football knowledgeable, so that is a factor in my opinions. But I have paid attention since Bledsoe was injured and Brady started winning. And I've been wondering ever since whether it was Brady or the coach who has made more difference.

Bottom line, without Brady at his best, without Teddy, Vrabel, and others, no rings. Matt C? Where would he have been without Welker? I also think BB has been out coached in big games, but, again, I my observations could be superficial and I could easily be wrong.

I've never seen Julien out coached. I don't think I've seen Doc out coached. And Tito can't be last after dealing with Manny.

I will defer to those with more expertise, and that's just about everyone here, but I do think Claude has done the most with the least and when changes were needed, his have worked best.

Claude Julien still hasn't solved the Bruins' power play struggles.

I don't know where you draw the line between coaches coaching and players playing, but the Celtics routinely play themselves out of a lead. And not just with sloppy execution, which the coach can't control, but also with terrible pace, which the coach can at least influence.

Bill Belichick has won with good players. But Tedy Bruschi was no Ray Lewis. Matt Cassel had Wes Welker and Randy Moss – but that's because Bill Belichick brought Wes Welker and Randy Moss to New England for next to nothing. The Colts had Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garcon, Austin Collie and Dallas Clark and they won two games without Peyton Manning. And I've seen Bill Belichick coach circles around the opposition a lot more often than I've seen him be outcoached. Sometimes the team gets outplayed, but that's a different thing.

But he's managed to win anyway.

I think I understand the Belichick value, and certainly 3 championships is a major big deal. Maybe we have to wait for all of this quartet to finish their Boston careers before ranking them.

Question: we know BB has a lot of GM like control. But how much input do the others have?

But he's managed to win anyway.

He has.

But I think it's fair to say that Tim Thomas won the Stanley Cup at least as much as it's fair to say that Tom Brady has won the 3 Super Bowls.

Nobody wins without good players and a little bit of luck along the way.

I don't think there's a bad answer here, but Belichick has proven his ability to adapt to different rosters and different conditions over a long period of time. The best you can do is give everyone else an incomplete grade there.

Significantly less. I couldn't really say exactly.

I do remember Doc talking about it a bit earlier this season. Something to the effect of having some general input early in the process – identifying types of players he could use, as opposed to a specific target. And then if a deal is close, Ainge will run it by him and get some feedback. In between, not much input at all.

I still think Julien is a good coach. And in the "ranking the coaches," the Patriots, Red Sox, and Celtics have all been guilty of coming out flat in big games/big series, too.

But the Bruins just made a minor league goalie who left rebound after rebound sitting in front of the net look, statistically, like a hero in a 7 game series. I think Julien miscalculated in sticking with Caron over Shawn Thornton in Game 7. They didn't figure out the power play. They didn't solve their series-long problem of turning the puck over in their defensive zone. They didn't solve their series-long problem of not getting traffic in front of the goal on offense. Julien failed to generate offense with his multiple changes in the lines – but it's arguable that the changes did prevent the shuffled lines from developing the chemistry that they needed.

It's on the players much more than the coach. Forget the first six games. The energy just wasn't there for Game 7.

Putting aside Nathan Horton, I think it's a much different series if Adam McQuaid is healthy, and much different Game 7 if Patrice Bergeron wasn't hampered by his mystery injury. All night long he lost puck battles along the boards that he never loses. And you have to give credit to Washington for playing up to their talent level – not doing so has been their downfall in the past – and for staying with their game.

But this series was definitely not Claude Julien's finest coaching hour.

Can't disagree.
The 2012 stage is set for Doc.