Flyers Fire Peter Laviolette, Craig Berube Takes Over

The Peter Laviolette era is over in Philadelphia.

(Listen to Flyers new head coach Craig Berube on the Sports Bash with Mike Gill )

Monday, following an 0-3 start to the season, the Flyers have fired the coach who had a 145-98-29 record across five seasons with the team. The Flyers plan to promote assistant coach Craig Berube as the 18th coach in team history at an 11 a.m. press conference.

Berube, 47, has been an assistant coach with the Flyers since 2008. Four years before that, he was brought in as an assistant coach with the AHL Phantoms.

The change is sparked by three losses to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes. Last year’s team, which didn’t make the playoffs in a lockout-shortened season, also began 0-3.

“I think last year was a fluke,” team chairman Ed Snider said at the beginning of training camp. “It was the kind of season where anything that could go wrong, went wrong.”

So far, this Flyers group appears on the same track. They have only scored one goal in each of the first three games. They were outshot 34-18 against Carolina Sunday and had only three shots on net in the third period.

“Everybody knows what happened last year and we’re 0-3 now but it’s a test for us,” defenseman Kimmo Timonen said. “There’s 79 games and we’ve got some home games coming up. Now we’ll really see where we are as a team and how tight we are as a team. If we start blaming people and not playing as a team, we’re gonna be 0-6 soon.”

The Flyers are hoping Berube can spark that change.