Hired to be Fired

It is safe to say that the most disposable member of a NHL management team is the head coach.  There is an old adage that a NHL coach is “hired to be fired”.  With the salary cap, teams are handcuffed if the players on the ice stumble out of the gate.  There are so few trades in the post-lockout NHL that teams are usually stuck with the roster they begin the season with.  This makes the job of the head coach even more tenuous as they know that if a GM decides that a change is necessary, firing the man responsible for the team’s performance is the easiest approach.  Getting rid of one man is undoubtedly less complicated than trying to move 21 under-performing players.

Last season it only took 4 games for the Chicago Blackhawks to grow weary of coach Denis Savard’s style and he was shown the door.  It took 16 games for the folks running Tampa Bay to discover that Barry Melrose was not the man for the job, which was way behind the learning curve as no one in the hockey world could understand why he was given the position in the first place.  In total, before the 2008-09 season was over, seven teams changed their head coach and by the start of the 2009-10 season 3 more teams followed suit.  That means that in one year 1/3 of all coaches were revising their resumes.

Another problem for coaches is that recent history has shown that a change of the man running the bench can often bring the results that the GM is looking for.  After firing Denis Savard, the Hawks had their best season in eons and made it to the Western Conference finals.  The Carolina Hurricane’s fired Peter Laviolette and recycled Paul Maurice out of the trash bin and he managed to reverse the teams fortunes and bring them to the Eastern Conference finals.  When the Penguins fired Michel Therrien, the team had a record 27-25-5 and was on the outside looking in at the playoff race.  With 25 games left in the season, in came Dan Bylsma and by June the Penguins were on top of the hockey world. 

Nearing the 20 game mark, not a single NHL team has yet to pull the trigger on firing a coach but that does not mean that someone will not be out of a job in the near future.  Curiously this year, the GM’s managing the teams with the worst records have their hands tied by recent history or the promise of future glory and that has made the game of guessing who will be first to be handed their pink slip much harder.

The two worst teams in the NHL are the Carolina Hurricanes and the Toronto Maple Leafs and in each case the head coaches are probably as safe as any coach can possibly be.  As mentioned above, Maurice came back to Carolina and saved the season.  In the summer he was awarded a new multi-year contract by the Cane’s management who believed that Maurice had the team on the cusp of true Cup contention.  However 3 wins in 19 games must have the front office wondering if last season was a dream or if this one is a nightmare that they can’t wake up from.  But armed with that new multi-year deal and the fact that G.M Jim Rutherford is his best friend, Maurice does not have to worry about looking at the job ads in the classifieds for a while yet, bad start or not.

In Toronto a different scenario is playing out.  One has to think that if this was not an Olympic year, either coach Ron Wilson’s neck would have already been on the chopping block or he would be a dead man walking.  But a twist of fate has kept Ron secure, whether he is the man for the job or not.  Don’t think for one minute that because GM Brian Burke and Wilson are old college buddies and have been friends for the last 30-odd years that Burke would hesitate to fire his coach if he thought a change was needed.  Burke has a lot invested into this Leafs team, and by a lot I mean his ego and reputation.  Before the season started he traded away the next two first round entry draft picks for Phil Kessel and told the Toronto media that he felt the team was good enough to challenge for a playoff spot.  Three wins in 18 games later, the stock of the makers of Pepto Bismol has got to be on the rise as he watches the Leafs play their worse hockey in twenty years.  But coach Ron has an ace up his sleeve to keep his job secure; this spring he was also was named by Team USA GM Brian Burke to be the head coach of the American entry in the upcoming Olympics.  There is no way that Burke can fire the coach of his NHL team without jeopardizing the working relationship with the same man who happens to be his coach of the American Olympic team.  Wilson’s job is safe at least until the Olympics are over.  And if the Americans win a medal you can bet Wilson to be behind the bench to start next season as well.

With Maurice and Wilson safe the odds are that one of the other teams making up the bottom tier of the standings will be the first to lower the axe.  The Ducks are wallowing in 3rd last overall so Randy Carlyle may be walking on thin ice.  But Carlyle won a Cup with the Ducks and the team lost key personnel this off season so management may just give him some more rope before they decide to hang him.  Peter Deboer of the Florida Panthers is in his second year with the team but the loss of defenseman Jay Bouwmeester has made his job even harder.  The Panthers are also strapped for cash as their market is proving that two teams in Florida is one team too many.  With a strict operating budget, management may be forced to keep Deboer.  Fired coaches still get paid by their former teams for the duration of their contracts unless they take a job somewhere else.  The lesser of two evils for Florida may be to keep Deboer rather than pay him not to coach and also pay someone else to take his place.  

My money for the first coaching casualty is Andy Murray of the St Louis Blues.  Murray has been with the Blues since the 06-07 season so that is a black mark next to his name as his shelf life is nearing the expiration date of a NHL coach.  The Blues had a breakthrough season last year where they were the last place team in the Western Conference in January but by April they had willed their way into the playoffs.  Once again, St Louis became a hockey city as fans began coming back to the Blues after a long and tough rebuilding period where even the team mascot had to be forced to show up to the games.  There was a lot of chest thumping by Blues management over the summer and good things were seen on the horizon.  However, the music has been anything cheery for the Blues to start the season.  With only 6 wins in the first 18 games the team looks like they lost the confidence and swagger they had at the end of last year.  This past weekend, Blues owner David Checketts stated that the team had to have a winning season and continue to improve on last year or the season would be considered a failure.  Reading between the lines, what Checketts really means is that he is finally starting to make some money on his investment and he wants to continue doing so.  And we all know the best way to make money in professional sports is to win.  With that kind of support from the top, management will have little choice to make a move if the team continues to falter.  Currently the Blues have lost 2 straight and face the Coyotes and the Islanders this week.  There should be no surprise that if they lose those two games, Andy Murray will be thanked for his fine work, shown the exit and be asked not to let the door hit him on the way out.  After watching Pittsburgh and Carolina turn their season around last year with a head coaching move, you can be sure that the Blues will hope to catch the same lightning in a bottle and ensure the turnstiles at the gate keep having bodies move through them. 

Greener