The coach-hammer is the favourite tool in nearly every GM's tool box when change is needed.
The simple question might go something like this: Where have you gone Ron Wilson, Joel Quenneville, Paul Maurice, John Paddock, Glen Hanlon, Bob Hartley, Dave Lewis, Jacques Martin and Jim Playfair?
The more complex question: Where are you going National Hockey League?
Wilson, one of the winningest coaches ever in the NHL was fired Monday evening for the same reason a lot of good coaches get fired: a lack of overwhelming playoff success.
Since the end of the 2007-08 regular season, Wilson, Quenneville and Maurice, all experienced coaches with some success on their respective resumes, have been turfed. The firings, dismissals and "mutual agreements on departures" put those three in with Martin, Paddock, Hanlon, Hartley, Lewis, and Playfair who were fired or demoted during the regular season or in the closing days of the 2006-07 campaign.
As of this writing, only Playfair was still working in his field. Playfair stayed on as an assistant to Mike Keenan in Calgary. Martin has survived as general manager of the Florida Panthers, but was dismissed as coach and might have lost the GM’s job as well had he not had substantial time left on that portion of his contract.
Ten coaches, some with Stanley Cup experience to their credit, and it’s likely not over yet. As I type, there are still very strong rumours that Alain Vigneault is on thin ice in Vancouver, Peter Laviolette might not survive in Carolina (especially now that Quenneville is back on the market), John Tortorella is under something of a cloud of uncertainty while awaiting new ownership in Tampa Bay and Dave Tippet may well be shown the door should the Dallas Stars fall to the Detroit Red Wings in four straight.
Lest we forget, Pat Quinn remains unemployed and not by choice. Three-time coach-of-the-year Pat Burns is hoping to catch on with another team after time off for a serious illness and using the Team Canada platform at the World Championships to make his case. Doug MacLean, who once took the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final is hoping to catch on somewhere after being fired first as coach and later as president and general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets as is Craig Hartsburg who has had NHL stops in Chicago and Anaheim and recently resigned after a successful stint as head coach of Canada’s world junior program.
Dave King is back from self-imposed exile in Russia and hoping to land an NHL gig. Barry Smith would do the same if he even got a hint of an NHL offer as would Steve Larmer, Trent Yawney and a host of others.
What used to be a rash of firings in the NHL has become a plague and it’s largely because in today’s NHL there is little else a general manager can do.
With rare exceptions (Alexei Yashin comes immediately to mind), GMs will tell you it’s next to impossible to fire one player let alone an entire contingent of underachievers. Players today not only have guaranteed contracts, but even if you want to eat the contract, GMs will tell you that it’s the hit against the salary cap that is really the tougher bullet to bite.
The cap has given players a remarkable degree of security in ways they never imagined when they fought so hard to keep it out during the lockout of 2004-05. Along with the cap and guaranteed contracts, GMs also have to deal with the fact that they are severely curtailed in terms of dumping players in the minors partly because of the cap and partly because of the salary hit and stricter waiver rules all together.
The latest wrinkle involves something relatively new but no less distressing for a GM, the long-term contract. It’s pretty difficult to dump an underachieving, non-performing "asset" when he’s coming off an average season. It’s next to impossible when he’s had a bad year and still has five or six more remaining on a pact both parties thought would happily bond them together long enough for the player’s firstborn son to join him in the lineup.
Now this is not to blame all things on the players as there are underachieving general managers who put forth unrealistic expectations for their teams or are the architects of their own poor trades and/or worse drafting. One could even argue (gasp) that there is a smattering of incompetent ownership in certain regions frequented by NHL teams.
It’s just that in the pre-cap era it was easier to cover mistakes with buyouts or burials in some less-than hallowed minor league stomping grounds.
So when it comes to explaining failure or at least minimizing defeat, more and more GMs are falling back on the old standby, an axe with the coach’s name on it.
After all, a coach doesn’t have to be traded, he can simply be dismissed. A coach’s salary may impact the bottom line for a little while, but not in the way a player’s salary does and besides, coaches aren’t subject to the Cap.
And what makes it easiest of all is that unlike players, of which quality is hard to come by and even harder to keep, there is always an ample supply of quality hockey coaches just panting for their chance to make it to the big leagues even though they know beyond even the whisper of a shadow of even reasonable doubt that they will almost certainly follow the flaming path of their predecessor. Yes they too will experience a firing, usually every bit as soon and usually every bit as undeserved as the one that came before them.
If a team misses expectations real or imagined, fire the coach. If players tune out a voice, silence the voice. If a coach is too strict, well, fire him. If he’s too soft, well, fire him too. Too dumb, too smart, too loud, too quiet, too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, fire them all. It hardly costs anything and there’s always another almost begging to take his place.
In the NHL it’s the best fail-safe move there is and if that’s a problem for coaches, well here’s the kicker: In the perceived best hockey league in the world (and with few exceptions) when a GM fires a coach, no one except the fired coach and his family really cares.
Little wonder the coach-hammer is the favourite tool in nearly every GMs’ tool box.
After all, how many even know how to use the fire-the-GM wrench.
