A NEW VOICE WORKS
Bruins have seen benefit
I don’t know if Bruce Cassidy is the second coming of Scotty Bowman. I’m not even sure he’s as good a head coach as Claude Julien was.
But what’s clear is that the Boston Bruins, who are 3-0-0 since changing coaches last week, are benefiting from having a new voice behind the bench. And they aren’t the only ones. From the St. Louis Blues to the New York Islanders, the best trades in the NHL this season have concerned a coach, not a player.
It’s called a bump, a boost or a boon.
And while there is no guarantee that this short-term surge will continue for the long run, it has quite possibly saved Boston’s season — and a similar move could save Montreal’s as well.
The Habs, who lost 4-0 to the Bruins on Sunday, still have a sixpoint lead atop the Atlantic Division. But after losing 10 of their last 14 games, they head into the bye week skidding toward the same proverbial cliff the team fell off last year.
Maybe the five-day break will give the team a chance to clear its collective head and get back on track. Maybe acquiring a player like Matt Duchene at the March 1 trade deadline will make things right. But that’s two weeks away. By then, the Habs, who have played five more games than the second-place Ottawa Senators and four more than the fourthplace Maple Leafs Leafs in the Atlantic Division standings, could be out of a playoff spot.
Besides, the Habs don’t really need to make a trade. They just need a jolt in the same way that the Bruins, Blues and Islanders needed one. In other words, they need to fire head coach Michel Therrien.
When the Blues fired Ken Hitchcock on Feb. 1, the team had lost five of its last six games and was clinging to the final wild card spot. Today, they are 5-1-0 under Mike Yeo and in third place in the Central Division. The Islanders are 7-2-2 since firing Jack Capuano, having climbed from last in the Eastern Conference to 10th place, just a point out of the wild card spot. Even the Florida Panthers, who fired Gerard Gallant in November, have shown a slight improvement since then.
It’s not about X’s and O’s. A new coach might assign new roles to players and devise different power-play schemes. But mostly it’s a wake-up call to the rest of the team. Trades are harder and harder to execute in today’s NHL, but firing the head coach is an easy way for a GM to get the message across that things need to change. After that, it’s up to the players. “It’s been pretty impressive,” Blues defenceman Colton Parayko told reporters after winning a fourth straight game under Yeo. “We’ve just realized that if we want to do this, we’ve got to put together the effort and make sure that we work together as a team. We definitely have the team on paper to be one of the best in the league, so it’s just a matter of showing up and working together. It’s definitely an exciting time for us when we know what we can be like when we play our best.”
A year ago, the Pittsburgh Penguins found themselves at a similar crossroads when they fired Mike Johnston and replaced him with Mike Sullivan. At the time, the team was 15-10-3 and in fifth place in the crowded Metropolitan Division. The move ended up not only saving their season, but also resulted in the team winning the Stanley Cup. In the last eight years, two other coaches — Darryl Sutter and Dan Bylsma — have taken over a team in the middle of the season and won a championship. There is no reason why the Canadiens can’t pull a similar 180 with another voice behind the bench. They have the best goalie in the league in Carey Price, a defenceman in Shea Weber who is in the Norris Trophy conversation and a scorer in Max Pacioretty who is two goals back of Sidney Crosby in the Rocket Richard Trophy race.
And yet, the Canadiens are a mess. The team, which went 13-1-1 to start the season, has the worst record in the NHL since the beginning of February. Price hasn’t been nearly as sharp as he was at the beginning of the season, but it’s hard to blame the goaltending when Montreal has been shut out in three of its last five games and is averaging two goals per game in the last month.
With Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher both healthy, there are no excuses. The Canadiens, who have another year after this one before Price becomes an unrestricted free agent, need to take advantage of this window before it starts closing and rebuilding teams like Toronto and Buffalo become even more competitive.
Montreal already made a culture-shifting move last summer, when general manager Marc Bergevin traded P.K. Subban to Nashville for Shea Weber. Now, another move is needed.