Sitting Duck?
Future isn’t looking good for beleaguered Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle, but he’s taking club’s poor season in stride
The scrum was over, but Randy Carlyle wasn’t going anywhere. He wanted to keep talking, to share a few more stories, and enjoy some more laughs.
Lord knows, he could use them about now.
So the beleaguered head coach spoke about seeing Freddie Mercury and Queen perform at the old Maple Leaf Gardens, and about the time when a teammate fell down the steep flight of stairs that carried players to the dressing room at the old Chicago Stadium. And how they used to give the visiting team oilstained towels at the old Boston Garden.
All it did, Carlyle said with a smile, was smear the sweat all over your body.
Had you not known, you never would have guessed that this was the same coach who, a couple of nights ago, had been on the losing end of a 9-3 blowout, and who entered Monday’s game against the Maple Leafs having dropped 15 of the past 17 games with the Anaheim Ducks.
Nor would you have guessed that this was the same coach who was criticized for being too stubborn, too old-school and too grumpy with the younger players during his somewhat brief time behind the bench in Toronto.
But times have changed. And with them, so has Carlyle — even if the results don’t necessarily show it.
The once-demanding head coach who used to have two ways of doing things — Randy’s Way or the Highway — now has younger players demanding to know why they should do what he asks. And the 62-year-old Carlyle, who won a Norris Trophy as a top NHL defenceman and coached more than 900 games, is now giving them the kind of answers that you’d expect to hear from a kindergarten teacher.
“The hierarchy of the hard coach with the iron fist — that’s gone,” said Carlyle, who was fired by the Leafs in 2015. “It’s gone by the wayside. What we try to do is provide them with as much positives — catch them doing something good, catch the good things — because everybody knows that coaches are going to harp on the mistakes being made. We’re all in this to correct the mistakes being made, but sometimes there are too many mistakes being made.”
This sounds like a different coach than the one who had no time for Jake Gardiner’s constant turnovers and Nazem Kadri’s lack of maturity, and who wasn’t sure whether Morgan Rielly would ever tap into the offensive potential that made him a top-five pick. That Carlyle, who made headlines and inspired an AT&T commercial for critiquing James Reimer’s effort in a 3-2 loss as “Just OK,” seemed to be warring with every player on a roster that simply wasn’t good enough.
“I get no percentages,” Carlyle said of the ads, which has mechanics, tattoo artists, babysitters and surgeons downplaying their aptitude level. “I’ve seen it used. I’ve seen the ‘Just OK’ and it makes me laugh. But, again, there are some fun times and there are some tough times.”
This is one of those tough times. Yet Carlyle is trying to find the positives.
For one, Ducks GM Bob Murray recently gave Carlyle a vote of confidence. And two, despite a recent 12-game losing streak that lasted six weeks, the team is only three points out of a playoff spot. Though the chances of Anaheim making the playoffs — they have to climb past five teams to do so — and Carlyle keeping his job past this season both seem unlikely at the moment.
Like Chicago and L.A., who after combining to win five of the past nine Cups are now at the bottom of the West standings, Anaheim is going through a transition period.
Heading into Monday’s game, the Ducks had the thirdworst record in the conference and the worst goal-differential in the league. Their two remaining players from their 2006 championship run (Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry) are now 33-years-old and no longer the players they once were. Too old and too slow for today’s game, the team should be looking toward a rebuild.
Yet, thanks to a wild-card race that nobody wants to win, Anaheim was still only three points out of a playoff spot — although that gap seems bigger when you consider the traffic jam in front of them.
“We’re still in a position to challenge, which is crazy enough with the season that we’ve had,” said Carlyle. “So that’s what’s most important for us now.”
In some ways, this Ducks squad resembles the Leafs teams that Carlyle presided over during his time in Toronto. They might be good enough to compete for a playoff spot. But even with a Vezina Trophy-worthy performance from John Gibson, no one would expect them to contend for a championship — much less make it out of the first round.
“It was a totally different time, a totally different group of players,” he said of his four seasons with the Maple Leafs. “Obviously, the overhaul that’s taken place here is something that they felt was necessary. They’ve done a good job of it.”