QUENNEVILLE WILL BE BACK ON BENCH AGAIN AND SOON
If you’re Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli, the question is: Do you make a coaching change right away or wait a few more days until Edmonton falls out of a playoff spot?
After all, Joel Quenneville is not going to be out of work for long.
Fired from the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday, I’d be shocked if the Los Angeles Kings weren’t already negotiating a new deal for the three-time Stanley Cup-winning coach. That is if the St. Louis Blues, Detroit Red Wings or Florida Panthers aren’t already tying up his phone line trying to do the same.
That’s how big of a name Quenneville is. And that’s also how badly some NHL teams have started out of the gate.
As Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said of Quenneville: “He’s going to go in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I don’t know what else you say about him. If he wants to work, he works.”
Last year, not a single NHL coach was fired during the regular season. A month into this season, we already have two, with many more on the way.
First came John Stevens in Los Angeles. Now Quenneville is gone following a 6-6-3 start in Chicago. Up next could be Florida’s Bob Boughner, St. Louis’ Mike Yeo, Detroit’s Jeff Blashill or Philadelphia’s Dave Hakstol.
After several players with the Ottawa Senators were caught on camera insulting their coaching staff, you have to wonder if Guy Boucher’s job security took a major hit.
Which brings us to Todd McLellan and the Oilers. As of Tuesday morning, Edmonton was sitting tied in third place in the Pacific Division with the San Jose Sharks. In other words, McLellan might not be sitting on the hot seat just yet.
With five of their next seven games against playoff teams, the picture could look a lot worse by U.S. Thanksgiving. By then, maybe the Oilers are in a position to make a change. The only question is whether Quenneville will still be available by then.
It’s not often a coach with his credentials becomes available. Boston fired Claude Julien on Feb. 7, 2017. Exactly one week later, the Montreal Canadiens fired Michel Therrien and hired Julien. At the time, the Canadiens’ record was 31-19-8.
That’s the kind of thing that Chiarelli has to consider. If the Oilers are contemplating a coaching change, they better act fast. Edmonton cannot miss the playoffs for a second straight year. Not with Connor McDavid on a torrid pace to start the season. If that were to happen, McLellan won’t be the only one in Edmonton who will be losing his job.
You have to assume that those types of thoughts had entered Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman’s mind in the last two weeks. Chicago missed the playoffs last season for the first time since Quenneville was hired in 2008. After starting this season on a 6-2-2 run, the Blackhawks went on a five-game losing streak that ultimately cost Quenneville his job.
Bowman had to make a change. And considering that nine players have no-trade or no-movement clauses, the easier change was replacing Quenneville with Jeremy Colliton, a 33-year-old with zero NHL coaching experience who was in only his second year behind the bench in North America.
That’s the new trend in the NHL, as more teams continue to hire coaches straight out of the NCAA or the junior ranks with little to no NHL experience. Still, a man with Quenneville’s resume is still hotly desired, especially if you want to win now.
Back in 2008, he replaced Denis Savard four games into the season and took a team with a 20-year-old Patrick Kane and a 21-year-old Jonathan Toews to the conference final. The following year, he won his first of three championships as the word “dynasty” once again became part of the hockey lexicon.
As Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz said in a statement Tuesday, “When Joel was originally hired into our 2008 season, we had great hope for his potential to take the team to new levels. He went beyond what anyone expected.”
Quenneville had been in his 11th season with the Blackhawks when the axe finally came. That sort of tenure doesn’t happen anymore. In fact, he had a fiveyear lead on Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper — his 441-game reign, including Tuesday’s clash with Edmonton, is the new gold standard — as the longest-tenured coach in the league.
But that’s the perils of being a coach, where the shelf life seems to get staler than a bag of bread left out in the summer. Or, as Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek said of Kings interim coach Willie Desjardins, all coaches are essentially interim coaches.
With Quenneville now available, almost every coach probably feels that way.