COACHING CAROUSEL GAINING SPEED
NHL teams appear to have lost patience when it comes to their bench bosses
When Vegas fired Gerard Gallant as its head coach last week, it caught the NHL by surprise.
It also created a bit of awkwardness.
At the time, the Golden
Knights were on a four-game losing streak. But they were still in a playoff spot and just a few points removed from taking over first place in the division.
Gallant, a two-time Jack
Adams Award winner who took the expansion team to the Stanley Cup final in 2018, had been doing such a good job that 12 days earlier he was named as the Pacific Division’s representative for the NHL All-star Game.
Now, like so many others this year, he was suddenly unemployed.
For the NHL, it was another John Scott type of moment.
This time, however, the league decided to give his invitation to Arizona Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet.
“I felt kind of weird,” Tocchet said of being asked to replace Gallant one day after he had been fired.
For Tocchet, it was one thing to be the league’s Plan B. It was another to take over another man’s job one day later, when the body was still warm. But those feelings changed when Tocchet called Gallant and received his blessing.
“He said to go,” said Tocchet.
“It was nice to have Gallant say it was a great opportunity for me. The one thing that makes him a good person is he gets what something means for not just himself, but the other person. He understands the business.”
It’s a harsh business. Including Gallant, there have been seven coaches fired this season. Over the past two seasons, more than half the teams in the league have made a coaching change.
Some of the names, such as Mike Babcock, Peter Laviolette, Peter Deboer and Gallant, are hockey lifers. These are Cup-winning coaches or coaches who took their teams to the championship final as recently as two, three or four years ago. These are also coaches whose teams were either sitting in a playoff spot or just outside of one when the axe fell.
“It shows you that there’s a lot of impatience,” said Tocchet, whose Coyotes have fallen from first in the division to eighth in the conference after going on a 1-4-1 run in the past six games. “It’s a results-oriented business. I think when Craig Berube took over St. Louis last season and won a Cup, a lot of GMS paid attention. You have to make the playoffs.
“If you look at the big picture and watch the standings, the pressure hits you and the stress hits you. But I’ve always loved pressure. When you have pressure, it means you’re relevant. Any time you try to be relevant, people are going to be recognized. It means you have a chance to do something special.”
The flip side is that being relevant means that, as a coach, you’re vulnerable.
Cliff Fletcher never believed in firing a coach in the middle of a season.
It’s a cop-out, he said. If a team was underperforming, Fletcher wouldn’t remove the coach, he would start removing players, like the time he sent five players packing in a 10-player blockbuster trade that brought Doug Gilmour to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Deals like that earned Fletcher the nickname Trader Cliff.
But not every problem can be solved with a trade.
In 1996, Fletcher fired Leafs head coach Pat Burns with just 17 games remaining in the season and replaced him with interim head coach Nick Beverly. Of course, if you ask Fletcher about it now, it was more of a resignation than a pink-slip release.
“Quite frankly, that was a mutual thing,” recalled Fletcher. “Burnsie thought he couldn’t coach the team anymore. He felt he lost the team. I had no thoughts on changing coaches until Burns came to me. Nick got us in the playoffs and then we lost to St. Louis.”
Consider the Burns firing a mercy pull. The equivalent to yanking a goalie in order to give his team a spark.
Today, those types of moves have become commonplace.
With trades — and playoff spots — more scarce than ever before, struggling teams that are looking to rebound are now turning their attention to the man behind the bench.
“Coaching was a much more secure position than it is today,” said Fletcher. “We’ve already seen seven coaching changes this year. I hope that’s not going to be an indication of what the future holds.”
There’s never been more pressure than coaches are feeling these days. It used to be that coaches were fired after a losing season. Now, they are fired during a losing streak.
Toronto, which was two points out of a wild card spot, had lost six in a row when it fired Babcock. Nashville, which was four points out of a wild card spot in the West, had won just once in its past five games when Laviolette lost his job. And Vegas was actually tied for a wild card spot when it fired Gallant.
Sounds extreme? But in an overcrowded NHL standings that resembles a game of musical chairs, where only one point separates the Pacific Division-leading Canucks from the second wild card team, a fourgame slide can be the difference between having home ice in the first round or having an early summer.
“When you’re in the middle of the hunt, losing streaks kill you,” said former head coach
Ken Hitchcock. “It’s hard to be patient in getting the energy back again, because once you get it back you’re too far behind and there’s too many teams to climb over.”
When it gets that bad, not even a Hall of Fame-worthy reputation can save a coach.
In the past, coaches were given long leashes to work out a team’s problems. Babcock spent 10 seasons in Detroit, while Joel Quenneville lasted 11 seasons in Chicago. Those types of runs might be a thing of the past.
Jon Cooper, who is the longest active NHL coach, is in his eighth season behind Tampa Bay’s bench. Third on the list is Jeff Blashill, who’s in his fifth — and likely his last — season in Detroit. Twenty-two others have been in their current cities for less than three years.
“If you were five, six or seven years into a team you were into a good run,” said Hitchcock. “Now it’s three or four. A three- or four-year window is the norm. I think the evaluation of a coach is dependent on time. How long did he coach for? And for how many teams? That’s the proper evaluation for a coach now. If that coach got a job at his next place, it’s because the team that fired him gave a good word.”
For Scotty Bowman, who spent seven or more years with three different teams over a career that includes nine championships, the turnover is ridiculous. But for someone who coached from the original expansion era all the way up to 2002, it’s also a sign of the times.
“The owners coming in feel like they have to get into the playoffs,” said Bowman. “Playoff revenue is huge. If you make it you can go on a long run. That seems to be the benchmark. It’s not pressure that you have to win a Cup. It’s the pressure of getting into the playoffs. When teams miss the playoffs or are not in the hunt, it’s on the coach.”
The problem is that making the playoffs has never been more difficult than it is today, with only 52 per cent of the teams getting in. Compare that to the first 32 years of the NHL, when teams had a 67 per cent chance of making the playoffs.
Up until 1967, four out of six teams qualified for the playoffs. Only four missed out when the league doubled in size to 12 teams, while 12 out of the 18 teams made the playoffs when the league expanded again in 1974.
Things got easier in 1980, when the 21-team league finally went to a 16-team playoff format. That increased the odds of qualifying to 76 per cent. Even with increased expansion, teams still had a 60 per cent chance of making the playoffs as far back as 1998.
Two years from now, when Seattle becomes the 32nd franchise, only half of the teams will qualify.
“It’s had a huge effect on job security,” said Fletcher. “We’ve already seen seven coaching changes this year. I hope that’s not going to be an indication of what the future holds.”
As Tocchet prepares for his first all-star game as a head coach, he’s already looking ahead to the future.
Not the playoffs and the way in which Arizona needs to start playing in order to win a Cup, but rather, the final stretch of games that the Coyotes need to win in order to just remain in the playoff hunt.
“I honestly think, I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of separation,” said Tocchet. “This is where the pressure hits and the hard work gets harder. If you look at every team in the race, every team is good. The teams that can stand losing streaks are the ones who are going to make it. I think as a coach or as a player, you have to approach it as it’s going to come down to the wire.”
For the coaches who don’t make it, that wire is going to feel more like an axe.