Shanahan’s plan a big unknown
Erratic firing and hiring pattern shows Leafs leader is in no hurry
On the matter of his dispatching of Randy Carlyle as the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, general manager Dave Nonis said on Tuesday morning the move had been discussed internally “for a while.” The decision wasn’t taken lightly, Nonis said: “We’ve discussed it at length.”
Carlyle had coached 40 games this season before he was fired, which raises some questions about how long it took for Leafs management to decide the twoyear contract extension handed to him in the off-season maybe wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
Ten games? Twenty? Thirty, tops.
Nonis was being purposefully vague, but having discussed Carlyle’s dismissal “at length” suggests the light bulb didn’t go off on Saturday, when Toronto was waxed by the Winnipeg Jets, or even a week ago, when the team blew leads to Florida and Tampa Bay. Most likely the realization that Carlyle was not the right coach for this roster started to crystallize in mid-November, with blowout losses at home to Buffalo and Nashville, 19 games after the organization had bought itself two more years of Randy Carlyle.
All of which leads to this conclusion: Whatever timetable team president Brendan Shanahan is working off in his quest to turn the Leafs into a contender, it is a strange one known only to him. He’s not following How to Rebuild a Franchise in 365 Days or similar titles. He’s forging an odd new path, and in so doing, leading with his battle-scarred chin. When Shanahan arrived in Toronto in April, it seemed as good an idea as any for a franchise that had made the playoffs only once since the 200405 lockout, and even then in a shortened season that ended before the Leafs’ bad habits could catch up to them. Smart guy, hall of famer who would command respect, former NHL executive who was connected with people in the league offices, and strong narrator of unintentionally funny player-suspension videos.
He was inexperienced in team management, but a president could put the right people in place to handle that stuff. This, generally, follows a certain pattern in sports: The newcomer cleans out the existing management, or cleans out the bottom rungs but leaves trusted people at the top. Shanahan did neither, maintaining, reasonably, that he needed time to get a feel for things. Then, the weird stuff. Carlyle received the two-year contract extension, though it was plainly obvious the team he coached was consistently bad since this time last year. They were routinely outshot and outchanced, a trend that dated from Carlyle’s arrival behind the bench in late 2012, which meant either that the coach didn’t know how to solve the problems, or he understood the required tactical adjustments but couldn’t get his players to make them on a nightly basis. But he would get two more years to keep trying, except with different assistant coaches, who were fired and replaced for him.
Nonis was also retained, although he was a holdover from the days of Brian Burke, who was fired in January 2013. But Nonis’ assistant GMs, Dave Poulin and Claude Loiselle, were cashiered and replaced in the following weeks by Kyle Dubas, a young executive in the OHL, and Mark Hunter, one of the architects of the powerhouse London Knights in the same league.
The well-worn path to a franchise rebuild sees the change happen from the top down: new boss comes in, hires new personnel manager, who hires a coach, probably with the boss’ input. This keeps the accountability tidy: you are responsible for the people you hire, and the same is expected of them.
With the Leafs, Shanahan appears to have instead embarked on a random firing pattern. His blast dispersal first claimed the assistant coaches, but not the coach, and the assistant GMs, but not the general manager, and then foisted new assistants on each of them. Now the only person left standing is Nonis, who might be the most responsible of any of them for the franchise’s current state of disrepair, a franchise which for three years now has thought it a good idea to have an undrafted free agent as its top-line centre.
All of which means Shanahan’s next moves won’t follow the usual pattern either, unless his next move is to wait, and we’ll get to that in a minute. If he lets Nonis hire a new coach, then firing the GM later would immediately raise questions about that coach’s job security. General managers like to hire their own coach. And if Shanahan picks the next coach, that person would immediately have more job security than the GM, his boss. Curious, that.
There’s an explanation for all of Shanahan’s manoeuvring that does make some sense: he’s in no hurry at all. In that scenario, the Carlyle extension was simply a measure to buy some time and not send the coach into the season with questions about his expiring contract being raised after every loss. The new assistant coaches, the new assistant managers, all of them could be brought in as pieces of a new team, but none would bear much public scrutiny. Ultimately, Shanahan, from the day he arrived in Toronto, had two changes to make that, when he made them, he would own: the coach and the general manager. The first one is underway. The second one remains on hold.
Nonis did his best on Tuesday to make a case for the roster he has assembled. “It’s not that they aren’t capable, because they are,” he said of his team, which for all of its flaws could still salvage a playoff spot if assistant coaches Peter Horachek and Steve Spott can get more out of the players than Carlyle could.
“It’s not that they haven’t done it, because they have,” Nonis said, pointing to recent good nights that have been greatly outnumbered by the bad ones.
“I’m never worried about my own job security,” Nonis said, when asked if he was.
That’s probably the right attitude. Worry about only those things you can control.