New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Jack Adams Award
(Coach of the year)
Most deserving:
Alain Vigneault, Philadelphia Flyers
The Jack Adams Award is bestowed by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association to “the NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.” It can be hard to evaluate how much a team’s performance is due to the players or the coach, but I think we can all agree expectations are important. After all, if you coach a team that is expected to make a run at the Presidents’ Trophy you shouldn’t get extra credit for winning the Presidents’ Trophy.
To determine expectations, we will look at the preseason point percentage set by the oddsmakers and compare that to a team’s actual point percentage earned during the regular season. If a team exceeds those expectations then their coach deserves some praise. This method isn’t a fail-safe way to establish expectations but it is a decent enough proxy. We will also use the odds for each team to make the playoffs. For example, the Columbus Blue Jackets had an implied playoff probability of 70% in the preseason but an actual playoff probability of 34% per Hockey Reference at the time of the season’s end (not including the change to a 24-team format), hardly living up to expectations in this case.
Alain Vigneault, on the other hand, guided his Philadelphia Flyers to 89 points (41-21-7) and a second-place finish in the Metropolitan division, earning the club a bye week through the play-in round. They were expected to earn 90 or 91 points over a full season, which equates to 76 points over their 69-game shortened season.