NHL’s hot seats are hotter than ever this season
ST. LOUIS – Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet took his seat behind a lectern and fiddled with a microphone on a makeshift stage in the auditorium attached to Enterprise Center during NHL All-Star weekend last month.
About the same time, Blues coach Craig Berube did the same, a few feet to Tocchet’s left.
A year ago, neither man seemed destined to be coaching in this season’s All-Star Game.
That Tocchet was there at all was telling, considering he was filling in for Gerard Gallant, who led the expansion Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final in 2017-18, only to become the seventh suddenly unemployed NHL coach this season.
In a span of eight weeks. Seven coaches were fired last season. None were given a pink slip during the 2017-18 season, the first time that had happened since 1966-67. In all, 26 coaches have been fired or have resigned during the season since 2014-15.
“It’s tough to see, to be honest with you,” said Berube, who led the Blues to the Stanley Cup championship last season after replacing Mike Yeo in November 2018. “I’ve been there. It’s not a fun thing. I don’t have the answer. Each team is probably different ... but this year has probably been worse than most, which is unfortunate.”
So bad, in fact, that new Predators coach John Hynes said there is enough “concern” about quick axes that coaches plan to meet this summer to try to figure out the issue. Why is it happening?
“I don’t know if it’s a concern,” Tocchet said. “It’s an eyeopener. More than ever your team and the players have to be a partnership with a coach. It’s not a dictatorship.
“The players have a say. That’s the nature of the beast . ... At the end of the day, it’s still the coach (who) has to run the ship; don’t get me wrong.”
Coaches just don’t have nearly as much time to right the ship when it starts going in the wrong direction.
History in the making?
Of the seven coaches who lost their jobs this season, five have been performance-related. Of those five, two have been rehired as head coaches since – Hynes less than a month after he was fired by the Devils on Dec. 3, and Peter DeBoer, who was let go by the Sharks on Dec. 11, only to be hired by the Golden Knights.
Peter Laviolette, who had led the Predators to the three best records in franchise history, was fired Jan. 6.
Bill Peters resigned from the Flames after allegations surfaced that he used racial slurs and abused players. Jim Montgomery was let go by the Stars and later said it was due to alcoholism. Mike Babcock was the highest-paid coach in the league when was fired by the under-performing Maple Leafs. But allegations soon surfaced that he was verbally abusive.
The precedent for coaching changes is there. Four times since 2008-09, NHL teams have fired coaches during the season – the Penguins (twice), the Blues and the Kings – and gone on to win Stanley Cups in the same season.
That had happened only three times before that.
“What goes on in the game is a testament to our competitive balance, which is extraordinary,” commissioner Gary Bettman said. “If teams think they need to make adjustments during the course of the season, they do it. That’s because we probably have the best competitive balance in all of sports.”
But does it work?
The formula of firing a coach during the season more often than not doesn’t result in a postseason appearance. Of the 19 inseason coaching changes from 2014-15 through last season, just
seven resulted in a team making the playoffs the same year.
“It’s becoming an easier and easier option,” said Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy, who was fired by the Capitals 28 games into the 2003-04 season and took over for fired Claude Julien in February 2017. “I’m not a GM, but I have to assume it’s tougher to make trades now than it ever was. You don’t see that many. You have salary-cap issues. You have no-trade contracts, so players have a little more control.
“So how do you want to inject some urgency into your team? It used to be you’d send guys down or make a big trade. Now it’s more maybe we’re going to replace the guy calling the shots.”