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Open Season: Why NHL Coaches are fired so often

Some time this past week, the Columbus Blue Jackets made the decision to fire Ken Hitchcock as their head coach. On the surface, this move seems logical; the Blue Jackets, a playoff team last year, are currently sitting in the second-last slot in the Western Conference.

What’s interesting, though, is that Columbus’ playoff berth last season was the very first in franchise history. Hitchcock is also an assistant coach for Canada’s Olympic hockey team. He is a former Jack Adams Trophy (coach of the year) finalist. He’s also known around the league as a good coach.

Not only that, but he was in only his fourth year as head coach. Each season, his teams had more points than the previous one. He went from 73 to 80 to 92. Granted, Columbus is struggling this year, but his overall body of work is

impressive.

I’d love to say that this firing is odd. Out of place. Shocking.

Sadly, I can say none of those. Teams fire coaches in Hitchcock’s position all the time.

Earlier this year, Andy Murray was fired as the head coach of the St. Louis Blues, a season after leading them to an improbable playoff berth and earning a Jack Adams Trophy nomination. Last season, Michel Therrien was fired as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the very season after he led his team to the Stanley Cup Finals.

In total, six coaches were fired in the middle of the 2008-09 season. Two of them were in their first season as head coach. Three of them made the playoffs the previous year… and made it that season as well.

The other one, Denis Savard, was fired after four games.

Lest you think this is a recent phenomenon, it isn’t. Bill Barber was fired in 2002 after winning the Jack Adams Trophy in 2001. In 2005, Dave Lewis was let go by the Detroit Red Wings after… two consecutive division championships. He then was fired after one year by the Boston Bruins. In 1970, Al MacNeil was demoted after winning the Stanley Cup for the Montreal Canadiens…in his first season. In 1973, Bep Guidolin was fired as the coach of the Bruins after losing in the Stanley Cup finals in his first full season.

In other leagues, there is nowhere near this level of impatience. One NFL head coach was fired midseason this year: Dick Jauron. He was in the middle of his fourth consecutive losing season. Two MLB managers were fired midseason: Clint Hurdle (in the middle of his second consecutive losing year and 7^th of 8) and Bob Melvin (in the middle of his second consecutive non-playoff season and 4^th of 5). The NBA may fire a lot of coaches, but they’re often teams in the midst of long (multiple year-long) losing droughts.

That brings up a simple question: why?

Why are NHL head coaches on such short leashes? Why are NHL owners and general managers so impatient? Why is the margin of error so thin? Why is loyalty never an option?

There’s nothing concrete that explains this win-at-all-costs mentality. I do have a few theories, though.

A) A playoff berth isn’t really worth that much.

This is very depressing for me to type. Look, I love the NHL playoffs. I think the sixteen team tournament is better than March Madness, because of the seven game series. Intensity is up, players are pumped, and everyone has a beard. If the NHL only maximized its playoff coverage in the U.S. (read: ESPN), there would be a surge in popularity. Up here, people simply can’t tear their eyes away from the TV.

The fact that playoff hockey is so awesome, though, doesn’t necessarily make earning a spot in the tournament a magnificent feat. The fact is that over half the teams in the league make the playoffs. Sixteen out of thirty may make it exciting, but it just makes playoff seasons less lustrous… and non-playoff years that much worse.

As a result, when teams make the playoffs, a coach can only be truly successful if they make an impact in the playoffs. Making the playoffs only to lose in the first round really doesn’t say that your team has arrived, or that you’re doing a particularly great coaching job. You may be in the top half of the league, but you aren’t on top of the league. You

aren’t showing yourself as a consistent winner.

And when you bomb out of the playoffs the next year, it looks that much worse. Because if you can’t make the playoffs on a 50-50 proposition, your season can never be termed a success.

This is similar in the NBA, which not coincidentally is the other league that fires a lot of coaches mid-season. However, I’ve still got the NBA below the NHL in terms of impetuousness. The NBA may fire a lot of coaches, but they do it with cause. In the NHL, they axe someone at the first sign of weakness.

Which leads me to this…

B) In the NHL, it’s all about the message.

What I mean is this. Consider an NFL coach. He may design the offence and the defence. He calls plays. He designs schemes around attacking the opposition’s weakness. On each individual play, he is sitting in front of a hypothetical chessboard, deciding which move to make.

With baseball, the manager decides where to put everyone. You don’t strategize on the field as much, but you do make sure that everyone is placed in a position to succeed. It’s almost like playing RISK… you decide where to allocate everything. Granted, the rest isn’t up to you, but you place the basis for your success based on tactical decisions.

With basketball, the coach designs plays for both offence and defence. He decides when to put on full-court pressure, in-bound plays, and the like. He’s not the ultimate puppet-master like an NFL coach is, but he can play a big role in how to exploit a team’s weaknesses.

With hockey? It’s vastly different.

Hockey, at its heart, is a game of willpower. That’s not to say teams don’t strategize; they do. The Detroit Red Wings are so successful because of their dominant puck-possession system, where they move the puck away from their opponents, dramatically increasing their odds of success. It’s just that, within the framework of the sport, it’s difficult to make your strategic imprint on each game.

Play begins with a face-off, which is won based on the will of the centre to win it. Coaches may decide who goes on the ice, but he can’t design a play for them out of a face-off. After all, if the face-off is lost, then all that planning time is worthless.

After that, action goes back-and-forth until a whistle, and then there’s another one of those unpredictable face-offs. During the action, it’s impossible for a coach to analyze the situation at hand and call out a play. All he can do is sit back, watch the action, and give people on the bench words of advice.

Compounding this is the fact that NHL teams only get one timeout per game to strategize. In the NBA, they get six. In the NFL, they get three per half, in addition to a break after each play to call out a play. In the MLB, you can strategize at the end of each inning or in the middle… so, basically, you have infinite decision time.

For hockey, games are won and lost based on two things: talent and willpower. Talent can’t be controlled by the coach at all, which is why general managers are under so much fire. Willpower, however, is squarely in the coach’s hands.

I’ve played hockey for several years, and I can quite clearly tell the difference from a team with a good coach and a bad one. I had one year when I played with a really awful coach. He was a decent strategian, and knew what it took personnel-wise to win on the ice, but nothing he could say would motivate us. His lack of a message wore thin the first week out, and the rest of a way we played without requisite hustle. This was exacerbated by a lack of vocal leaders on the team, and when I tried to motivate the team they were so set in inertia that nothing would work. We made a swift exit from the season.

Years later, however, I had a really great coach. A fire-and-brimstone type. He wouldn’t hesitate to let us know what we were doing wrong and gave us all the tools to succeed. He scheduled lots of outside tournaments to improve team bonding. At the end of the year, we really wanted to succeed for each other. We probably would have won the championship had we gotten consistent, competent goaltending.

With hockey, it’s sometime hard to tell whether a coach is a great strategizer or not. You can, however, tell immediately when a coach’s message has run dry. Once that happens, it’s time to go.

This ties in with the next reason…

C) There are tons of good coaches out there.

One reason why teams are so quick with their trigger fingers is because lots of people have the tools to control a dressing room and give them the tools to succeed. I’d estimate that 50% of all former NHLers would make a decent to good head coach. They’ve been in a position where they know what it takes to succeed.

As well, many minor league, junior, and college coaches understand. They’ve spent just as many years motivating people. They, too, know what it takes.

Throw in all the assistant coaches out there, and it’s easy to see that finding a successful NHL coaching type is not a problem.

Want proof? Look at Dan Bylsma. Bylsma took over the Pittsburgh Penguins last season after Michel Therrien was fired. He was previously the coach of their minor-league affiliate, for only half of a season. Prior to that, he played in the NHL for nine seasons, with one trip to the Cup finals. He takes over a Pittsburgh team that while talented was struggling mightily and out of the playoffs at the time.

What did he do?

Win the Stanley Cup.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that coaching an NHL team is something anyone can do. What I am saying is that becoming a head man in the NHL is not a difficult thing to do for someone already in the profession. Odds are good that an owner can find someone who knows what he is doing.

In addition, if you’re firing a coach mid-season, there are lots of unemployed former head coaches who would be happy to step into any vacancy and work their magic. NFL teams can’t exactly hire Bill Cowher mid-season, but the NHL teams can—and do—hire John Tortorella.

Take Peter Laviolette, for instance. The former NHL defenceman became a successful coach for the New York Islanders, taking them to the playoffs for two years after seven years prior without a berth, then was fired after the season. The next season, he replaced Paul Maurice mid-season as the coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, and coached the team to a Stanley Cup in his second year. Last season, he was fired mid-season, and replaced by… Maurice. This season, he replaced John Stevens mid-season as coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.

I’ll let you catch your breath.

All these reasons, in my opinion, pale in comparison to the final one:

D) An NHL team must be successful if it is to be noticed at all in the surrounding community.

This one hurts the most to admit, but here goes: the NHL is clearly is the weakest of the four major professional sports. In almost every non-Canadian media market, the hockey team is the one that falls behind all the others in terms of viewership, money, and civic pride. The only exceptions I can think of are Detroit (the Red Wings have a serious claim to the top, but they’re at least above the Lions), Minneapolis (the Wild are above the Timberwolves), and Pittsburgh (the Penguins are above the Pirates).

Take Chicago, for instance. Chicago is one of those top hockey cities, where people love the team and vice-versa. Chicago sells out its games and gets good ratings on TV. But, when looking at the hierarchy of Chicago sports teams, the Blackhawks are not near the top. They’re behind the Bears. They’re definitely behind the Cubs and the White Sox. And, thanks to Derrick Rose, they’re behind the Bulls.

Another way to put it: when I meet someone and they mention they’re from Los Angeles, I don’t ask them about the Kings. I ask them about USC football and Lakers basketball. If I meet someone from Boston, the first thing I ask is not, “What did you think about the Kessel deal?” It’s “What’s wrong with the Patriots?”

The thing about the three cities I’ve mentioned is that, with the exception of Minneapolis, their hockey teams are really really good. Detroit and Pittsburgh met in the past two Stanley Cup finals (Minneapolis, meanwhile, is Canada South). Also, the Lions and the Pirates are both really, really bad; several people I know from Detroit are Steelers fans. But, in Detroit and Pittsburgh, the Red Wings and Penguins only became popular when they started winning. Before that, they couldn’t sell free tickets.

The only way an NHL team is going to get noticed in their community is by winning and exposing people to their product. If a team isn’t winning big, then they simply don’t make enough of an impact. Look at the Boston Bruins: they may be in a town that loves hockey, but thanks to almost 40 years without a Cup they aren’t really imprinted on the civil consciousness. Even Bill Simmons, the self-described quintessential Boston sports fan, gave up on the Bruins for a decade.

Because of this, NHL owners are particularly jumpy when confronted with a flagging team. They can’t afford to let a team stick with a coach whose message has been lost and sink further down into the depths of the city’s soul. They see that a change needs to be made quickly if they have any hope of getting to the elusive top.

Let’s go back to the case of Ken Hitchcock for a moment. His Columbus Blue Jackets last season may have made the playoffs last season for the first time, but they were the #7 seed, and got swept in the first round by the Detroit Red Wings. They clearly were not ready for the top. Their berth didn’t mean they were selling games out, though. Their meagre berth did not bring them anywhere near Ohio State football.

This season, they started out poorly. Immediately, Columbus was notable for their lack of effort. Hitchcock preaches a system of defensive might, and his charges stopped buying it. He lost the ability to relate to the youth on his team. The team slipped and slid down to the hellish depths of the Western Conference. It was clear that Hitchcock’s message was wearing thin, and that Columbus as it was would never be a contender.

He didn’t have a chance.

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