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How come hockey coaches get fired so quickly?
By hoif | May 7, 2009
Oh Yea Its Af asked:
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Topics: Hockey | 7 Comments »
May 9th, 2009 at 12:27 am
It is easier to fire the coach than 20 players. You are right other sports tend to wait until the off season while hockey it usually happens during. I think one of the main reasons is that changing the coach seems to work in the short term anyway. The players seem to respond knowing that the next changes will involve them. Coaches sometimes lose the room and the players are waiting for the firing and do put more effort in after a coach has been fired.
Also, it gives the GM some breathing room. I think it becomes, try a new coach before someone decides to try a new general manager.
This makes more sense than New jersey firing the coach with 3 games left.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:31 am
He was on the hot seat at the end of last season, but the team’s GM decided to take a chance on the guy going into this season.
It quickly became apparent that the players had basically quit on the coach and that things would not be improving if left alone. The GM felt he had to make a decision before it got too late, in hopes of salvaging the season.
With 76 games left, the GM can now try to bring in a new coach that might inject some energy and enthusiasm back to the dressing room.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
because there team lose and bad camps with all there drills
May 16th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Well Football you only have 16 regular season games, wouldn’t have time to regroup the team. As to baseball I don’t know why anyone would want the job in the first place but they wait usually because maybe the team is going to turn around as it is SO long of a season. Hockey though the Coach is usually in trouble from the previous season. You see how the year starts. If the same problems are there you get someone else. Sometimes it is about getting different players to see if that will help. Sometimes it isn’t just about coaching styles. I remember Hlinka was fired from the Penguins and part of the reason was that he wasn’t putting enough effort into learning English as the team had asked. Anyway the new coach has time to try to fix the problem and the earlier in the season the faster he can put his system in and the team can see if it will work.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:03 am
In hockey there are many different types of systems, coverages, defensive, and offensive stratagies that a team can play. Over the years it has been my experience that any of the systems can be effective and produce winning (and championship teams). Example: 70′s Habs – Left Wing Lock, 80′s Oilers – Run and Gun, 90′s Devil’s – Trap, 04 Flames – dump and chase, 07 Senator’s – overload give and go.
The responsibility of the coach is to pick the best system for the talent avaliable, and get every player to buy into the system (execute), and motivate the team to work hard for the coach and the team. Rarely at the NHL level is there not enough talent to execute and win with the proper system. Remember the Flames under Darryl Sutter – a low talent bunch of over-achivers went to game 7 of the finals using the dump and chase system and litterally out-worked every team they faced (and a hot goaltender). Those players played for their coach.
If a coach implements the wrong systems or cannot motivate the players then he should be replaced and he is to blame for a lot of the trouble. That is why teams normally do not fire all the players, they fire the coach. Teams normally do it quickly at thr request of the players (captains) if they know the team will not play for that coach.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
It happens quickly in other sports but to get a better handle on this you need to have a similar frame of reference. For football changes mid stream are hard, the sched is short and a new coach likes to have input on who they have on the lineup and how thay plan to use them in their “schemes” on O or D. For baseball, a long schedule means teams can still turn things around and make the playoffs. Iv’e seen baseball teams go on 20 game winning streaks so they move slower there. For hockey and basketball after 8 games or 10% of the season it may be obvious the club has to shake things up before they get so far behind they can’t catch up. In hockey today with the new 3 point possbile per game format, it’s hard for teams to make up a ten point difference in the standings than it once was so teams are more apt to make changes if things go south in a hurry. For Hartley, he not only lost 6 games this year but also was swept from the playoffs 4 straight last year so that’s 10 straight losses. You can’t fire the players when it’s quite obvious they are really at fault so you dump the coach and hope that it sends the players a message.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
well they got swept in the playoffs pretty badly last season, they lost 1 of their PLAYOFF games 7-1 thats embarising