LeBrun: As usual, NHL coaches pay the price for teams’ high expectations, lack of roster flexibility
Jay Woodcroft was fired 13 games into the season, and now Dean Evason gets the axe 19 games in.
Each paid the price for his team wallowing in a panicked state after digging a hole in a season that carried higher expectations.
The lesson? Parity is great, except when you’re on the wrong side of it. And with meaningful trades so difficult to make in the first few months of the season, with most teams up against the cap, firing a coach is often the move for a team trying to salvage its season.
Always the coach.
“It’s expectations for teams, that’s what it is,” Gerard Gallant told The Athletic when asked about the thin line for NHL coaches these days. “There’s 32 teams. Probably about 26 or 27 of them believe they have a playoff team. And that’s not going to happen. There’s very few teams that go into the season that think they’re not going to make the playoffs.
“I mean, I’m sure hockey people can pick four, five teams that don’t have a good chance to make the playoffs, but besides that, everybody thinks they have a good opportunity if they get off to a good start.”
Until they don’t, as Gallant points out.
“I get so mad,” Bruce Boudreau, who was replaced by Evason as Minnesota ’s head coach in February 2020, told me after the news about Evason came out. “I mean, if you don’t have goaltending and defense, and you don’t have anything (trade-wise), the coach always gets fired. It pisses me off so much.
“What are you going to do, right? You can implement the best system in the world. The biggest thing is that you can get fired if you don’t handle the losing the right way with the players and then they quit listening. That can be something. But you’re going to lose games if you don’t get good goaltending, and the Wild didn’t get good goaltending. Any time I’ve been fired, it’s usually you’ve got really subpar goaltending. I don’t know. It’s a weird thing. But it is an out (firing the coach).”
Wild general manager Bill Guerin tried to do something before coming to this, reading his players the riot act two weeks ago. It didn’t work. And making a trade with the Wild’s cap situation is next to impossible right now.
Minnesota Wild fire coach Dean Evason, hire John Hynes, per sources #mnwild make the Hynes hiring officialFrom earlier, and me
Remember final hours of ’s $1 a month special so get in now
— Michael Russo November 28, 2023
So Evason paid the price. Just like Woodcroft did. In both cases, there’s absolutely no doubt the GMs would have loved to throw the coaches a lifeline with a big trade. But it’s almost impossible in the first few months of the season.
“They used to be able to give them one big trade to try and get it together and if it doesn’t work, after that, then the coach goes,” said Boudreau. “Now the coach goes and then they wait until March 1 to try and make trades with guys on the last year of their contracts. It’s an ass backwards type thing.”
And so, two good coaches have been sent packing, and it’s not even December yet.
“Solid guys, solid coaches,” Gallant said. “Woody had a good run for almost two years in Edmonton. Things went really well for him, and his winning percentage was real good. You get off to a horrendous start like they did, and they’ve got to do something.
“And same thing, Minny was a competitive team, a hard team to play against the last few years — physical and played aggressive. They get off to a tough, tough start. Expectations, and you can’t get behind too much early. It’s the way she goes. It’s part of our game and every coach knows that going in.”
Every coach knows it, and NHL coaches are paid more than in years past, too. But it sure feels like job safety is at an all-time low right now for NHL coaches.
“It’s become like the English Premier League in soccer. If you last longer than three or four years, you’re doing really well,” Hockey Hall of Fame coach Ken Hitchcock said after the Wild announced Evason’s firing. “That’s just what happens when it’s so darn competitive. There’s the feeling that the voice has to change, the system has to change, the method has to change. There’s got to be something fresh that happens. Because you’re trying so hard to turn it around, it gets to be like a headache that won’t go away.”
Hitchcock saw it all during his stellar coaching career. And that feeling when you’re losing control over a runaway train is a horrible one.
“One of the things that happens is that momentum downhill as a coach is really hard to stop, you know?” Hitchcock said. “Once the ball starts rolling down the hill, it’s hard to put the brakes on to it. You need something big happening to turn it around, whether it’s a big game by a star player or your goalie saves the day. You need someone to really step up and have an unbelievable game that turns the momentum the other way. If you don’t, then that ball just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. As a coach, you can almost feel it.
“Woody and Deano are really good coaches. But trying to stop the ball rolling down the hill is a real challenge.”
You can hear the angst in Hitchcock’s voice as he talks.
“I just know from experience, because I’ve been on both ends of it — can’t turn it around or did turn it around. The thing that turns it around is special performances. ... Whether it’s a goalie, one of your top players, somebody does something special and kind of turns the language around. I’ve seen it happen a lot.
“You look at Edmonton right now, those big guys are red hot and lighting it up. They’re turning it around, you know?”
Yup, but too little, too late for Woodcroft.
The key now, Hitchcock said, is for both those coaches to get in a good mental place as soon as possible. Because the phone will ring for them at some point.
“I know how sincere Woody is, and I know how sincere Deano is, but as a coach, you’ve got to take it and move on as quickly as you can, because the next job could be coming your way within a month,” Hitchcock said. “You never know.”
Getting fired comes with the territory, but that doesn’t mean it’s not crushing when it happens, especially for two coaches who entered the season with high hopes.
“I will say this: It’s the world all coaches know about,” Boudreau said. “We know it’s potentially going to happen. And we still want to dive in and do it anyway. Because we love to do it.
“And Dean will get another team, and he’ll do well because he’s good.”
Added Gallant: “It’s where it’s at. We’re paid well to go out and win. That’s what it is.”
(Top photo of Dean Evason: Claudio Bresciani / AFP via )
