In the NHL, if a franchise doesn’t make the postseason, if the ownership has to go without the extra income of at least a few more home dates and if the team’s fans have to watch playoff hockey from the “outside” (if they can even find it on their cable system or dish), the housecleaning usually begins.
And that’s what happened last week in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Toronto.
A look at the decisions:
Pittsburgh: The firing of longtime Penguins general manager Craig Patrick defied common sense. Team president Ken Sawyer made the announcement, and Mario Lemieux – still the major owner of the troubled franchise – went along with not renewing Patrick’s contract, ending a tenure that had lasted since 1989.
Though the back-channel whispers after the fact were that Patrick had made some bad decisions in the past few years, including the revolutionary hiring of Czechoslovakia-born Ivan Hlinka and the untested Ed Olczyk as head coaches, that doesn’t sufficiently take into account the handicaps he faced. By the way, Toe Blake couldn’t have gotten much more out of the Pens than Olczyk did.
Patrick, from one of the United States’ pioneering hockey families, was a University of Denver All-America player, assistant coach of the 1980 Olympic team, then the Pioneers’ athletic director before helping put together Stanley Cup champions in Pittsburgh.
He also was a good soldier in Pittsburgh, going along with – and even doing the dirty work himself – paring the Penguins’ payroll as the franchise struggled to survive two bankruptcies while continuing to play in Mellon Arena, the oldest and worst building in the NHL. Somewhere, Andrew Mellon is screaming from the grave: “Take my name off that dump!”
As bad as the Penguins were this season, it could have been worse, considering the handicaps Patrick faced.
The funny part is, they have a bright on-ice future with young stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury. Malkin is expected to come over from Russia for next season, and he likely will win the Calder Trophy in 2006-07, something not even Crosby could do. But someone else – and perhaps another city, whether Hartford, Portland, Kansas City or Houston – will reap the benefits of that foundation.
As a symbolic protest of Patrick’s firing, Penguins team personnel should be banned from scouting at DU games … or, even worse, attending postgame gatherings at the Campus Lounge.
Los Angeles: I’d have a little more sympathy for fired Kings general manager Dave Taylor if he hadn’t been so desperate down the stretch, firing coach Andy Murray and bringing in an out-of-work John Torchetti, whose NHL head-coaching experience was limited and certainly insufficient to stamp himself as a miracle worker.
It’s not that Murray hadn’t worn out his welcome, but he deserved a chance to finish out the season himself and see if he could get the Kings back in the playoff picture. Yes, a desultory 5-0 loss to the Avalanche made it seem that the Kings had quit on him, but bringing in an outsider – and an unproven one at that – at that point was a sign of panic. And it didn’t do any good, which is why the Kings, owned by Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz, aren’t playing any longer – and Taylor is out of work.
Taylor’s successor, Dean Lombardi, did a good job in seven years at San Jose before he was a victim of the raised expectations he helped create and was fired late in a disappointing 2002-03 season. He apparently will have more authority – and perhaps less interference – than Taylor did. Anschutz sporting empire right-hand man Tim Leiweke has stepped out of the role as the franchise’s chief executive officer while continuing to represent the team as its “governor” at league meetings.
Toronto: In 1977, Colorado Rockies general manager Ray Miron once tried to hire his friend, Pat Quinn, and give the young Quinn his first NHL head-coaching job. But Miron ended up hiring Pat Kelly instead. A year later, Quinn was hired as the Flyers’ head coach.
Quinn, 63, probably has come to the end of the road as a head coach following his firing at Toronto. He is a respected coach who has proved to be adaptive in many ways, but he clings to some archaic concepts often enough to make it seem as if the Leafs might be better off with new blood behind the bench. When he gave up his general manager’s duties in 2003 and became only the head coach, the clock was ticking. John Ferguson Jr., his successor as GM, denied there was friction between the two men, but it clearly wasn’t a warm working relationship, either.
“This change is as much about the future, and where we are going as an organization, as it is as much about what has transpired here,” Ferguson said Thursday at the news conference to announce Quinn’s firing.
Clearly, it didn’t go over well that the Leafs were among the two Canadian franchises to miss the postseason. In Toronto, the assumption is Ferguson will hire Paul Maurice, the former Whalers-Hurricanes coach now guiding the Leafs-owned American Hockey League franchise, the Toronto Marlies.
Some other NHL coaches and executives have survived the postseason purge. At least so far.
Atlanta: One of the Thrashers’ owners, Bruce Levenson, told The Atlanta Journal- Constitution general manager Don Waddell and coach Bob Hartley would not be casualties. “I can tell you unequivocally that those guys will be back next year,” Levenson told the paper.
Waddell’s “guarantee” that the Thrashers would make the playoffs didn’t come through. But there was much overreaction to that remark, anyway, since it came in a one-on-one conversation with a columnist who didn’t even think it was particularly bombastic and didn’t make a big deal of it.
Others did, though.
With Ilya Kovalchuk, the Thrashers are on the verge, and Waddell and Hartley will have at least one more chance to get them to the next step.
