The Detroit Red Wings and Dallas Stars were meeting in the Western Conference finals, and some of the discussion on the off days — or even in the arena hallways on game mornings — was about the surprising Colorado coaching vacancy that followed a period of uncertainty in the wake of the Avalanche’s postseason exit.
I’m not talking about the current series. It was 1998, or the last time the Wings faced the Stars with a Stanley Cup Finals berth on the line.
Ten years ago, the Colorado coach ousted was Marc Crawford, and the announcement followed a period of limbo for the coach — or, more accurately, of what Avalanche general manager Pierre Lacroix termed allowing “the dust to settle.”
At that Detroit-Dallas series back then, Detroit assistants Dave Lewis and Barry Smith said they would be interested in talking about the position if it truly were open, but acknowledged that they — like everyone else — assumed it would go to Hershey Bears coach Bob Hartley.
They were right.
The major difference this time is that because Joel Quenneville’s contract was up and he knew there would be other opportunities out there for him, including possibly at Toronto, there’s little chance this could deteriorate into the kind of acrimonious dispute that Crawford and the Avs eventually went through.
Because Crawford didn’t insist on being fired, though he wasn’t wanted back, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman eventually agreed that the Avs could get out of paying him for the final year of his contract and still could block him going to another team if they felt like doing so.
This truly is a “mutual” parting, at least so far with no public acrimony.
As the days passed following the Avalanche exit and Giguere and the Colorado front office didn’t take the many opportunities presented to say that a new contract for Quenneville was inevitable, it became obvious that somewhere along the line this relationship turned uneasy.
The confirmation came last week when Quenneville met with Giguere.
“It’s a tough business and you know as coaches that your shelf life is not forever,” Quenneville said Friday. “The reality of it, whether it’s the evaluation process or the decision-making process going forward . . . hey, you just get hardened, you don’t let yourself be surprised by anything. . . .
“Everybody has their viewpoint on how to go forward and what you like and what you do. Everybody’s their own way, and you don’t want to change that aspect of what makes you be you.”
Quenneville’s notorious and deserved reputation for having little patience with the foibles of goaltenders was an issue, especially if folks upstairs — whether Giguere, team president Lacroix or other hockey executives — wondered whether Jose Theodore could have rebounded sooner. It also didn’t help when he kept making Jordan Leopold a healthy scratch, especially embarrassing given that Colorado acquired him in the deal that banished Alex Tanguay.
Was Giguere or front-office intervention in coaching decisions an issue? “Not an issue,” Quenneville said. “We like talking about hockey and we welcome everybody’s input in all aspects of talking about hockey. As a staff, as coaches, we definitely had all the autonomy to make all the decisions we needed to make. It’s nice having hockey people around and you don’t mind talking about what they think.”
Bottom line: This roster, on balance, wasn’t capable of more than this in the first three seasons of the transition to the NHL salary cap era. Anything beyond that is nit-picking.
What’s next for Quenneville? On Friday, I asked him if he wanted the Toronto job. “Do I want the Toronto job? You’re firing right away.” He laughed. “Let’s put it this way,” he said, “I would like to coach in the league again. Right now, it’s very fresh, the situation. I’ve been fortunate enough to play there and coach in the organization to start there. There’s a lot of synergy there in my experience with Toronto, and it’s all positive. I don’t want to say no and I don’t want to say yes, because right now I’m not even thinking that far out. I want to coach in the league. I’ll leave it at that.”
And what next for the Avalanche? After citing style-of-play issues in Quenneville’s departure, if Giguere hires Pat Burns, at least in the past one of the leading proponents of the neutral-zone trap, he will have to scramble to rationalize the move. Patrick Roy would create an initial buzz and perhaps help shore up the season-ticket count, and he has shown in his work at the major junior level that he can coach, although the Quebec-Chicoutimi brawl has diminished his reputation.
If the Avs indeed are in search of a coach with winning NHL experience who espouses an up-tempo, attacking and more wide-open style, Tampa Bay’s John Tortorella could be a possibility. The Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2004 and has slipped since, primarily because of shaky personnel decisions, bad goaltending and — at least until the trade of Brad Richards in February — allocating an inordinate amount of cap room for Richards, Vinny Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis. The Lightning was awful this season and while Tortorella has a year remaining on his contract, the team’s ownership change is pending and Tortorella recently made — and withdrew — an offer to accept a firing or otherwise step aside.
