With a late-season slump fueling fears of yet another playoff disaster, the New Jersey Devils on Thursday fired coach Robbie Ftorek, who led the team to the best record in the Eastern Conference with eight games left in the season.
Larry Robinson, the assistant seen as the heir apparent since rejoining the coaching staff this season, was given the job of turning things around before the playoffs start in just under three weeks.
The Devils were favored to win the Stanley Cup for a second time since 1995 until a recent slide that saw them lose 10 of 16 games, the most recent an embarrassing 5-0 setback at home on Tuesday night.
The Devils return to action Friday night.
“We were not playing to our capabilities, in my mind,” Devils General Manager Lou Lamoriello said. “I did not see this changing,” he added, referring to a lack of “ice discipline.”
New Jersey has had one of the top regular-season records in the NHL the past three years, but the Devils have been embarrassed in the playoffs, losing in the first round the last two years.
Ftorek took over the team after Jacques Lemaire resigned in May 1998.
Lindros lashes back: For the first time since it was revealed that Eric Lindros has a more serious concussion than originally believed, the Philadelphia Flyers captain questioned the competence of the team’s medical staff.
“I knew that things were not good, and I tried to convey that through my symptoms. But I was not going to pull myself out of the game,” Lindros said. “I wanted the team to pull me out. I was hoping as the week went on that they would do that.”
Neilson released: Flyers coach Roger Neilson went home from the Philadelphia hospital where he was being treated for cancer.
The 65-year-old Neilson, who underwent a stem cell transplant March 10, will be examined again Monday.
Dryden sees visors: Toronto Maple Leafs President Ken Dryden said he expects visors to become mandatory equipment in the NHL within the next 10 years.
One of Dryden’s players, defenseman Bryan Berard, might lose sight in an eye that was injured earlier this month. He was not wearing a visor. Dryden said the introduction of visors is inevitable.
