General managers change coaches in order to give their teams a spark. So far this season, changing coaches has been a sure-fire way to get at least one immediate victory.
With Darryl Sutter winning his debut Sunday night behind the Calgary Flames’ bench, teams are 6-0 in their first games with new coaches. Calgary also won its first game after Greg Gilbert was fired and Al McNeil took over on an interim basis.
Sutter’s former team, the San Jose Sharks, won for both Cap Raeder and Ron Wilson. Atlanta won when GM Don Waddell took the reins from Curt Fraser, and Colorado won in Tony Granato’s debut.
Teams in every sport seem to get a two- or three-week surge after a coaching change, then revert to the form that got the previous coach fired.
“That’s the easiest way to impress a new coach,” Calgary’s Chris Clark said of the Flames’ win over Anaheim. “Get a win and then everybody looks great.”
Firsthand look: Whenever a situation gets bad–or not as good as people think it should be–inevitably the coach takes the fall. The players who underachieved stay and the general manager who put the underachieving team together seldom goes.
Give Atlanta boss Waddell a little credit, then, for putting himself behind the bench in place of Fraser while he looks for another coach.
Waddell can see firsthand the kind of team he gave Fraser and what he’ll present to his next coach.
“We all have to be held accountable,” Waddell said on the day he fired Fraser, the only coach in the Thrashers’ three-year history. “I’ll tell the players when we meet that they got a good guy fired.”
With Waddell behind the bench, the Thrashers are 2-1.
Happy holidays? Through the first three months of the season, four coaches have been fired. And the Rangers’ Bryan Trottier could be next, even though he’s in his first season.
Despite throwing tons of money at players–again–in the off-season, New York is 12th in the Eastern Conference and showing no signs of improving.
Rangers GM Glen Sather was considered a genius while putting together five Stanley Cup championship teams in Edmonton from 1984-90 on a shoestring budget. Now he has unlimited finances and his first two Rangers teams missed the playoffs.
Dollars and sense: Going into Tuesday night’s games, Ottawa and Vancouver led the NHL with 22 victories. And they’re winning in a fiscally responsible manner.
The Senators began the season with a $30.3 million payroll, 25th in the league. Vancouver’s was $31.8 million, 21st in the league.
What might have been: Blackhawks coach Brian Sutter talked about a conversation he had with his brother Darryl last week. It was before Darryl was officially hired as the new Calgary coach, a job that Brian had for three seasons.
Darryl coached the Hawks for three seasons, compiling a 110-80-26 record, before talking a leave of absence to care for a son with Down’s syndrome.
According to Brian, Darryl told him last week that he shouldn’t have left Chicago and that Brian shouldn’t have left Calgary.
While Darryl left on his own, Brian didn’t. He was fired.
The Hawks made the playoffs in each of Darryl’s three seasons as coach. Since he left, at the end of the 1995 season in which the Hawks reached the Western Conference finals, the Hawks have made the playoffs just three times in seven years.
Calgary didn’t make the playoffs in any of the three seasons that Brian coached the Flames, but they improved their point total each season, something Darryl accomplished in San Jose for five straight seasons.
Sorry to see 2002 end: The Canucks closed out a stellar calendar year Tuesday night.
Since January, they have the best record in the league and one of the best calendar years ever with a winning percentage of .695 (48-18-8-3) going into Tuesday’s home game against Toronto.
The St. Louis Blues have the best record for a “year” when they compiled a .759 winning percentage in 2000. Detroit has the most points in a single year, when the Wings amassed 126 in 84 games played in 1995. The Wings have three of the best 10 yearly records since 1990.
Future stars: The U.S. national junior team defeated Slovakia on Tuesday to finish second in its group and advance to the quarterfinals of the World Junior Tournament in Nova Scotia. The U.S. won its last three games after dropping its opener to Russia, the group winner.
The U.S. will face either the Czech Republic or Sweden in Thursday’s quarterfinal.
Long time coming: Bill Houlder was more surprised than anyone when he scored the Nashville Predators’ go-ahead goal Monday night. It was the veteran defenseman’s first goal in 145 games.
