Same-Day Analysis: Musing on changes in Vancouver and Philadelphia
NHL Firing Season is in full swing and the Flyers and Canucks are using it to make big moves behind the bench and in the front office
Including overtime and shootout defeats, the Philadelphia Flyers won one more game (74) than they lost (73) in Alain Vigneault’s three incomplete seasons with the team. That’s not good enough, not in that market and not with that roster. By the time Vigneault was fired Monday morning, the Flyers were a discombobulated mess. They couldn’t score, they couldn’t defend, their power play was atrocious, their young players had either stalled or regressed in their development and their defense and goaltending had dropped off precipitously.
So there you have a laundry list of reasons why one of the winningest and most respected coaches in the league was fired. Particularly last season and through the first quarter of this one, Vigneault could not get the Flyers to play to their capabilities. It looks as though Mike Yeo will have the rest of this season to reverse that trend and if he can’t do it, GM Chuck Fletcher will go through the NHL Coaches Recycling Bin™ and replace him with someone like John Tortorella or Rick Tocchet.
It’s difficult to criticize Fletcher’s decision given the circumstances, even though Vigneault could not get out on the ice and score goals or defend them. After an encouraging start to the season, the Flyers are mired in an eight-game losing streak, capped by a 7-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in which goalies Carter Hart and Martin Jones combined for a .741 save percentage. The Flyers actually outshot the Lightning by 12 shots and still lost by an unconverted touchdown. “I’ve played in a lot of embarrassing games,” captain Claude Giroux said after the game, “and this is one of them.” (Not sure how that would have helped the Flyers in any way, but I’ve read that quote about 20 times and it still makes me laugh.)
If you really need a reason for why the Flyers have not been winning games of late, consider that Sean Couturier, Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, James van Riemsdyk, Cam Atkinson and Scott Laughton are on a skid that has seen them score just seven goals in a combined 85 games. “Right now, we’ve lost our way,” Fletcher told reporters. “We have to get guys playing better, playing a little bit differently and right now I think a new voice is needed.”
Hard to argue with that sentiment. So now Vigneault goes back into the NHL Coaches Recycling Bin™, where you’d have to think the Montreal Canadiens will give him a serious look.
OWNERS MAKING HOCKEY MOVES = BAD IDEA
Over in Vancouver, news broke Sunday night that the Canucks had fired both GM Jim Benning and coach Travis Green. Again, the NHL is a results-oriented business and win-loss records absolutely do not lie, so the change was not a shock. When a fan tosses a sweater onto the ice – and remember, it’s a sweater, not a jersey – you’re in the midst of a full-on revolt.
So owner Francesco Aquilini and his circle of advisors made the bold move of firing both the GM and the coach. But instead of installing interims in both posts, they made Stan Smyl the interim GM and Bruce Boudreau the coach, at least for the rest of this season and next. All of which tells you that ownership is too involved in hockey decisions, to the detriment of the organization.
In three-plus decades of covering this game, I have learned that the difference between the elite organizations and the ones that struggle in this league is ownership. It always starts at the top and a team’s performance is relatively impervious to both market size and financial resources. Teams with solid ownership that hire people to do their jobs and allow those people to do them thrive. And those with well-intentioned owners who can’t seem to get out of their own way struggle. It is, and was ever, thus.
With that in mind, consider that Aquilini hired a coach before he signed a GM. It’s a backward way of doing things and gives you every indication it’s Aquilini who is in charge of hockey decisions at the moment. It’s a move that reeks of panic. And while Boudreau is a good hire behind the bench and may very well pull the Canucks out of their funk in the short-term, the way it was done screams for the Canucks to hire a president of hockey operations who can be at the controls and give the coaches and management a much-needed layer between them and ownership. Until that happens, the Canucks can keep changing GMs and coaches all they want, but they’ll continue to spin their wheels.