What to watch for when a coach and team are heading for divorce
Just some notes on this as someone who's covered several coaching changes.
From a popular narrative standpoint, tonight’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins features two of the coaches most likely to lose their jobs.
Mike Sullivan missed the playoffs last season, and despite the two Stanley Cups on his résumé, this year’s version of the Penguins look like they are playing the wrong style and can’t trade chances like they would have in the past.
Derek Lalonde is the final year of a three-year contract, the Red Wings are struggling to generate much of anything offensively this season, and it’s certainly become en vogue — with American Thanksgiving looming — for teams to at least consider coaching changes to save the season before it gets out of hand (see the Edmonton Oilers in 2023).
Now this isn’t a piece about whether Lalonde or Sullivan will be fired, it’s also not a piece about whether Martin St. Louis or Jim Montgomery will keep their respective jobs with the Montreal Canadiens or the Boston Bruins.
This is a piece about reading the proper context when it comes to when and if a team might make a change.
I’ve primarily covered two franchises in my career as an NHL journalist, and in that time I’ve covered seven head coaches rather closely. I’ve seen the end for five of them, and might be watching the end for sixth this season in Detroit.
Now one of those firings has a major asterisk, Montgomery getting fired for unprofessional conduct in Dallas, but the rest tend to check at least one of these key boxes.
The GM and coach are no longer on the same page
This is honestly the biggest one. While coaches and general manager are never completely on the same page, they have to work together when it come to roster building and application.
Near the end of Jeff Blashill’s time in Detroit, he wasn’t great at hiding his feelings about the roster Steve Yzerman built, often going to a go-to line of “that’s a Steve question,” to deflect some blame.
GMs also give mandates to coaches, whether it’s explicitly spoken or not, certain contracts and certain players are going to play no matter what. When coaches have been given a puzzle piece they don’t like, or maybe lost a piece they like, this often turns into a flash point of discontent.
Someone had to be the fall guy
It’s cliché, but it’s true. You can’t trade away the entire roster, so sometimes axing the coach is the best and quickest move.
It’s also a move that a GM tends to make when they need to protect themselves, which is why I have a hard time seeing Sullivan fired soon in Pittsburgh. Yes, the Penguins are struggling, but right now it doesn’t feel like Kyle Dubas needs a fall guy to take the heat off him. Same goes for Luke Richardson in Chicago, it’s kind of hilarious when I see him on the list of coaches likely to be fired.
The coach has lost the room
This is a hard one to take a true temperature of, but I’ve seen up close. When the Stars tried the Ken Hitchcock 2.0 experiment, which only lasted one year, the demotion and handling of Jason Spezza didn’t go over well with much of anyone.
At one point it was made abundantly clear that either Hitchcock or Spezza would be back the following season, but not both.
Again, I’m not pointing this out in any specific room right now, but it’s important to note that this is a realistic impetus for a coaching change, especially for GMs that have a strong read on their players.
If you check those boxes, the next question becomes, who takes over and will it even change things?
The St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup with an interim coach, firing Mike Yeo mid season before Craig Berube took over.
For some teams, the interim answer is already in-house, for others — like the Edmonton Oilers last season — you have to go outside to find the right choice. And finding the right coach mid-season, depending on who it is, can be more difficult than it looks at times.
For teams in a rebuild, like a Montreal, an interim coach often doesn’t make much sense, and why you see those changes tend to happen in the offseason.
For teams that are contending, or believe they should be contending, an interim coach sometimes fits well because it’s a coach effectively trying to prove they should have the full-time gig.
All just something to watch for, especially tonight with a national TV game featuring two coaches who are going to routinely find their names on “hot seat” lists going forward.