Notebook: For hard-liners like Hitchcock, the saturation point comes quickly
Funny thing about this age of so much information. Too much can make it hard to keep a job for very long.
At least as an NHL coach.
That's the reality of the league's post-lockout world, with the game's dynamics continuing to evolve and be geared toward the youth in it. The environment demands constant change, and for detail-heavy, old-guard coaches like Ken Hitchcock, it means a limited lifespan.
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| Ken Hitchcock led the Blue Jackets to their first postseason appearance. (Getty Images) |
Andy Murray learned that lesson when he was fired by the St. Louis Blues after New Year's. Hitchcock lasted a month longer before the Columbus Blue Jackets dumped him Wednesday, but the two were hired within a few weeks of each other late in 2006 and had similar paths to dismissal.
Both had taskmasters club membership cards along with winning track records -- Hitchcock's resume even included the 1999 Stanley Cup with Dallas. And they each pushed young teams to surprising playoff spots last season by getting players to buy into their strict systems. But success was fleeting if not illusory -- both Central Division teams were swept in the first round of their series and took big steps backward when this season began.
Murray's firing surprised no one and was accompanied by whispers about young players' growth being stifled by the coach and most tuning out a hard-driving micro manager. Those are the same kinds of sounds that have been coming out of Columbus for more than a month, and the inevitable occurred when the Blue Jackets went sleep-walking through a loss against Colorado this week.
"When you watched a lot of our games, we didn't have a lot of push-back and that was troubling," said Columbus GM Scott Howson. Understandably so, although Howson did go on to praise Hitchcock while he was burying him and hiring minor-league coach Claude Noel on an interim basis. But Howson conceded he started thinking about a coaching change about a month ago when the Jackets were in the midst of a nine-game losing streak.
Then again, there really wasn't much hope of salvaging a season that had long unraveled. Columbus was actually still in the playoff mix as late as Thanksgiving week, but has gone 10-21-6 since and is being saved from the Western Conference basement only by the awful Oilers. Howson said he gave Hitchcock as long as he could to turn things around.
"The team was not responding to the message," Howson said.
No kidding.
Strange thing is, the Jackets heard him last season and got to the playoffs. Of course goalie Steve Mason was on his way to being Rookie of the Year and now is headed for the biggest bust title. And the players handled the constant harping about defense by actually playing it. This season, not so much.
The Jackets are 29th in goals against, very uncharacteristic of a Hitchcock team. Then again, he wasn't helped by the lack of improvement by young players like Nikita Filatov, who pouted about the coach not recognizing his entitlement to an NHL job and then went home to Russia. And a few veterans to lead a room would probably have helped push the buy-in concept that Rick Nash, who may still be little young to be the captain, wouldn't or couldn't. Certainly some better talent might have been nice. "Obviously we didn't have the right pieces," Howson said. "We were poor defensively and thin at center."
But most of all, the players who were listening ...
"We were always well-prepared for the games," second-year player Derek Dorsett told the Columbus Dispatch. "But I think our team was thinking too much in the past few months."
Can't have a coach that makes you do that, now can you?
Icings
• The sale of the Tampa Bay Lightning to hedge fund manager Jeffrey Vinik is nearly complete, says the Hockey News. Vinik has a small stake in the Boston Red Sox and will pay at least $30 million less than the $200 million spent by Oren Koules and Len Barrie in 2008. The discount was negotiated so that Tampa Bay would not have to move the high-priced contract of captain Vincent Lecavalier.
• If you doubt the wisdom of going with younger coaches with no previous NHL experience, consider the examples Bruce Boudreau, Dan Bylsma and Joe Sacco. Then add Ottawa's Cory Clouston to the list. He took over a floundering Senators team a year ago and posted a 19-11-4 record that nearly got them to the playoffs. Clouston celebrated his one-year anniversary this week with the white-hot Senators' 10th consecutive victory. Overall, Clouston is 51-32-8 in the NHL.
• Detroit defenseman Andreas Lilja is closer to returning to the injury-riddled team's blue line. Lilja suffered a concussion 11 months ago but saw his first game action Wednesday in a minor-league conditioning appearance at Grand Rapids.
They said it
"I felt like I was in Toronto still." Matt Stajan after he and his new Flames teammates lost at home to Philadelphia and were booed off the ice. Stajan was involved in a seven-player trade between Calgary and the Maple Leafs a day earlier.
