Hammer falls in Toronto

[Skilly]

Maple Leaf President Brendan Shanahan Knew it was Time to Fire Head Coach Randy Carlyle

Steve Simmons

The conversation began in the midst of the hottest streak of this Maple Leafs season: What to do with Randy Carlyle?

The Leafs were winning games they had no business winning. The trends were starting to show statistically, analytically, and to those who know and understand hockey best. Alarm bells were ringing in the Leafs’ front office: The regression of the hockey club had begun and the discussion was ripe and active.

How long could they continue with Carlyle as coach?

Brendan Shanahan and Dave Nonis talked — as they do regularly — their concerns growing, the regression apparent to them and other members of the Leafs’ front office.

There was too much dependence on goaltending. There was too little puck possession. The breakout — the key to so much in hockey — had completely broken down.

On his own, Nonis may not have pulled the plug this quickly. It isn’t his nature to be impatient. Normally, he borders on the conservative. But the combination of Shanahan and Nonis — new club president and old general manager — brought a different dynamic to the situation.

Shanahan went to Winnipeg on Saturday night and watched the debacle up close. He had to have been incensed by what he saw.

Nonis was supposed to be there, but wound up watching on TV. The Leafs, showing little regard for their play, lost on Friday night in a very winnable game in Minnesota. And then they followed that with a disgraceful defeat on Saturday.

The distaste remained post-weekend. And what was talked about previously became apparent on Monday. Together, Shanahan and Nonis agreed to fire Carlyle. Shanahan may have agreed a little more strenuously, but Nonis executed the firing.

At the end of the day, the two signed off on the coaching change for a troubled team that has — this year, last year, at times the year before — stopped responding to a reasonably decent coach who probably deserved better from his players.

Carlyle, they thought, was reverting to old habits, ones they thought he was supposed to have left behind. The connection between the coach and management was growing tense.

Shanahan — who talks to everyone in the organization, listens to everyone, quietly determines — knew it was time.

He wasn’t willing to watch the Leafs drive off a cliff in the midst of an up-and-down season with still so much possible in the wonky Eastern Conference. He wasn’t going to do what Brian Burke did with Ron Wilson — he wasn’t going to wait too long.

This is Shanahan’s first time through as club president or an executive of any kind at all and we’re still learning about him. And he has intentionally been difficult to pin down, staying in the background, out of the limelight, avoiding interviews, watching, observing, deciding what he has and doesn’t have, getting a feel for his front office, his players, his coaches.

He knows how flawed and schizophrenic this team has shown itself to be. They score more goals than 28 other teams. They have that much talent.

They allow more goals than all but four. They have that little structure.

They play high risk, high reward, seemingly losing hockey, a trait Carlyle knew they had to change, but couldn’t.

He talked about that when we met for lunch before the season began. He talked about playing “the right way” almost daily. He talked about the template he needed for the team to succeed. He knew what was necessary.

What he couldn’t get was a buy-in from his players, especially his best players. He tried to push, be friendly, yell, cajole, punish, joke, everything a coach pulls out of his arsenal

Shanahan has been a player more than he has been anything else in hockey. He knows what a dressing room feels like when a coach is let go. He knows that players with a conscience take it personally when this happens, a slap in the face of sorts. What he is about to find out — which of his players has a hockey conscience.

That is the question now: Who will take the firing personally enough to change? And are they capable of change? Shanahan and Nonis will spend the next few days looking at coaching alternatives.

For now, the assistants Peter Horacek and Steve Spott are in charge.

For now.

There is a possibility of another coach coming in for the second half of the season only.

The off-season offers up all kinds of possibilities. Mike Babcock’s contract is up, but I have long maintained that the Leafs can only fulfil half of his requirements. He wants to be paid and he wants to win. The Leafs can assure half of that.

But what happens at the end of this season in the Western Conference? Who among Todd McLellan, Ken Hitchcock, Bruce Boudreau and Dave Tippett will be available? The Leafs would likely jump at three of those — and maybe all four.

They need a coach who can build structure into a lineup with speed and scoring talent and defensive allergies. They need a coach who can establish defensive zone coverages and hold players accountable for minor hockey mistakes.

Almost everything about the Leafs is contradictory: They lead the NHL in shorthanded goals scored, have allowed the most shorthanded goals against, and with all their talent are among the worst 5-on-3 teams in hockey.

For everything they do at high-end — some NHL coaches hate game-planning to play against the Leafs’ speed and finesse — they give it back with their lack of leadership and hockey intellect.

Shanahan was hired as club president at the end of last season. He didn’t hire Nonis. Nonis didn’t hire Carlyle. Carlyle didn’t appoint Dion Phaneuf captain. The levels of disconnect in the organization have been many. But, slowly, they are changing.

Carlyle is gone. The assistants he didn’t really hire are in charge for now. The front office, aside from Nonis, is all Shanahan hires. The leadership of the club, not just the captain, is in question. Earlier this season, when the Leafs hit a crisis point, they were pulled out of it by the middle-of-the-roster players such as Mike Santorelli and Daniel Winnik and Leo Komarov.

But the Leafs need Phil Kessel, Phaneuf and James van Riemsdyk to show something they’ve never shown before.

They don’t have to say anything, they have to do something.

They have to earn their keep in the most precious of statistics: Winning. They have to demonstrate a side of themselves they have yet to display for any length of successful time.

This firing is on them. All of them. Every one but the goaltenders. The fact that Jonathan Bernier is a top-end NHL goaltender makes the Leafs’ frustrations all the more apparent.

The players have to take care of today and the rest of the season. Shanahan, and assuming Nonis remains, have to take care of the future. The Leafs are once again out of excuses.

They have to stop beating themselves. They have to start caring more. The sport is all about mistakes. They happen every game to every team. But when you spend as much time in your end as the Leafs do, that many mistakes turn into that many defeats.

Once already this season, with Carlyle coaching, they overcame the disasters of Buffalo and Nashville. Now they have to do it again, with new voices, a battered lineup, leaving the bad habits behind. If they can.

And if they can’t after a coach has been fired, then prepare for the roster to be torn apart.

Piece by piece.

Overpriced player by overpriced player.

The famous Shanahan patience is already running thin.​

[e-mail]

[franko]

Jan 7, 2015 19:34:13 GMT -5 Disgruntled70sHab said:

thought this might have been a defining game for Kessel

maybe it is

[Disgruntled70sHab]

Jan 7, 2015 20:34:39 GMT -5 franko said:

Jan 7, 2015 19:34:13 GMT -5 Disgruntled70sHab said:

thought this might have been a defining game for Kessel

maybe it is

I was thinking the same thing ... one way or another ... the Leafs responded with a plop tonight ...

Cheers.

[NWTHabsFan]

It is easy to fire a coach, but a lot harder to get a taker on some of those overpaid contracts. Any trade Shanny makes will not be from a position of power.

[blny]

Shannahan saying at presser today that they'll wait until the off season to make a more permanent decision regarding the coach (IE string along the false hope of landing Babcock). Rest of season will be used to evaluate who on the roster stays/goes.

[seventeen]

I read Buffery's article the day it came out, and there were two major impressions left, make that 3. First, Carlyle handled it very professionally and honestly. Yes, it hurt, but that's the coaching business. Secondly, it left a very good impression of him as a person. Not only was he under huge pressure because of the way the Leafs season was heading and because of attitudes like Kessel's, but the impending death of his brother in law had to add a lot to his plate. I know I'd certainly want to support any family member whose spouse was dying. Despite all that, he didn't throw any rocks and he conducted himself in an upstanding way.

Thirdly, I have to wonder about Nonis. Why on earth would you ask Carlyle to drive back from Sudbury, to fire him? Because it's not right to do it over the phone? Ok, I agree that if you're going to fire someone, you should do it face to face. But that's not written in stone. It's right most of the time, but in this case it's totally wrong. Better to tell Carlyle that the team has decided to replace him as coach, that you'd prefer to have done this face to face, but you understand that he has family responsibilities in Sudbury and didn't want to inconvenience him any further and then fire him. Either that, or go to Sudbury yourself and do it there. The timing is curious too, as my guess it wasn't Nonis' and that he was told to fire him by a certain deadline. The whole thing looks pressured, and its not like Carlyle is a bad coach. I didn't find him likeable (that's changing), but I thought he was doing a very good job with what he had. Oh well.

Does he speak french?

[seventeen]

I just read Steve Simmons' article. He doesn't indicate any sources, or references that I can see. Is the story a sequence of what he 'thought' could have happened? There's a ton of speculation in the story and very few confirmed facts. I also didn't like his conclusion that the offense was all about talent and the lack of defense was all about structure. If the Red Wings decided they'd rather not play Babcock's game, could you presume he had no structure in place? Of course not. Players have to want to execute the structure the coach sets up. If I choose not to backcheck hard, it's going to put pressure on the defense. Good offense and poor defense is more a symptom of cherry picking to me. There have been lots of successful teams who have had purely offensive players (Gretzky's Oilers are the obvious example), but they had a limited number of those guys. KUrri was a responsible player. Gretzky could hang out at the blue line and red line because other guys worked hard defensively and he was so efficient at putting up points that the team could let him play that way. Kessel does that, but he's no Gretzky and the Leafs don't have enough quality defensively responsible players to make it work. I think you'd have to have a 50% turnover in the team to turn them into a more rounded, better character group. The coach is not the problem, at least not at this stage.

[CentreHice]

Leafs lose 3rd straight in California.

3-1 to the Sharks.

After going 10-1-1, they've lost 11 of their last 14 games.

Shots against were up again….42 on Reimer.

On to face the Blues.

=================================================================================================

Damien Cox: Why Shanahan Must Blow Up The Leafs

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not Brendan Shanahan’s fault.

But soon, it will be.

It will be if Shanahan, like so many before him, chooses not to take this current Maple Leaf situation for precisely what it is and instead rationalizes his way to the same partial rebuilds or reconstructs or renovations that have kept this team so far removed from the upper echelons of the sport for so long. Shanahan, you see, is at a crossroads, and just nine months after he was hired. He can boldly try to aggressively build this hockey team from the foundation up in the way that others, from Floyd Smith to Cliff Fletcher to Ken Dryden to Pat Quinn to John Ferguson Jr. to Brian Burke, refused to do. Or weren’t allowed to do. Or chose not to do.

Or he can pretend that there’s upside here to simply staying the course and trying to build upon the flawed foundation that currently exists. The guess from here, folks, is that Shanahan knows he’s at a crossroads, understands there’s no easy way out and that there’s little or no real choice in what must be done. Tear this thing right down and start over.

Start over? START OVER?? Again? You can hear the groaning of Leaf Nation when that’s even suggested.

But there’s really no choice, and to think otherwise is to pretend. Shanahan has a core group of players that isn’t good enough or strong enough or committed enough to take this team anywhere meaningful. As Sportsnet colleague Jeff Blair recently pointed out, that core group also isn’t particularly likeable to the public.

The team appears to own one young player, Morgan Rielly, who has the earmarks of both stardom and leadership, and that’s it. Outside of Rielly, there are young promising players, but not enough of them. This isn’t a franchise that owns Drew Doughty, Jonathan Quick, Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar and just needs Justin Williams and Mike Richards to join in and point the way to a championship. So to build a championship team with the Leafs, priority No. 1 has to be to find other players similar to Rielly, or better.

That will take time. It could be achieved partly through clever trades, but for the most part it will require those kinds of athletes to be drafted and developed the way Doughty, Quick, Brown and Kopitar were by the L.A. Kings. Keeping the current core will, really, just make it impossible to do that by keeping the Leafs in the mushy middle of the NHL standings. Instead of getting John Tavares, they’ll draft Nazem Kadri. Instead of Nathan MacKinnon, they’ll get Frederik Gauthier.

All of this, of course, means that 6 1/2 years after Burke came to Toronto, the Leafs need to again tear down what has been built and start again. That will take someone to admit these have been 6 1/2 wasted years, 6 1/2 years filled with expensive decisions that didn’t work out. That’s not an easy thing for any sports organization to admit. But that’s what must be done. It’s what Shanahan appears to have the political capital to do if he so chooses.

The fact that Shanahan authorized the axing of Randy Carlyle as head coach when the Leafs were in possession of an Eastern Conference playoff berth is promising, for it demonstrates he not only knows the difference between being competitive and being a real contender, he wants no part of the former if it stops his team from becoming the latter.

He’s undoubtedly figured out Phaneuf and Kessel can’t lead an NHL team, this one or any other. Both are good NHL players who might and probably will find success as support players with other teams, but they can’t provide the combination of leadership and performance necessary for this Toronto team in this difficult market. He gave both a chance to prove him wrong this season, but they haven’t been able to do so, and the team’s getting worse.

The Leafs, 0-2 in California without scoring a goal this week, might win in San Jose tonight, maybe even in St. Louis on Saturday. It’s unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility, that this team might even find a way to scratch and claw its way back into the fight for one of the wild card berths in the east. But that, really, would only take the Leafs further away from where they need to go, not closer. They need to be much nearer to the McDavid sweepstakes, not hoping to get back in the fight for a playoff spot.

Tearing down this roster won’t be easy and it will likely be very costly. Moreover, it will have to be followed up by hiring all the necessary coaching and management personnel needed to begin to build again. It would probably be easier for Shanahan to keep drawing his paycheque, say he’s trying to win, periodically make changes that don’t really change much and dodge reality until the next upheaval sends him out the door. It would be a cynical approach, but a lucrative one.

Or, he can do what nobody, really has ever tried to do in Toronto. Take it down to the wood and try to build with excellence, the kind of process teams like Vancouver and Ottawa are resisting because they know how painful it will be and don’t have the stomach for it.

Burke could have done it for the Leafs starting in November, 2008, but he chose another course for a variety of reasons, then was fired before he could see whether his vision would have worked out or not. Now Shanahan is in exactly that same position Burke was in November, 2008.

Three years from now, he won’t be able to order the kind of massive change of direction we’re talking about. By then, more mediocrity will have exhausted his political capital. This opportunity to do it correctly is, as Burke found out, limited.

For Toronto hockey bosses, you only arrive at a crossroads once. The next one always belongs to the next guy.

[blny]

The real fans won't disappear. You might see a few more grey seats, but they won't suffer at the gate. Bad for us, but good for them long term if they commit to the rebuild from scratch and do it right.

[CentreHice]

Jan 16, 2015 11:19:06 GMT -5 blny said:

The real fans won't disappear. You might see a few more grey seats, but they won't suffer at the gate. Bad for us, but good for them long term if they commit to the rebuild from scratch and do it right.

We had a taste of it when Molson cleaned house after the 2011-12 season. But we didn't suffer long-term. Bergevin has proven to be the right selection. (I still can't believe Pierre McGuire was runner-up.)

IMO, it starts there. The Leafs have had a string of inefficient GMs ever since Cliff Fletcher traded for Doug Gilmour in the early 90s.

Just in this century….John Ferguson Jr….terrible. Cliff Fletcher, just as interim. Brian Burke…the Saviour riding in on his horse, Over-Hype...Kessel trade, phaneuf said. Fail. Nonis….continuing the nonsense with the Phaneuf extension, Clarkson contract.

The ACC has seen only 3 playoff crowds since 2004. The Leafs have been a mediocre team paid like a top-end team…..because the market will bear it. They're always up against the cap.


Poor architects, all.


Maybe they DO throw the GM/Coach role at Babock? I hope they do…and he accepts. He's good, but I doubt he's good enough to wear two very important hats.

[blny]

Agreed CH. Poor architects. As Cox eluded, it's hard to say how much pressure there is from ownership. Are they hounding the front office to sign certain people not because it makes the team better but because it might sell more merch and advertising?

I don't think Babcock has any interest in being a GM. He comes across as the simple man's coach. By that, I mean old school no nonsense, "I'm a coach, and I coach" mentality. He's not looking to be any more or less than what he believes he is.

Berg had some good people when he got here. While there have been misses, it's hard to argue with our amateur scouting department this century. Their success rate of churning out pros is as high as anyone's. What he has done is come in and affected change in development of those players by bring in professional development guys. Experienced, retired, players who mentor. For me, that's the biggest change. In the latter years of Gainey, and all of Goat's tenure, there was a cloak over the office. It seemed inaccessible to me, so I can only imagine how the players felt. The players didn't know what was going on, and the office was completely out of tune/touch with the locker room. Now, not only can Berg get his information first hand, but he can get it from the people he's put in place to develop talent.

Strong amateur scouting, strong office staff to develop kids into men, communication, and accountability.

[Disgruntled70sHab]

I feel bad for the Leaf fans, but at the same time it wouldn't hurt me to see them continually stagnant ... was on FB earlier today and Sens fans are all over last night's game ... they figure there's no excuse why their team can't be a contender after manhandling the Habs last night ... ah, the fans (of which I'm one I must say) ...

Cheers.

[blny]

Jan 16, 2015 12:47:12 GMT -5 Disgruntled70sHab said:

I feel bad for the Leaf fans, but at the same time it wouldn't hurt me to see them continually stagnant ... was on FB earlier today and Sens fans are all over last night's game ... they figure there's no excuse why their team can't be a contender after manhandling the Habs last night ... ah, the fans (of which I'm one I must say) ...

Cheers.

Tampa laid an egg against the Flyers the other night. Flyers fans aren't delusional enough to think their team is a contender.

[seventeen]

Jan 16, 2015 12:08:42 GMT -5 blny said:

Agreed CH. Poor architects. As Cox eluded, it's hard to say how much pressure there is from ownership. Are they hounding the front office to sign certain people not because it makes the team better but because it might sell more merch and advertising?

I don't think Babcock has any interest in being a GM. He comes across as the simple man's coach. By that, I mean old school no nonsense, "I'm a coach, and I coach" mentality. He's not looking to be any more or less than what he believes he is.

Berg had some good people when he got here. While there have been misses, it's hard to argue with our amateur scouting department this century. Their success rate of churning out pros is as high as anyone's. What he has done is come in and affected change in development of those players by bring in professional development guys. Experienced, retired, players who mentor. For me, that's the biggest change. In the latter years of Gainey, and all of Goat's tenure, there was a cloak over the office. It seemed inaccessible to me, so I can only imagine how the players felt. The players didn't know what was going on, and the office was completely out of tune/touch with the locker room. Now, not only can Berg get his information first hand, but he can get it from the people he's put in place to develop talent.

Strong amateur scouting, strong office staff to develop kids into men, communication, and accountability.

We have to stop agreeing or people will wonder about us. As I read the article, it surfaced that you can do what Burke tried to do, if you have an excellent scouting staff that keeps finding gems amongst the clams. That's the key. Where would the Habs be without the 2007 draft and without Carey Price? The results haven't been as evident in the last few years, but Timmins keeps finding prospects (Gallagher, Hudon maybe, Beaulieu, in the later picks. We'll see how McCarron and Scherbak turn out, but those two are potentially above average NHL'rs. If you don't get those replacements, you get a team that cycles through good times and bad times, but never wins a cup. Edmonton is a perfect example. Yes, they had 4 very high picks, but they got almost no one from after the first round. There's no support, so you end up having to sign Pouliots and Nikitins to multi year, expensive contracts.

If I'm a GM, I spend all my money on improving the scouting and development of players. Next on getting great coaches. It's not that complicated.

[blny]

Jan 16, 2015 15:23:09 GMT -5 seventeen said:

We have to stop agreeing or people will wonder about us.

HA! lol