Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
They play a much more disciplined game than the Flames but this is the advantage of having a head coach with a proven record of success. It's something Treliving as a GM needs get drilled in his noggin when hiring the next coach. None of this going with his gut, falling for the wiz kid interviewer, or the guy that flashed a bit in a short hockey tournament. There's plenty of proven head coaches available to hire this offseason and no excuse for getting this next hire wrong.
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I actually agree with you that Treliving's hiring practices for HCs is a big flaw. That said, "proven record of success" doesn't pan out as much as you might think. St. Louis went through a ton of proven coaches (inc. Hitchcock and Quenneville) and then won with Berube, who'd never gotten out of the first round (and had only been a HC for 2 seasons in Philly). Similar in Boston - Cassidy was a minor league coach with a year of HC way back, gets put in the drivers' seat when Julien got fired, lost in round one, then went to the finals 2 years later and has a really good team now. Jon Cooper - zero experience when he was put in.
Speaking of Julien, there's a really experienced guy who had success in Boston until he didn't and then his teams in Montreal sucked. Babcock got fired. Hitchcock failed badly in Edmonton.
Tippett's "proven record of success" is being out of the POs with Phoenix/AZ for 5 years in a row, and losing in round one more often than not whenever he did make it with Phoenix or Dallas.
So I think that, while Treliving needs to get his next coach pick right, it doesn't need to be based on experience - it needs to be based on personality, smarts, fit, etc.