2021: NHL Head Coach and Front Office Hunting Season

Hockey has gone through some tough times between 2020 and 2021. Pandemic, season stoppage, a bubble playoff, a shortened 2021 season, a massive scandal at one of the biggest clubs, and recently, hefty amounts of executive changes with the clubs. Since the end of the last season, starting with the New York Rangers and all the way to the Vancouver Canucks as of December 5th, 2021, there have been five clubs who have decided to sack their executive leaders, be it the general manager, head coach, both, and a combination of assistants and lower-level management. 2021 has been NHL's season of executive turnover, so just what does this mean about the state of club leadership during a time of great change and uncertainty?

Hockey has always been a volatile sport from the business side. Coaches get recycled far too often, GMs can fail with one team but manage to pick up a job in the same role with a new club for an even higher salary, ownership groups tend to make very hasty or late decisions regarding executives; it paints the picture that this sport is ruthless in all facets of its business model. It has always been a result-driven business, and over the past few seasons, the Rangers, Canucks, Canadiens, Flyers, and Coyotes have all undertaken this organizational upheaval. Some have come out of it in fine form, in this case, the Rangers, as former GM Jeff Gorton was relieved of his duties despite rebuilding the New York-based club from top to bottom and they now boast one of the best records in the NHL today. The other four teams...we wish things did not go so bad for them. 

The Canadiens are going to be under the tiniest of lenses amongst the Canadian media as Marc Bergevin and his team were finally fired after many years of gambling on draft picks and trades while relying heavily on the prime of Carey Price in goal. This team miraculously made it to the Stanley Cup Final, where they got gentleman-swept by a Lightning team who was in a totally different level of hockey caliber. The thing about Twitter GMs...they tend to be right in the grand scheme. Hockey Twitter lambasted the Canadiens, saying how they were lucky enough to make the Cup Final that season; that the win over Vegas said more about Vegas choking rather than the Canadiens being a legitimate championship contender. This was further exacerbated by the dismal start and continuation of poor from Montreal is suffering this season. The team Bergevin assembled - which had long been criticized - then tried to retool on the fly...they are set to miss the playoffs and at the time of writing only have 6 wins in 26 games played. So owner Geoff Molson decided Bergevin, who had done more than his share of shady decisions i.e. drafting Logan Mollienux despite the "character flaws" that were well known, could no longer be the leader of a franchise so decorated yet declining in the Canadiens. Bergevin was behind the times, not really an embracer of analytics, was dedicated to the idea of playing for Montreal was a hockey rite of passage, but the thing about history its luster tends to fade when there isn't a recent success. No Cups since 1993, one Cup final appearance in 2021 with a completely uneven matchup, a core of players that is vastly underachieving given their payroll and youth...Molson did what he had to be done, maybe even a bit late. Bergevin wasn't modern enough and often too risky with an established club like the Canadiens. It was time for him to go; he was at the end of his cycle.

The Canucks are a different animal. They have underachieved since their existence. That's nothing new to anyone who has followed them. To this day, they are still hurt by the 2011 Cup Final loss; the fanbase loathes any southern American team that has more silverware in fewer years of existence than British Columbia's club. The last eight seasons saw the Canucks end the era of the Sedin twins, head to the Western Conference Semifinals in the 2020 bubble playoffs, and suddenly everything changed. The Canucks went from trying to build upon a kind-of shock playoff run with a young-ish core to win-now in a snap of the fingers. Jim Benning had garnered the reputation of a man who really had no plan in the place for the future; he was intent on winning now when the team on the ice was consistently riding on the wild card race to get into the postseason. This summer was crucial for Benning and coach Travis Green as they had to pick themselves up after a seriously-disappointing 2021 where they finished second to last in the all-Canadian division. So trading for Conor Garland and offloading Loui Eriksson was a smart move...but signing Jake Virtanen over Tyler Toffoli? That is where the eyebrows got raised. Adding another hefty contract in Oliver Ekman-Larsson also makes it wonder whether Benning was really understanding of the cap situation and the big money he was going to owe Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson in the offseason. In the end, he won't know, as more woeful hockey under Green as bench boss led to his firing just hours before Benning and his team would be shown the door. Another Canadian franchise sat in the mud and tried to do too much when they found the first few signs of promise. Not to mention, just by looking at Benning's roster, he was not looking at advanced stats or approaching the game analytically. It was about speed and skill, two important traits, but how does that help when you can't get your players firing? So the Canucks did what had to be done.

The Coyotes are just a mistake of Gary Bettman's undying need to expand the NHL into non-traditional markets. Some have worked out as we know, but the NHL's adventure in Arizona has never gone well. The Coyotes continued to spiral out of control this offseason, as they underwent more executive turnover in the wake of their draft combine meddling and allegations of workplace misconduct. Bill Armstrong now runs the show and he's embracing the rebuild. Rick Tocchet, unfortunately, did not last before Armstrong had his chance to fire himself. Tocchet should've been blameless in this regard. He was in charge of the on-ice affairs, not the bullcrap that kept oozing out in the front office. His team was not good, that can't be denied, but it wasn't all his fault in this manner. They relied sheepishly on the idea Clayton Keller, Jacob Chychrun, and Phil Kessel would reinvigorate the desert franchise; instead, they failed to finish above .500 again. In the wake of John Chayka's draft combine tampering and his ultimate resignation, the Coyotes are still picking up the pieces of it. Sometimes maybe it is better to go with a fresh face behind the bench, and it doesn't look like Rick Tocchet is hating his job with TNT these days. The Coyotes are the definition of a defunct sports franchise, so casting too much blame on Tocchet would be unfair to him. 

Now we come to the most recent head coach firing: Alain Vigneault and the Philadelphia Flyers. Rangers fans tried to warn Flyers fans what was coming under the man coined "AV." You could play pretty decent hockey in the regular season, but come playoff time, Vigneault's stubborn approach was often the bane of his team's approach. Vigneault is a system-based coach, and if you don't buy into it, you are sentenced to a life of misery. It happened on several occasions, most notably with Ryan Kesler in Vancouver and JT Miller in New York. We didn't truly see it happen in Philadelphia, because in his first season, AV was doing good work with the Flyers. He got them into the bubble playoffs, where they had finished 3rd in the Metropolitan division behind the Capitals and Islanders, ultimately bowing out to the Isles in the second round. In his first season with what was supposed to be a building-block year, AV defied a lot of expectations asked of him. Maybe regrettably, he built his coaching career on defying expectations. Stanley Cup Final berths with two teams who likely were out of their depth and got showed up by a higher-quality opponent, this is the lasting legacy of Vigneault in the playoffs. The Flyers never got that far. 2021 would seem to try to fight for a playoff spot but with no wild card, they missed it and finished behind sixth, behind AV's former team in the Rangers. Perhaps it was a fluke, but the offseason saw a lot of roster shuffling with long-time fan-favorite Jakob Voracek being shipped back to Columbus for Cam Atkinson, a player AV always wanted in New York. He also parted ways with the forever-scorn Shayne Gotisbehere after a litany of AHL send-downs and recalls that the defenseman was probably happy he was being traded to the Coyotes of all places. The Flyers then stumbled into the 2021-22 season like they were completely lost at sea. Cam Atkinson was returning the favor, but the rest of the team suffered. Carter Hart was often the whipping boy for AV last season; this season, it's become apparent it's not just him but the rest of the defense's fault they continue to blow leads. Kevin Hayes signed a lucrative deal only to be placed at the third-line center or hit the injury list. This season he's dealing with a lot more personal issues so it's understandable if his game isn't up to par. Chuck Fletcher may not last much longer in Philly either, but it was clear that Vigneault had lost the team as they sink further down in the Metro division, sitting just above the Devils and Islanders. So again, it had to be done. 

The NHL has always been a meat grinder, but it's different in the wake of the pandemic and the rumors about lost revenue among teams. Now as things slowly revert to normal, teams are now deciding the post-pandemic virtues must be different and run by people who understand modern sports better than those mentioned. Perhaps the biggest theme here is there was a lack of progressive thinking in these gentlemen; they were products of the era when hockey was all grit, no skill. When Canadian teams had all the clout but now can't boast about as they drop lower in value and American franchises continue to grow. Hockey is not that sport anymore. Stats matter, analytics have become mainstream, front offices rely on much more data-based decisions and people who understand them. If this is how the NHL becomes modern in their approach to building competitive teams, it is probably right to fire a failing coach or GM. Hockey is a ruthless business, and 2021 has become head coach/GM firing season.