Fire Deboer

[hohosaregood]

None of our local news guys are really worth following on twitter. Just unfollow them, it's not like their line/coaching/injury reports are worth much.

 

[Mattb124]

Where exactly did that notion come up? Where the **** did I say that the skaters and Joneswere not very poor?

Why do the DeBoer defenders constantly feel the need to put words in somebody else’s mouth to defend him?

You made the comment "if there’s one guy I have to pin this one on, it’s DeBoer and this is the second game in a row I’ve said that."

Dont try to move the goal posts.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

It works perfectly because then you can’t be contradicted.

I mean, I don't even respect the appeal to authority argument if the authority actually exists and is cited. But these kinds of arguments are even worse because he could be just completely making it up for all we know.

The "authorities" don't even agree with Kurz's argument. Look at Jack Adams Voting in DeBoer's career.

2017-2018 - 7th
2016-2017 - T-14th (No votes)
2015-2016 - 7th
2014-2015 - T-17th (No votes)
2013-2014 - T-15th (No votes)
2013 - Can't find data
2011-2012 - 9th
2010-2011 - T-18th (No votes)
2009-2010 - T-15th (No Votes)
2008-2009 - 12th

(I can't find the results for 2013 anywhere, but DeBoer wasn't a finalist and it's likely that he didn't even get a single vote since his team finished 11th in the East. I'll exclude that season for the sake of being fair.)

In 5 out of 9 seasons, DeBoer has received no votes for the Jack Adams award. In the 4 seasons where he has received votes for the Jack Adams, he has finished no higher than 7th. That doesn't really match the idea that every authority around the league sees DeBoer as a top end coach. But of course, Kevin Kurz is an "insider", so obviously he knows more than all of us.

You made the comment "if there’s one guy I have to pin this one on, it’s DeBoer and this is the second game in a row I’ve said that."

Dont try to move the goal posts.

Lol, you're the one who is moving goal posts here. My comment was in direct response to DeBoer's comment which blamed Jones for the loss.

IF I had to blame one person for that loss in LA, it would have been DeBoer because it's a lot easier for him to just not let Micheal Haley on the ice against Anze Kopitar than it is for Martin Jones to make a save on any NHL shot, or for Justin Braun to shut down top players, or for Brent Burns and Tomas Hertl to drive possession and score multiple points, etc.

I place much more blame on somebody who makes an obviously awful and avoidable decision than somebody just wasn't capable of being good enough for whatever reason. That doesn't mean I put no blame on the players who were disappointing in that game but IF I had to blame one person for that loss...it's DeBoer.

 

[Mattb124]

True, but one cannot fire the whole team. When these situations consistently occur, it's common they fire the coach.

How common is it that the coach of a top 5 team in the league gets fired, esp. just before the playoffs? It may have happened, but DeBoer is no where close to that.

My personal opinion is that folks who believe DeBoer should be fired as a result of this current losing streak are suffering from a serious lack of objectivity.

 

[SabresSharks]

Man, this guy is something else.

Cites or not, the members of the hockey establishment Kurz speaks with probably do regard DeBoer as an excellent coach. That doesn't mean they're correct in that assessment.

With the advent of advanced stats, establishment thinking has been revealed to be far from infallible.

 

[Mattb124]

Lol, you're the one who is moving goal posts here. My comment was in direct response to DeBoer's comment which blamed Jones for the loss.

IF I had to blame one person for that loss in LA, it would have been DeBoer because it's a lot easier for him to just not let Micheal Haley on the ice against Anze Kopitar than it is for Martin Jones to make a save on any NHL shot, or for Justin Braun to shut down top players, or for Brent Burns and Tomas Hertl to drive possession and score multiple points, etc.

I place much more blame on somebody who makes an obviously awful and avoidable decision than somebody just wasn't capable of being good enough for whatever reason. That doesn't mean I put no blame on the players who were disappointing in that game but IF I had to blame one person for that loss...it's DeBoer.

My comment was to suggest that people are foolish to blame the coach for losses and you've doubled....nigh, tripled....down.

 

[SabresSharks]

How common is it that the coach of a top 5 team in the league gets fired, esp. just before the playoffs? It may have happened, but DeBoer is no where close to that.

My personal opinion is that folks who believe DeBoer should be fired as a result of this current losing streak are suffering from a serious lack of objectivity.

"Our garbage/mediocre/talented team would be so much better with a different coach." is a common refrain on HF team forums.

Enjoy this gem from earlier this month.

Regardless of where Pete fits in the coaching hierarchy, his job is about as safe as it gets, whether Haley sits or not.

EDIT - And, for the record, Haley should have never been acquired (hi, Doug!), let alone play.

 

[hohosaregood]

"Our garbage/mediocre/talented team would be so much better with a different coach." is a common refrain on HF team forums.

Enjoy this gem from earlier this month.

Regardless of where Pete fits in the coaching hierarchy, his job is about as safe as it gets, whether Haley sits or not.

EDIT - And, for the record, Haley should have never been acquired (hi, Doug!), let alone play.

I don't necessarily love PDB and I would've fired him if the December mediocrity continued but it didn't, partially because they made adjustments. Despite that, I do agree with you that his job is safe. He hasn't done anything egregious recently that could be considered an ongoing trend. PDB got mentioned on the 31 thoughts podcast for not getting enough credit for his work here so there's some people in professional hockey circles that regard him in a favorable light.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

My comment was to suggest that people are foolish to blame the coach for losses and you've doubled....nigh, tripled....down.

And you’ve tripled...nigh, I’ve actually lost count of how many times you’ve failed to provide any sort of argument in defense of that position.

"Our garbage/mediocre/talented team would be so much better with a different coach." is a common refrain on HF team forums.

Enjoy this gem from earlier this month.

Regardless of where Pete fits in the coaching hierarchy, his job is about as safe as it gets, whether Haley sits or not.

EDIT - And, for the record, Haley should have never been acquired (hi, Doug!), let alone play.

It’s a common trope not just on HFBoards, but among sports fans in general. It’s much easier to blame the coach than to blame the entire roster and the coach’s job generally looks easier and more replaceable. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a good argument for firing PDB.

I also don’t see what the issue with that Jon Cooper thread is. He’s the longest tenured head coach in the NHL in the middle of his 6th season and he still hasn’t won a championship despite being gifted a truly top-end roster in just about every single season he’s been there. He has been out-coached in various playoff series before and him being out-coached by Trotz was probably the biggest reason they lost to Washington last year.

 

[SabresSharks]

It’s a common trope not just on HFBoards, but among sports fans in general. It’s much easier to blame the coach than to blame the entire roster and the coach’s job generally looks easier and more replaceable. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a good argument for firing PDB.

I also don’t see what the issue with that Jon Cooper thread is. He’s the longest tenured head coach in the NHL in the middle of his 6th season and he still hasn’t won a championship despite being gifted a truly top-end roster in just about every single season he’s been there. He has been out-coached in various playoff series before and him being out-coached by Trotz was probably the biggest reason they lost to Washington last year.

That thread epitomizes the blame-the-coach herd mentality. The Lightning are having an historically good season, yet there's the inevitable bitching and moaning about the coach. None of the credit, all of the blame. It's so tedious.

Trotz is all the rage now, having finally won a Cup with the Caps, and seemingly working miracles with the over-achieving Isles. In 15 years with Nashville his best results were 2 WC semi-final losses. His 3 non-Cup seasons in Washington resulted in 2nd-round defeats, 2 with President's Trophy winners.

The point here is none of these guys are miracle workers. The roster is far more important than coaching in determining team success. Even guys widely regarded as mediocre, or poor, coaches have won Cups, e.g. Bylsma, Carlyle, Hartley. Unsurprisingly, they had pretty stacked teams.

"Fire the coach!" is just such an unimaginative, superficial take.

Are there truly inept head coaches? Sure. My eastern team suffers from one. Housley is reluctant to make in-game changes, dresses inferior players over his healthy scratches, appears to be passive and emotionless, deploys lines and pairings that have never worked, is full of happy talk, demands little, will scratch a guy coming off an excellent game. Truly bewildering stuff.

I couldn't get too excited about firing him though, because prime Scotty Bowman couldn't have gotten this roster into playoff contention, and a rookie coach deserved a 2nd season to grow into the job, and show the improvement we unfortunately haven't seen.

The Sabres will have a much better roster next season, and he's clearly not the guy to extract full value from it. Phil must go.

Playing Michael Haley (I expect he will see precisely zero playoff time unless Vegas is physically punishing us) is not a fireable offense.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

To people like Kurz and those who think like him (like Drew Remenda) everyone is a good head coach that gets an NHL job barring extreme circumstances. That's just how they are. Their standard for good is different than anyone looking at things analytically.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

That thread epitomizes the blame-the-coach herd mentality. The Lightning are having an historically good season, yet there's the inevitable *****ing and moaning about the coach. None of the credit, all of the blame. It's so tedious.

Trotz is all the rage now, having finally won a Cup with the Caps, and seemingly working miracles with the over-achieving Isles. In 15 years with Nashville his best results were 2 WC semi-final losses. His 3 non-Cup seasons in Washington resulted in 2nd-round defeats, 2 with President's Trophy winners.

The point here is none of these guys are miracle workers. The roster is far more important than coaching in determining team success. Even guys widely regarded as mediocre, or poor, coaches have won Cups, e.g. Bylsma, Carlyle, Hartley. Unsurprisingly, they had pretty stacked teams.

"Fire the coach!" is just such an unimaginative, superficial take.

Are there truly inept head coaches? Sure. My eastern team suffers from one. Housley is reluctant to make in-game changes, dresses inferior players over his healthy scratches, appears to be passive and emotionless, deploys lines and pairings that have never worked, is full of happy talk, demands little, will scratch a guy coming off an excellent game. Truly bewildering stuff.

I couldn't get too excited about firing him though, because prime Scotty Bowman couldn't have gotten this roster into playoff contention, and a rookie coach deserved a 2nd season to grow into the job, and show the improvement we unfortunately haven't seen.

The Sabres will have a much better roster next season, and he's clearly not the guy to extract full value from it. Phil must go.

Playing Michael Haley (I expect he will see precisely zero playoff time unless Vegas is physically punishing us) is not a fireable offense.

In that very thread there are plenty of posters who give credit to Cooper and his accomplishments and defend him. Feels like you didn't even read it. Beyond that, it doesn't matter if they're having a historically good season because the purpose of hockey isn't to have a historically good regular season, it's to win a Stanley Cup and Cooper hasn't done that yet in this season or any of the 5 previous seasons he has been with the Lightning. If he does win, the critics will be quieter than crickets.

Yes, Trotz is all the rage right now. He was a Jack Adams Finalist in 2010 and 2011, he won the Jack Adams in 2016, and he's most likely going to win again in 2019. He also won a Stanley Cup in 2018 and two Presidents Trophies in 2016 and 2017. His results in Nashville are held in relatively high regard because Nashville was an expansion team that he inherited the reigns of and a budget team for the vast majority of his time there and he still got them into the playoffs pretty frequently.

Suggesting the coach be fired is far from an unimaginative superficial take when it's backed by as much rational thinking and logic as it has been frequently in this thread. Just because DeBoer isn't truly inept and he isn't worse than Phil Housley doesn't mean he should be exempt from being fired either. Just like Minnesota's roster isn't good enough to win the Cup just because they're not as bad as Ottawa's.

To people like Kurz and those who think like him (like Drew Remenda) everyone is a good head coach that gets an NHL job barring extreme circumstances. That's just how they are. Their standard for good is different than anyone looking at things analytically.

This applies to Kurz but also plenty of posters on this forum.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

This applies to Kurz but also plenty of posters on this forum.

And to a certain extent they are correct to say that. It's just not a legitimate thing to use as a point in any argument assessing their skills on these boards.

 

[SabresSharks]

In that very thread there are plenty of posters who give credit to Cooper and his accomplishments and defend him. Feels like you didn't even read it. Beyond that, it doesn't matter if they're having a historically good season because the purpose of hockey isn't to have a historically good regular season, it's to win a Stanley Cup and Cooper hasn't done that yet in this season or any of the 5 previous seasons he has been with the Lightning. If he does win, the critics will be quieter than crickets.

Yes, Trotz is all the rage right now. He was a Jack Adams Finalist in 2010 and 2011, he won the Jack Adams in 2016, and he's most likely going to win again in 2019. He also won a Stanley Cup in 2018 and two Presidents Trophies in 2016 and 2017. His results in Nashville are held in relatively high regard because Nashville was an expansion team that he inherited the reigns of and a budget team for the vast majority of his time there and he still got them into the playoffs pretty frequently.

Suggesting the coach be fired is far from an unimaginative superficial take when it's backed by as much rational thinking and logic as it has been frequently in this thread. Just because DeBoer isn't truly inept and he isn't worse than Phil Housley doesn't mean he should be exempt from being fired either. Just like Minnesota's roster isn't good enough to win the Cup just because they're not as bad as Ottawa's.



This applies to Kurz but also plenty of posters on this forum.

The very existence of that thread demonstrates the point. You're spot-on about the crickets.

Adams' voting? I don't recall you being an "appeal to authority" advocate, but perhaps you consider the voice of the NHL Broadcasters Association unassailable.

The difference between Pete and whatever contemporary Scotty Bowman (speaking of loaded rosters) you have in mind isn't the difference between winning and losing a Cup. Getting key players healthy and having goalies string some saves together is.

 

[Dicdonya]

DWJR has thoroughly impressed me so far with what we’ve seen of him, but he can be the Gretzky of GMs and it doesn’t really change my point. Nepotism is the antithesis of accountability and we’ve already seen with Haley that the organization will base their decisions on it before they base their decisions on things like merit.

See I just disagree that nepotism and non accountability are synonymous.

If there were a master shoe maker, and his son had been working under him for half a century waiting to take over the business, and learned the craft, perfected his own work, and by the time his father decided to pass the business along, was now a master shoe maker himself, it would not be a lack of accountability to give the son the job. That is still nepotism in the strictest sense, but its miles away from just handing your son(or daughter) a job based on nothing but blood ties.

Maybe you just have a stronger aversion to nepotism than I do, as I really do not care about it at all, unless its vividly clear that someone does not deserve a job at all, but continues to have it seemingly ONLY because of family ties, I could care less if someone is given the job in the first place due to family connections. People get jobs all the time due to connections, networking etc, so to me all that matters is whether that person can actually do the job, and after getting the job, earns the right to keep it.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

See I just disagree that nepotism and non accountability are synonymous.

If there were a master shoe maker, and his son had been working under him for half a century waiting to take over the business, and learned the craft, perfected his own work, and by the time his father decided to pass the business along, was now a master shoe maker himself, it would not be a lack of accountability to give the son the job. That is still nepotism in the strictest sense, but its miles away from just handing your son(or daughter) a job based on nothing but blood ties.

Maybe you just have a stronger aversion to nepotism than I do, as I really do not care about it at all, unless its vividly clear that someone does not deserve a job at all, but continues to have it seemingly ONLY because of family ties, I could care less if someone is given the job in the first place due to family connections. People get jobs all the time due to connections, networking etc, so to me all that matters is whether that person can actually do the job, and after getting the job, earns the right to keep it.

I don't think that the terms are strictly synonymous but it's still nepotism that Junior got the opportunities that he has. It's pretty safe to say that even if he's qualified every step along the way that the only reason why he got them is because of his family connections. But even arguably warranted nepotism has a negative look from the outside and that tends to have negative impacts internally down the line. Your company whether the nepotism is the best person for the job or not will be seen as not giving applicants or would-be applicants a fair shake. And they're not exactly wrong either. That sticks with you.

 

[Dicdonya]

I don't think that the terms are strictly synonymous but it's still nepotism that Junior got the opportunities that he has. It's pretty safe to say that even if he's qualified every step along the way that the only reason why he got them is because of his family connections. But even arguably warranted nepotism has a negative look from the outside and that tends to have negative impacts internally down the line. Your company whether the nepotism is the best person for the job or not will be seen as not giving applicants or would-be applicants a fair shake. And they're not exactly wrong either. That sticks with you.

Yeah, I understand perception is what it is, I just personally do not care, however if JTR does, and that is why he sees the hire of DWjr being lacking in accountability, then so be it. I cannot argue with someones personal feelings on the matter.

I just do not care about nepotism, its not the only way someone can unjustly get a job over someone else, and of all the ways to do it, helping your own family succeed in life is about the least offensive of the ways to gift a job to someone. If someone else has a different opinion then ok, we will just have to disagree, and that is fine.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Yeah, I understand perception is what it is, I just personally do not care, however if JTR does, and that is why he sees the hire of DWjr being lacking in accountability, then so be it. I cannot argue with someones personal feelings on the matter.

I just do not care about nepotism, its not the only way someone can unjustly get a job over someone else, and of all the ways to do it, helping your own family succeed in life is about the least offensive of the ways to gift a job to someone. If someone else has a different opinion then ok, we will just have to disagree, and that is fine.

I certainly understand the sentiment behind it. I just don't see how one legitimately makes the case that their family member was actually the best person for the job and a thorough vetting of candidates was done in most of those cases.

 

[Dicdonya]

I certainly understand the sentiment behind it. I just don't see how one legitimately makes the case that their family member was actually the best person for the job and a thorough vetting of candidates was done in most of those cases.

That is the challenge for the team/business hiring the family member, I agree. However, I am not someone they need to explain that too, unless DWjr starts sucking at his job and still keeps it.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

That is the challenge for the team/business hiring the family member, I agree. However, I am not someone they need to explain that too, unless DWjr starts sucking at his job and still keeps it.

I find it hard to believe that in this particular instance that the organization will have much in way of an internal evaluation of job performances. I mean, any legitimate one would've had Burke out on his ass a long time ago.

 

[Dicdonya]

I find it hard to believe that in this particular instance that the organization will have much in way of an internal evaluation of job performances. I mean, any legitimate one would've had Burke out on his ass a long time ago.

Haha no disagreement with that on my end.

 

[PattyLafontaine]

Yeah, I understand perception is what it is, I just personally do not care, however if JTR does, and that is why he sees the hire of DWjr being lacking in accountability, then so be it. I cannot argue with someones personal feelings on the matter.

I just do not care about nepotism, its not the only way someone can unjustly get a job over someone else, and of all the ways to do it, helping your own family succeed in life is about the least offensive of the ways to gift a job to someone. If someone else has a different opinion then ok, we will just have to disagree, and that is fine.

Except you don’t seem to grasp how nepotism affects organizations. Whether Doug Jr is a great head of scouting or not nepotism creates an ivory tower sentiment in the organization. The Sharks organization already has mediocre reputation for how it treats its non upper management employees, and there is a sentiment that suggests that the upper management is insulated from the rest of the organization.

 

[Dicdonya]

Except you don’t seem to grasp how nepotism affects organizations. Whether Doug Jr is a great head of scouting or not nepotism creates an ivory tower sentiment in the organization. The Sharks organization already has mediocre reputation for how it treats its non upper management employees, and there is a sentiment that suggests that the upper management is insulated from the rest of the organization.

Except I do understand, and I personally do not care. If you do, or others do, be my guest, but unless DWJR starts sucking at his job and not getting fired for it, I just do not give a shit how he got the job.

 

[The Nemesis]

Between the lengthy digression about nepotism, the increased infighting, and the frankly circular arguments going around, I think we've reached the end of this thread's useful life.