Coaches who did not deserve to be fired

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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I guess 2019-'20 is the year of the coach getting fired, so it inspired me to do this thread. I don't have the stats handy, but if I recall 1998 was the year where half of the coaches got fired during the season or at the end of it. It was pretty rare.

Okay, so who didn't deserve it?

Bill Barber 2002 - He got the axe a year after winning the Jack Adams trophy for coach of the year. Okay, it is true his Flyers lost in 5 games to the Sens and were as offensively starved as almost any team in NHL history in a playoff round. They scored a grand total of 2 goals. Only one of them in regulation. I have heard he wasn't very good at having the team practice the power play and maybe he wasn't a great coach overall, but I do remember Keith Primeau of all people being someone that made some complaints out of him that may have caused him to get the pink slip. I mean, Primeau? A career playoff bust, and in this playoffs he had 0 points. Roenick had 0 as well. Gagne, Recchi.......0 points. Adam Oates had two assists and he was the only one with more than a point. So that's got to fall on the players too. Lastly, his old buddy Bobby Clarke gave him the axe and while I realize it is all business his wife Jenny of 30 years had died during that season. Ouch.

Gerard Gallant 2020 - Sure it just happened this year, but that was rough. Two years after leading an expansion team to the Cup final (when will that happen again?) and even so when he got fired the team was in 1st in their division. Was there just bad blood from the 2019 loss?

Pat Quinn 2006 - Maybe the game was passing him by? Perhaps. But this was clearly to prolong a horrible GM in John Ferguson Jr.'s job. The Leafs weren't even that bad in 2006, just barely missing the playoffs. They didn't make it again until 2013.

Marc Crawford 1998 - It was an ugly loss to the Oilers, blowing a 3-1 series lead, but it was just that - an upset. It happens. This team was right in the mix before and after Crawford. I am not a fan of the guy, I still get reminded of the Nagano Olympics from time to time, but should he have gotten the pink slip or was there more to it?

Roger Neilson 1979 - Was fired in March of 1979 by Harold Ballard, although not to his face. Neilson was on the plane with the team when he was informed about it. Ballard had no one to replace him so eventually he asked Neilson to come back but wanted to have him wear a bag over his head prior to the game so that the fans could have a surprise as to who was coaching. Neilson didn't do this, but got the job back anyway. At the end of the season Neilson was fired for real despite an impossible situation for any coach.

Don Cherry 1979 - Nothing wrong with losing to the dynasty Habs, even if it was repeatedly. The Bruins waited a decade to get to the Cup final again.

Randy Cunneyworth 2012 - If you can't speak much French in Montreal then that will be a problem from the get go, I get that, but why even hire him in the first place? Perhaps the Habs should broaden their pool of talent to choose from. They've fired Michel Therrien twice and are almost certainly going to fire Claude Julien for a second time as well. Did Scotty Bowman, Toe Blake and Dick Irvin know a lot of french? Because if they didn't do you really take back those Cups?

Bill Peters 2019 - The power of social media I guess. Should we get used to a coach getting fired over a tweet on Twitter? No, it wasn't right what Peters said when he lashed out at Akim Aliu, but it was 10 years ago, on a different team, in a different league and is no one allowed to learn from their actions and grow anymore? I don't want to turn this into a debate, but you should never get fired from your current job based on something that didn't even happen there. Not to mention he led them to a 107 point season the year prior. It just left a bad taste.
 

CharlestownChiefsESC

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Tom Renney 2009

The Rangers werent playing well but when you go from Having Jagr Shanahan and Avery as your top players to a team led by Gomez Drury and an old Markus Naslund what do you expect
 

JackSlater

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Apr 27, 2010
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Al MacNeil got a raw deal in Montreal, though it did work out for the team.
 

quoipourquoi

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Marc Crawford was actually offered a contract extension, but left the Avalanche anyway. The team really collapsed at the end of 1997-98 (not just the Edmonton series). Bob Hartley would be a better example of a premature firing from that era’s Avalanche.
 

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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Al MacNeil got a raw deal in Montreal, though it did work out for the team.

I actually thought of him right away, and although Bowman comes in and, well, the rest is history, the truth is he did sort of get a raw deal didn't he? I know there was the language issue thing with benching Henri Richard and stuff, although I have heard Henri say he had never thought of such a thing at the time. He just feuded with MacNeil. Yvan Cournoyer I have heard as well say something along the lines of "with the issue of language we speak both (English and French) so that's not a problem". I think it was probably just the rift within the team. Red Fischer asked Sam Pollock after he fired MacNeil why he did it. "The guy won you a Cup Sam!" Apparently according to Fischer Pollock said "I didn't demote him, I just.............shuffled the cabinet." Well, there you go.
 
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LeafsNation75

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Pat Quinn 2006 - Maybe the game was passing him by? Perhaps. But this was clearly to prolong a horrible GM in John Ferguson Jr.'s job. The Leafs weren't even that bad in 2006, just barely missing the playoffs. They didn't make it again until 2013.
I think that happened because JFJ used the excuse of them missing the playoffs, even though they missed by 2 points and the fact he never hired Quinn. Although the funny thing is Quinn was in the meetings when JFJ was hired to replace him as the GM. Anyway I also think that happened because he wanted Paul Maurice to be the next Leafs coach since he was already coaching the Toronto Marlies. Plus I remember JFJ saying he had to deny another team permission to speak with Maurice about interviewing with them.
 

c9777666

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Rick Bowness 1992

got only one full year as Bruins coach. Team was decimated by injuries. Still made the Wales Finals.

Outside of Bourque and 39-goal scorer Vlad Rucizka, they were limited on offense until the Adam Oates trade and post-Olympic callup Joe Juneau. Yet he held them together despite 575 man-games lost due to injury.
 
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Kyle McMahon

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May 10, 2006
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The Avalanche firing Joel Quenneville always struck me as bizarre. Did they really think that 2008 roster, which lost in the 2nd round to eventual champion Detroit, had underachieved? And if I'm remembering right, a flu bug crippled the Avs in that series to boot (though you have to think the Red Wings would still have won anyway). There had to be some bad blood behind the scenes there or something.
 

Big Phil

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I cant remember why Mike Keenan left Chicago after 1992. If it were 1993 and he gets swept in the first round I can see why maybe, but not 1992, they went to the Cup final. I know he left the Rangers after 1994 in the same mold Jimmy Johnson left the Cowboys the same year, but I cannot remember why with Chicago.
 

c9777666

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The Avalanche firing Joel Quenneville always struck me as bizarre. Did they really think that 2008 roster, which lost in the 2nd round to eventual champion Detroit, had underachieved? And if I'm remembering right, a flu bug crippled the Avs in that series to boot (though you have to think the Red Wings would still have won anyway). There had to be some bad blood behind the scenes there or something.

3 full years- made the playoffs twice, the one year they didn't they had 95 points (had a better record than last year's Avs), pulled off upsets over higher-seeds in round 1, but got swept twice in round 2

Those teams given the Theodore/Aebischer/Budaj goalie carousel and how they were a very old team save for Marek Svatos/Paul Stastny I felt he got to overachieve.
 
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quoipourquoi

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The Avalanche firing Joel Quenneville always struck me as bizarre. Did they really think that 2008 roster, which lost in the 2nd round to eventual champion Detroit, had underachieved? And if I'm remembering right, a flu bug crippled the Avs in that series to boot (though you have to think the Red Wings would still have won anyway). There had to be some bad blood behind the scenes there or something.

His contract expired. Didn’t seem to be bad blood, though Francois Giguere did say publicly that they wanted to play more aggressive hockey going forward.
 

Nerowoy nora tolad

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Bill Peters 2019 - The power of social media I guess. Should we get used to a coach getting fired over a tweet on Twitter? No, it wasn't right what Peters said when he lashed out at Akim Aliu, but it was 10 years ago, on a different team, in a different league and is no one allowed to learn from their actions and grow anymore? I don't want to turn this into a debate, but you should never get fired from your current job based on something that didn't even happen there. Not to mention he led them to a 107 point season the year prior. It just left a bad taste.

In fairness, that 107 point team had dissolved like a cream puff in the first round against Nathan Mackinnon and... Nathan Mackinnon.

I dont think the firing was a move they had to think long and hard about, considering his NHL track record of four years of... existing with the perpetually underwhelming Hurricanes. And then Aliugate and Kickgate come to light. Cmon man, I might have been ready to fire the guy based on his performance even before the allegations happened.
 

Nerowoy nora tolad

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I cant remember why Mike Keenan left Chicago after 1992. If it were 1993 and he gets swept in the first round I can see why maybe, but not 1992, they went to the Cup final. I know he left the Rangers after 1994 in the same mold Jimmy Johnson left the Cowboys the same year, but I cannot remember why with Chicago.
More general comment on Keenan, ya think if hed settled down in one place for longer than a few years, his program of importing his boys and shaping them into teams that played Keenan hockey might have had decent results? Look how many assets he wasted over the years bringing in his Noonans and Larmers and Corsons on 3 or 4 different teams
 
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Nerowoy nora tolad

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May 9, 2018
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Rick Bowness 1992

got only one full year as Bruins coach. Team was decimated by injuries. Still made the Wales Finals.

Outside of Bourque and 39-goal scorer Vlad Rucizka, they were limited on offense until the Adam Oates trade and post-Olympic callup Joe Juneau. Yet he held them together despite 575 man-games lost due to injury.
Seems like the Bruins have a long history of extremely short leashes on some coaches. Fred Creighton comes to mind as another odd example. Probably Jacobses/Sinden related, but who knows.
 

The Panther

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I don't know if Terry Crisp deserved to be fired from Calgary or not (some players clearly didn't like him, but that's a coach's life), but has any NHL coach ever been fired, within a few seasons of being hired, with a better winning result?:
1987-88: 1st overall
1988-89: 1st overall (+ Stanley Cup)
1989-90: 2nd overall

Summer 1990: Fired

The team was .669 during his three seasons -- best in the NHL. And in the playoffs were .595.
 

The Panther

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Oilers' fan will point to current Sabres' coach Ralph Krueger, who was fired by Craig MacTavish... by Skype (!)... after the short 2012-13 season... for no apparent reason. Krueger had just had the best result in about five years of any Oilers' coach, and was known for good rapport with young and European players, such as the Oilers were "developing" (or so we thought) then. Hell, Krueger even made Nail Yakupov look pretty good.

Fortunately, MacTavish saved face by replacing Krueger with.... the worst head-coach in Oilers' history:
Eakins_to_Spec.gif
 

Kyle McMahon

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His contract expired. Didn’t seem to be bad blood, though Francois Giguere did say publicly that they wanted to play more aggressive hockey going forward.

Yeah I guess a non-renewal isn't quite the same as a firing, but still surprising. My impression of the Avalanche those years was that two playoff series wins was as good as you could reasonably hope for with that roster. Quenneville had a pretty good reputation around the league as well. I will say though, nobody could have imagined he'd go on to put together a probable HOF career over the next decade. Quite the turn of fortune.
 

The Panther

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Mar 25, 2014
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Wasnt Eakins held in very high regard before breaking into the NHL?
Yes, he was. If the Oilers hadn't hired him, I think there were a couple of other teams that would have made offers.

Maybe I'm being too hard in calling him "the worst head-coach in Oilers' history". In fairness to Eakins, he got over his disastrous "swarm defence" concept after his first couple of months on the job. Unfortunately, just as he was starting to figure out NHL coaching, a rift had opened up in the Oilers' locker-room between the millennial spoiled brats and the overpaid-bum veterans who thought they knew best because.
 

BigBadBruins7708

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Dec 11, 2017
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Claude Julien his first go around with the Habs. Gainey wanted to bring in his boy, Guy Carbonneau, and Julien was the collateral damage.

Claude again in Jersey as well, didn't even get a full season.

Has them at 47-24-8, 107 points with 3 games to go and is inexplicably fired in the final week of the season.

Now as a Bruins fan I'm thrilled they did because it immediately led to him coming here...but what was Lou smoking?
 

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