“We’re just not getting it done. We haven’t been winning,” Harris said. "There wasn’t anything specific. You guys know the record. You guys know everything that’s been done. There were a lot of positives, but it was time to go in a different direction.”
“There’s nothing really different. It’s more a function of, we don’t do these things lightly,” Harris said. "We take a long-term approach. But the reality is, we’re now in our fifth season (with Shero) and we’ve made the playoffs once. And it was just time for a change.”
I decided to dig these quotes up from Harris from the day Shero was fired.
So hypothetically if say we miss the playoffs the next two years, that's 3 years of no playoffs under Fitzgerald (who was Shero's right hand man) and he will have started out with more than Shero had to work with.
And the only reason I bring these up is his comments from yesterday or whatever day that was (it was this week), seems like he doesn't expect to really make a whole lot of noise this year.
Firing Ruff is something that really could go either way for Tom. If he fires Ruff now, that's not gonna look good on him if we don't improve this year, nor next year again. He will have fired a coach and it will have made no difference and it probably will have cost the organization money on paying the rest of Ruff's deal and his staffs deals, as well the new coaches deals.
But if he waits too long to fire Ruff, he might be out the door not too far behind him.
Either way, I think Ruff is safe for this year, next year not so much. If we bottom out this year and finish last in the Metro, I'm starting to think Ruff might not be here at all next year and the same goes for several of his assistants, if not all of them. Nas is probably gone just because of how long he's been here, Recchi is probably gone for being Ruff's lackey that's come in at the same time. Maybe Chris Taylor goes too?
If we go on a really BIG losing streak, Ruff might be gone this year, but like it or not, I feel he's safe for the remainder of this year, but his security for next year has taken a hit IMO. If you would have asked me before this skid, I said Ruff is probably here for all of this year and probably all of next year and gone at the end of next season, if we fail to make the playoffs either of these two years.