MONTREAL—There’ll be plenty of time to weigh the pros and cons of Randy Carlyle’s hiring as Maple Leafs coach.
When the Leafs played against the Ducks in November — this before Carlyle was made a coaching free agent after a Nov. 30 firing — Lupul made no bones about his distaste for the way Carlyle treated him in the wake of a back injury that cost Lupul the bulk of a year on the injured reserve.
Make no mistake: Left wingers or right wingers, centremen or defencemen, few if any of the athletes the Toronto dressing room were rejoicing at news that Carlyle will be behind Toronto’s bench when they face the Canadiens on Saturday night. When word broke that Brian Burke had flown here from a sports conference in Boston to deliver the news to Wilson, his old college pal, sources close to the team said the immediate and overwhelming hope of players was that Wilson’s successor would be Dallas Eakins, the current coach of the Toronto Marlies, the Leafs’ AHL farm team. Eakins, a former journeyman NHLer, has built a reputation as a skilled dressing room leader who demands much of his players while listening to their concerns.
The players’ second choice, the unscientific consensus seemed to suggest, was current Leafs assistant Scott Gordon who was previously head coach of the New York Islanders. A distant third choice was Carlyle, whose reputation for a not-so-sunny disposition promises to make Torontonians look back longingly on Wilson’s condescending detachment during his nearly four seasons with the Leafs.
What is a fan to make of that? So long as Carlyle can find a way to pull the Leafs out of an ongoing death spiral that has seen them lose 10 of their past 11 games, perhaps it means nothing. Carlyle has never been what’s commonly termed a players’ coach. But Carlyle, who reportedly signed a deal for the remainder of this season and three more, has had the ultimate success behind an NHL bench, winning a Stanley Cup with the Ducks in 2007, back when Burke was Anaheim GM.
