Vancouver Canucks fire Willie Desjardins

[Maplebeasts]

DimJim is next.

 

[D0ctorCool]

Not stupid at all. . The nucks wouldn't be making the playoffs with this lineup. . But Willie's player deployment was incredibly poor all year long

Call me crazy, but I thought the young guys like Baertschi, Horvat, Granlund, Stetcher all performed well under Willie.

 

[Nightrain]

Wow, didn't see this one coming , lol.

Firing the coach when the on ice talent is lacking is so lazy but not surprising.

 

[Hansen]

Call me crazy, but I thought the young guys like Baertschi, Horvat, Granlund, Stetcher all performed well under Willie.

Baertschi is arguably the only one who had a fire lit under his ass by Willie. Bo has just been chugging away despite getting shafted with line mates, lack of pp time, and role usage the last couple years. Granlund did decently this year but it was because he was thrust into essentially first line minutes and given every chance over someone like Horvat, despite being very useless for major parts of the season until the Sedins started setting him up. Stecher wasn't even on the team after having an amazing camp. They sent him down and even then it was a struggle for him through the first 20 as Willie continually dressed Larsen over him.

 

[Mrbubble]

I wouldn't be surprised if he did well somewhere else, he never had a good roster to begin with and still got decent results from them.

For the ¨irrationals¨ lineup decisions, every fans complains in every cities about these decisions when the team loses. If Mike Sullivan would have lost last year, every pens fans would have complain about Kessel on the 3rd line not being with Crosby or Malkin.

Im not saying Willie is a genius, im sure Canucks fans know what they are claiming but i would like to see this guy get a chance somewhere else before calling him atrocious. Give him a decent lineup + now he has experience. Why not Buffalo...

 

[Elias Pettersson]

Good move. Awful coach.

 

[Mr Positive]

Wow, didn't see this one coming , lol.

Firing the coach when the on ice talent is lacking is so lazy but not surprising.

the same could have been said of Boston last season. A lot of people said it was dumb to try and patch together a playoff season again. Just like Boston, Vancouver has a lot of good young players, and I don't blame them for wanting to win now, while they still have some quality veterans who are still very good players. There is a window for Vancouver to make a couple key moves, and maybe a new coach can get something out of this group.

 

[Eternalize]

The canucks have made two stupid moves in recent years 1) Hiring Mike Gillis as GM 2) Firing Desjardens today.

The man had nothing to work with and the team's current state is still the result of when Burke was GM.

Desjardens will be scooped up pretty quickly by a franchise that actually has depth to bottom.

What are you talking about? Gillis built the best team that the franchise has ever had. Sure it's partly his fault that the Canucks are were they are right now since he wasn't very good at drafting, but the guy was a master as far as signing his best players to good/great contracts. He was perfect for the job at the time, and he did well. He were also able to add the last pieces to the puzzle to create pretty much a complete team. His team was dominant and should have won the cup in 2011. And WD is a useless coach that shouldn't even be coaching in this league, so that just proves how uninformed you are if you actually believes that he's a good coach... He's an old dog that can't learn new tricks.

 

[BertCorbeau]

Isn't Greens' contract up this season?

Have to think he'll be retained and get a look here.

 

[stuffradio]

I wouldn't be surprised if he did well somewhere else, he never had a good roster to begin with and still got decent results from them.

For the ¨irrationals¨ lineup decisions, every fans complains in every cities about these decisions when the team loses. If Mike Sullivan would have lost last year, every pens fans would have complain about Kessel on the 3rd line not being with Crosby or Malkin.

Im not saying Willie is a genius, im sure Canucks fans know what they are claiming but i would like to see this guy get a chance somewhere else before calling him atrocious. Give him a decent lineup + now he has experience. Why not Buffalo...

Willie had a pretty good lineup in the year we played the Flames in the playoffs, but all Willie did was send out the lines in the order of 1-2-3-4 and didn't do any coaching.

 

[Guardian17]

Not surprising.

 

[The Extrapolater]

Willy's team skates hard, but his team has no structure. He is also poor with strategy. And he has little talent for teaching hockey. The next team picks him up better be ready for a coach who doesn't know how to hockey, but can get his guys skating hard.

 

[karnige]

Should have fired Benning/Linden.

agreed. no one can coach this mess right now

 

[Canucks5551]

People saying that the Canucks wouldn't have made the playoffs regardless of coaching and that the management are at fault for icing such a crappy lineup are missing the point. Desjardins is an awful coach regardless of all that and deserved to be fired for it. Hopefully Benning and co. are booted out the door soon too.

 

[WTG]

Willie is a bad coach
Benning is a bad gm
Linden is a bad president

Just because there is a narrative that Benning gave Willie a bad roster doesn't suddenly make Willie a good coach. He was garbage

 

[bleedblack93]

Back to back presidents trophies and a trip to the finals. Gillis put together a dominant team.

Yeah, but this is hockey's future. To some individuals here winning is getting the #1 overall pick. Gillis brought the Canucks very, very far from getting a #1 overall pick and is, therefore, a terrible GM in some people's eyes.

 

[hellstick]

His player deployment is maddening.

Just look at the numbers Loui Eriksson put up this year. He earned that 6 million contract by playing in the greasy areas on the power play in Boston. He was never given that same opportunity here. Some of that could be on the player, but Willie decided guys like Megna or Chaput were better. I mean, what?

 

[RandV]

I wouldn't be surprised if he did well somewhere else, he never had a good roster to begin with and still got decent results from them.

For the ¨irrationals¨ lineup decisions, every fans complains in every cities about these decisions when the team loses. If Mike Sullivan would have lost last year, every pens fans would have complain about Kessel on the 3rd line not being with Crosby or Malkin.

Im not saying Willie is a genius, im sure Canucks fans know what they are claiming but i would like to see this guy get a chance somewhere else before calling him atrocious. Give him a decent lineup + now he has experience. Why not Buffalo...

Nearly everyone's seen plenty of coaches in the NHL and there's always something fans will grumble about with even the best (eventually), but Willie really took it to a whole new level.

There are things he does really well, mainly to do with preparations and getting the players to play hard for him. After the Torts mess when Willie came onto the Canucks he was a miracle worker starting the season. So there probably is a team out there that he'd be a good fit for.

Personally I always thought a big problem with Willie is he's too old to be a rookie coach. It's the old 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' thing, he started his professional head coach career really late, and now that he's an NHL head coach at age 60 way to stubborn and set in his ways. That playoff loss to Calgary was a huge debacle.

 

[End on a Hinote]

 

[wonton15]

When you refuse to take Sutter off the first line powerplay and neuter the Sedins with Mike Chaput for 15+ games, you deserve to be fired

 

[Stickpucker]

Free willie!

 

[FZ23]

*sees mcdavid on the ice*

*sends out sbisa*

 

[Intangibos]

Linden and Benning are the main problems, but Willie is still not an NHL coach.

Nobody forced him to give Megna and Chaput big minutes / Sedin time. Before that it was Dorsett with the Sedins. Before that it was Vey getting huge PP time.

His roster decisions are unfathomably bad, maybe the worst I've ever seen. Even if he's a good guy who can get a lot of effort out of his players, he doesn't even break even with the absolutely horrid lineups he puts together. He may not have much to work with, but he has more than ****ing Megna to stick with the Sedins.

 

[BigTruzz]

He started our best player on the 4th line this season. Let that sink in.

 

[These Are The Days]

Can't say I'm surprised