Post-Game Talk: Washington Hockey Team @ Actually it's a peninsula 7:07pm

I'm pretty sure even people who were fine with letting him go wouldn't argue that "realistically" the team wouldn't have been better under him than Reirden the following season if not both. That's just straining cherry picking to 11 to support a narrow personally driven agenda. Just compound and exacerbate every potential negative what if until the Caps only cup was crapped out by God and they should thank their lucky stars they weren't a lottery finisher under Ebil Trotz, Challenger of Supreme Leader Never Wrong Ted Leonsis plz hire me for your online defense force Ted

 

It was bad business for Ted and I’m pretty sure Barry didn’t want to get fired, would rather coach his 5 years and build somewhere else. The writing was on the wall for at least 12 months before their run IMO.

it’s time to let it go.

 

Ok Ted. Who cares about 2 prime years of the team flushed down the crapper when their chance of winning would have been higher than at any other point before that and all they had to do, for the first time ever, was stay the course?

Certainly not Caps fans.

Well at least we have Lavi here to give it one more old college try now that Ovechkin is going on 36. Turns out it's ok to pay him 4 million dollars a year

 

Sorry I'm a visionary.

 

we care....jeez.....but if Barry knew his days were numbered and wanted to move on what can you do?

 

If that's the case you probably don't need to go on a pr offensive detailing contract escalation clauses and other legalese fluff meant to obfuscate the matter of things and don't insistently point out that Barry wanted more money than they'd pay him when what he wanted was reasonable given the market.

I also don't buy that Barry wanted to uproot his family and move from a cup winning team to an organization that was circling the toilet before he got there if he had an equivalent contract presented to him.

All they'd need to do is come out and say is "we offered Barry 5/20 and he declined" and that would be the end of that. They'd have probably made back the money with a playoff run and not having to spend on years of full court press defending the move

 

Is it PR offensive to shed light on the truth? It’s an unusual circumstance for a winning coach to not return, so transparency makes sense to me.

If Barry didn’t believe he would finish out his next contract here, it certainly makes sense to go some place you KNOW you have a great shot of doing that.

He certainly knows how close he probably came to being fired at one point here.

 

if he wanted to be here i have high doubts leonsis would lowball him to then turn around 2 years later and give the money to peter

 

The Big Truth came down to they wouldn't pay him, otherwise the only sentence they'd ever need to say would have been "we matched/outbid and he declined". That's all Lou said when he lost Parise and all Poile said when he lost Suter and all Lou said when he lost Tavares and not a single fan of those teams blames their management for the split. The "transparency" was more akin to volunteering breadcrumbs of information to steer public opinion/scrutiny a certain way which is PR management 101.

 

Or Leonsis was forced into a corner by his cup primed veteran team falling on its face to lower seeds in displays worthy of the Adam Oates era, to Trotz the second time around no less.

 

someday maybe we’ll know for sure. Will you be so angry at Barry if it ends up not all being on Ted?

 

I think we all know that Barry Trotz is a straight forward man of principle. His relationship with Ted and the team was destroyed when the Caps insisted that he coach the last season of his contract without an extention. This means as a lame duck. He was insulted on a basic level. There was NO chance that he came back as coach after that.

We have a fairly recent example of how much this situation bothers sports coaches with Dusty Baker. He managed the last season of his contract and was vocal about being unhappy. He got cut loose.

You dont have to buy it but coaching in professional sports as a lame duck makes it almost impossible to manage professional players. You have no leverage and no power base.

 

If Trotz wins the Cup then we can revisit this discussion. Until then, he will continue to bomb out in the playoffs by playing coin flip hockey and continue to showcase his inability to make adjustments on the fly.

The Caps won in spite of Trotz, not because of him.

 

I think his contributions mattered....that’s unfair.

 

He did not want their money

 

I think it's important to acknowledge two things about this:
First, while I believe you're right about how Trotz felt, after the 16-17 season, Barry had done nothing to earn an extension so it was a bit unreasonable of him.
And second, Trotz had only one previous NHL head coaching gig before the Caps and it went on forever. His experience was one of near-openended employment regardless of outcomes, which is unusual. But I think it colored his view of the DC job. He maybe thought it would be the same, but the Caps had higher expectations and weren't willing to commit without results.

The reality of his contract was that it was results-based. But then when he finally delivered he was, as you say, already embittered, and chose not to honor the deal he'd made because of it.

 

He coached them to a cup, against 4 difficult opponents no less. Jackets were the gritty first round team that swept Tampa the following year and gave us fits. Pittsburgh was Pittsburgh. Tampa was Tampa. Vegas was a team that for the first time in history no one in the league had a read on and cut its way through a solid WCF.

That's not something that happens when you're seen by players as a lame duck. If you want to see how teams act with lame ducks look at the team under Reirden last year. They clearly followed him into battle instead lying down and taking the L after Columbus was up 2-0 and had just as much of an opportunity to bend over for Pittsburgh as the last 3 times they faced them.

People in power have egos and clash. They also generally get over it and patch things up when the landscape changes and bigger things are on the line because they understand each other. Here not doing that cost us our 2 best chances at the cup before 8 turned 35. Yeah Reirden was the initial plan. You know what wasn't the plan? Winning the cup that year. That should have been enough to make an earnest attempt to keep him.

 

Did they offer it?

 

There is not one regular poster here that would have supported extending Barry Trotz before the 17-18 season. The two options were firing him or having him work out his contract. This is part of my point. Noone would have supported the only legit way to keep that coach while slamming the team for not keeping him

 

If it turns out Ted did everything in his power to keep him that one would expect then yeah he'd be absolved. Doesn't seem likely.

It's not about being angry, it's about sabotaging your best chance to win more cups and possibly the best chance the organization will have in the next 50 years and playing it off. It's not gonna hit you until Ovechkin is retired and you're going through the 2018 memorabilia and it rolls into 2019 and you'll be sitting there being like what the f***

 

Did anything happen towards the end of the 2017-2018 season that could have led a "regular poster" to reconsider?

 

Trotz told Tortorella after the Columbus series out on the ice where he knew cameras were on him that HE WAS OUT OF THERE. His entire roster knew the truth all along. Trotz embarrassed his bosses and caused a distraction going to the second round. He was bitter and angry. If you think after that both sides wash it away and then do a $25m deal, thats up to you.

 

It's cute that you don't realize how many posters here know exactly what decades without a Cup feels like. And that's why for a lot of us there is literally nothing could ever sour the memory of 2018.

 

Why are we discussing this? He’s gone and I do believe extending him for the next 4 years wouldn’t bring us the cup. We might have done better in the regular season and won a round, but not the cup. Having Lavi is much better.

 

Not after that, but after something else.

I mean I guess what we got was fine too. No "distractions" going into the second round 2 years running