On January 15, 2020, the Vegas Golden Knights announced that head coach Gerard Gallant and assistant coach Mike Kelly had been “relieved of their coaching duties.” In place of Gallant, Vegas hired former San Jose Sharks coach Peter DeBoer. Vegas fans didn’t take kindly to the news of Gallant’s firing.
To be fair, the NHL community didn’t seem to agree with the move. Gallant is a good coach and loved in the Vegas community. So, it should come as no surprise that emotion got the better of most. Before moving forward, I’m not a big fan of the DeBoer hire. He’s a decent coach I suppose, but he’s not the long term answer.
The reason a majority of coaches in any sport get fired is because their team is underperforming. Typically, the first thing general managers do is trade away players to acquire new talent. Since you can’t fire a player for playing poorly, you move on from them. Once you’ve assembled a high level of talent, the only place left to look if the team is still underperforming is the coaching.
In the case of the Golden Knights, last season was the major acquisition year. Signing Paul Stastny, trading for Max Pacioretty–and later: Mark Stone–the moves to acquire talent last year were made. There were injuries to factor into last season’s underperformance, but there’s also looking at an offense that didn’t consistently perform to its ability.
That despite having one of, if not the most, offensively talented top nines in the game. For context Cody freaken Eakin, a third line center might I add, twenty-two goals last season. Their division’s Arizona Coyotes didn’t have a single twenty goal scorer. Vegas had five, make it six if you count Mark Stone. That’s an entire top six of twenty goal scorers despite injuries and underperformance compared to the season prior.
Add in the fact that Marc-Andre Fleury was overworked to a terrible degree. During Vegas’ debut season in 2017-18, Fleury played a respectable forty-six games, going 29-13-4 with an 2.24 goals against average and a .927 save percentage. Not being overworked no doubt led to Fleury being healthier for the playoffs.
He went 13-7-0 with the same goals against and save percentage. That put Fleury at sixty-six games played throughout 2017-18. Now skip ahead to last season where despite injury, Flower played in sixty-one games during the regular season.
The blatant overworking of the franchise goalie without a good backup was a boneheaded move that didn’t pay off. Fleury went 35-21-5, 2.51 goals against and a .917 save percentage. You add fifteen more games from season to season and the other important stats saw a noticeable decrease.
Add in the seven playoff games and that puts Flower at sixty-eight games played without even getting out of the first round of the playoffs. This season in around sixty games, he’s already played in forty-two games. Once again, despite injury. It’s not even a debate that Fleury is being overworked, which is hurting the team.
All of this without mentioning how Vegas’ offence didn’t step up in games five and six which would’ve won them the series against San Jose last year’s playoffs. It’s clear that bad coaching decisions were to blame for the team not achieving their highest potential. Gallant being fired was a smart decision for Vegas moving forward, though DeBoer shouldn’t have been the replacement.
My point is evident by Vegas just playing well, not great since the coaching change. The NHL needs to stop recycling coaches and find new blood to bring in. Allowing for younger minds to bring new ideas to the game.
All it would do is diversify the NHL’s game and make things more interesting. Unfortunately, NHL GM’s aren’t brave enough to go all the way with it.