Overtime thoughts

We can’t blame David Carle, the Denver Pioneer head coach, for not leaving his current job to transition to the NHL because of the current lifespan of coaches in the new NHL. Rod Brind’amour is the fourth-longest-tenured head coach in the National Hockey League and was hired by Carolina in 2018. Carle, who is coming off back-to-back world junior gold medals behind the bench of the United States team, is a name that many NHL teams are keeping their eyes on if he chooses to leave Denver. The Anchorage, Alaska, product has led the Pioneers to two National championships in his first six years as a college head coach, becoming only the 20th coach to win multiple championships.

I find it outrageous that every time a bottom team struggles, the first person who gets blamed is the coach. Maybe we should look at the current roster and some of the moves the general manager did or didn’t make to put the team in that situation. Jared Bednar struggled in his early years in Colorado, but if you look at their roster, they were not expected to be good. It took until his sixth season as a head coach for Bednar to take his team over the 100th-point mark in a season. Thankfully management stayed patient and a few years later when the GM made moves to bring in guys to help them win, and guys like Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen gained experience they finally got over the hump and lifted Lord Stanley. 

It seems that the way the league is trending, coaches are expected to win no matter what the lineup looks like. Paul Maurice, one of the best coaches in the league who helped the Florida Panthers win the Cup last season, struggled in his early years, making the playoffs only three times in his first 10 seasons. This is just one example that proves that coaches, like players, need time to adapt and mature.

Luke Richardson, whom the Chicago Blackhawks hired before the 2022 season, inherited a lineup lacking talent, experience, and culture. Nonetheless, 108 games after picking 1st overall in the 2023 draft, meaning that they had one of the worst records in the league, the Blackhawks chose to part ways with him. A team that had no expectations of winning was not winning, and somehow the blame gets put on the coach while management did nothing to help the roster on the ice, being sellers every trade deadline, making no strides to become contenders.

Coaches don’t necessarily have time to come in and be culture changers since turning the direction of a team around takes time, meaning that certain coaches get hired and their primary focus is on the quick fixes. So many times we see a new coach come in and give a team a new wind for half a season, but very rarely does it lead to long-term success.