As the post-Gerard Gallant Florida Panthers continue to sink in the standings, you have to feel for Tom Rowe, the guy seemingly caught in the middle of all this.
Sure, Rowe is the GM and that’s the person who generally decides to fire the coach. But as he said in an interview with Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman days after Gallant was let go, this call was made by the owner, Vinnie Viola, after the Panthers blew a lead to Carolina in the second period.
“Vinnie and I talked about it after the second, (and I said) let’s get through the rest of the road trip, let’s maybe evaluate in the middle of December and then if things aren’t going good and you want to make the decision to let Gerard go then that’s probably the better time to do it.
“But obviously the decision was made sooner.”
And now here is Rowe, behind Florida’s bench taking over for a beloved coach who led the franchise to the best regular season in its history. Since he took over for Gallant, Rowe’s Panthers have struggled to score and struggled to win. The latest, a 5-1 loss in Minnesota, in which starter Roberto Luongo was pulled.
Outscored 24-14 in the Rowe era the Panthers, who were once thought capable of challenging for the Atlantic Division title, are now just three points out of the Eastern Conference basement. The interim coach lashed out at his players during one stoppage in play…
And again challenged them to be better in a post-game interview.
“Guys have got to understand if you’re going to play in the National Hockey League you gotta show up every day you can’t show up when you feel like it,” Rowe said.
Rowe also spoke about his team’s power play, which is 2-for-28 on his watch and last place in the league with a 12.6 per cent conversion rate.
“It’s struggling no doubt about that it’s at the bottom of the league and we gotta fix it,” Rowe said. “And we have the personnel here to do it, but if we’re not going to get it done with the guys we have then we gotta find some other people who are going to come out and execute and play a more simple power play. We’re getting too fancy and not shooting the puck enough.”
It’s hard to imagine that Rowe’s job would be in jeopardy, since he has bought right in to the “analytics experiment” ongoing in Florida that led to the dismissal of Gallant and the “demotion” of former GM Dale Tallon, who built the team that had so much success last season.
And by the usual Corsi measures, the Panthers are still playing well. They have a 52.41 CF% on the season, which is still fifth-best in the league, and behind just Boston, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Nashville. Even in the eight games since the Gallant firing Florida’s 5-on-5 CF% is fifth-best at 54.98% according to Corsica.Hockey and as Rowe said, they again outshot their opponent Tuesday night 30-22.
But the wins aren’t there and in the end, that’s the metric that matters most.
