Let’s just say Dave Cameron’s experience should give the next guy in line pause.
Pause, that is, to wonder whether Eugene Melnyk is an owner for whom a coach really wants to work. If he’ll only give Cameron, who he has known for 15 years, just 137 games behind the bench before giving up on him without even a courtesy call, well, that’s something the entire coaching fraternity will have noticed.
But there are only 30 of these coveted jobs (probably 31 in June when Las Vegas gets the nod) and hundreds of coaches. So as long as supply far outstrips demand, there will be coaches who take jobs knowing they may be working for somebody who sees starting the backup goalie in the home opener as a fireable offense and steams about it for an entire season. The Ottawa Senators have had six head coaches in the past nine seasons, and have suddenly turned into an NHL coaching graveyard.
So where will Melnyk and new general manager Pierre Dorion turn this time?
After mostly hiring head coaches without NHL head coaching experience over the last 25 years, Dorion said “ideally” the next bench boss will have that on his resume in addition to a “commitment to have our players play defence.”
While the Sens GM says essentially cost is no barrier, the team has never spent heavily on coaching and Melnyk has made it clear that throwing more money at the hockey club isn’t the answer, in his mind.
Indeed, the winner of this coaching derby may be the coach willing to chop his asking price to fit Melnyk’s budget.
That narrows the field. Taking Dorion at his word, then, he won’t be looking at top minor league coaches like Travis Green or Sheldon Keefe, or a highly-regarded NHL assistant like Lane Lambert.
You can probably also scratch Rikard Gronborg off the list. Gronborg will coach Erik Karlsson with Team Sweden at the World Cup in September and work alongside Daniel Alfredsson, who is one of the team’s consultants. Those connections, however, probably wouldn’t be enough to push Ottawa in the direction of hiring a Swedish coach.
Three names jump to the top of the list: Former Minnesota Wild coach Mike Yeo, former Colorado/Dallas/Vancouver/Los Angeles head coach Marc Crawford and former Tampa Bay Lightning coach Guy Boucher.
Yeo has a year left on his contract with the Wild, while Crawford and Boucher spent this season coaching in Switzerland and have made it clear they want back into the NHL by declaring themselves free agents. Crawford returned to Europe this week after spending 10 days checking out the North American job market.
Randy Carlyle and Ron Wilson are out there, too, but neither has a reputation for commitment to team defence in the way Dorion was speaking — or at least neither was able to make that happen when they coached Ottawa’s provincial rival, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Add Todd Nelson, Todd Richards and Kirk Muller to the list of former head coaches looking for another shot.
John Stevens, an assistant with the Los Angeles Kings, is probably due another head coaching opportunity, although his future may be linked to how long Darryl Sutter wants to coach. Kevin Dineen had one shot in Florida and is an assistant to Joel Quenneville now in Chicago.
So that’s a pretty long short list.
Crawford, with 1,151 regular season games and another 83 in the playoffs, is by far the most experienced of the candidates and received a great deal of exposure in Zurich this season for coaching Auston Matthews, the likely first overall pick in this summer’s draft.
He hasn’t coached in the NHL since 2011 after being fired following a 95-point season with the Dallas Stars. Interestingly, it was Dorion’s father, Pierre Sr., who recommended Cliff Fletcher hire Crawford to his first pro job with the St. John’s Maple Leafs in the early 1990s.
Yeo, meanwhile, had top-10 defensive teams in his final two full seasons with Minnesota. That said, when he was fired this season, the Wild appeared likely to miss the playoffs but turned the season around under his replacement John Torchetti.
Boucher has only 195 games of NHL coaching experience, and hasn’t coached in the league since 2013.
Where will the Sens turn? It’s a fascinating question. The winning candidate, you have to believe, will be the one who agrees with Melnyk’s dreamy assessment that this Ottawa squad has the talent to be a “top five or six” club in the NHL, and is comfortable working with a rookie GM and a limited player budget.
Looked at another way, perhaps you could argue Melnyk has an insatiable drive to win, and that 2007 gave him a taste of success that he desperately wants again.
Changing coaches like underwear, it’s fair to say, probably isn’t the way to do it.
