As the regular season comes to a close, there’s been a lot of focus on who should win the Norris Trophy. Analytically inclined analysts argue Erik Karlsson’s record-breaking season should make him a lock, while more traditional analysts are arguing for Drew Doughty – a great defenceman who’s never won the award.
While that’s a controversial topic, it’s not the toughest award to break down. That honour goes to the Jack Adams Award, which is often the easiest to get a handle on which way the voters are leaning.
The problem with evaluating coaches is how difficult it is to separate team strength from coach impact. Is Joel Quenneville a great coach, or just a good one with the league’s best core of players? Some would say the game-to-game adjustments made in the playoffs separates the real coaching talents, but that doesn’t factor into the Jack Adams.
In recent years, the Jack Adams has often gone to surprise teams that weren’t supposed to be very good, but often assigning credit for surprising results to coaching leads to silly-looking winners a year later; just look at recent winners:
The last three Jack Adams winners all rode very favourable percentages the year they won the award and followed it up with a disastrous season. Obviously, the tools we’re using to evaluate them need to change.
The Jack Adams is awarded to the coach adjudged to have contributed the most to their team’s success. That means there has to be a certain level of success, so the first filter applied should likely be that the coach has to make the playoffs. That seems obvious, but it would likely eliminate one of two coaches who deserves consideration in Philadelphia’s Dave Hakstol and Boston’s Claude Julien.
Hakstol has led a remarkable turnaround for the Flyers, while Julien has the Bruins clinging to a playoff spot despite having perhaps the worst blueline group in the NHL that has contributed to Tuukka Rask having the worst season of his career.
It’s clear from previous winners that being consistently good for a long time isn’t enough to get the attention of voters, so an exceptional bit of coaching has to occur. Therefore, year over year improvement could be worth considering. Let’s quickly look at both points in the standings and score-adjusted possession changes.
The biggest improvements in points for playoff teams — with the season yet to finish — are the Washington Capitals at +17, the Dallas Stars at +15, the Florida Panthers at +10, the Philadelphia Flyers at +8, and the San Jose Sharks at +7. In terms of score-adjusted possession (Corsi), the biggest improvements are the Anaheim Ducks at +1.8%, the Philadelphia Flyers at +0.9%, the Los Angeles Kings at +0.8%, the San Jose Sharks at +0.6%, and the Dallas Stars at +0.4%.
The teams that show up in both areas are the Stars, Flyers, and Sharks.
Another factor that could weigh in is adversity – a coach of the year candidate should have to manage his way through some of that. This factor would push Bruce Boudreau and Mike Sullivan to the forefront. On Dec. 12, Boudreau’s Ducks were way out of the playoffs and Sullivan was hired by Penguins, who were just on the edge. Now, both teams are solidly in the playoffs, with the Ducks pushing for a division title.
Sullivan has a great advantage over other coaches because he was a mid-season replacement, so we can directly compare his Penguins to Mike Johnston’s. Sullivan has rejuvenated the Penguins offensively to the point where they are leading the league in scoring chance production by a significant margin, with the gap between them and the next-best team (Capitals) as large as the gap between second place and 12th.
Boudreau is the coach who sticks out the most for me. The Ducks had seen success as a run-and-gun team in previous years, but when they struggled early, he changed them into a choking track team – and that’s astounding.
That versatility allowed the Ducks to avoid an epic collapse and rocket up the standings, but even more impressive than the even strength change are the Ducks’ special teams. Playing with the man advantage and shorthanded are areas that are much easier to separate coaching ability from skill on the roster. You can have an absurdly skilled team and a poor power play because you need good coaching in that area, and the Ducks happen to be the top NHL team on the power play and penalty kill.
You can look at a dream season for the Capitals under Trotz, the unexpected runs for Hakstol with the Flyers or Gallant with the Panthers, or Sullivan turning the Penguins around and make a case for those coaches.
But Boudreau has run a tour de force in Anaheim while being under enormous expectations from management. He’s hit on most of the big points and would be an excellent choice for this year’s Jack Adams.
