Image courtesy of Canadian Press
While you’re taking a breather from nightly playoff hockey action – the NHL loves to sprinkle in their annual award nominations. It steers the eyeballs away from asking whether Jordan Eberle is truly playing deplorable hockey (unlike a bunch of other Oilers) or if Randy Carlyle has simply conceded McDavid is really good with his famous “white gloves” comment.
The white ones must be the extra skilled gloves I guess.
Recently one award fans and, occasionally, the writers aren’t quite sure what to make of is the Jack Adams award. The Jack Adams award ,awarded to the league’s best coach for the season, has become the NHL’s feel-good story du jour. A chance for the hockey community to celebrate when a bunch of ragtag, lunch-pail players battle hard enough in the corners and exceed everyone’s expectations with their resiliency and sticktoitiveness to only squirm into the playoffs. It makes your heart all gooey.
A week ago now Todd McLellan, the eerily mellowed John Tortorella, and Mike Babcock were nominated for coach-of-the-year. The only winner from the group is Torts from 2003-04, an understandable winner. But the fact that Mike-50-million-dollars-baby-Babcock hasn’t been honoured is surprising. And by surprising, I mean incorrect at this point.
The 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings won the President’s Trophy with 115 points, including 54 regular season wins en route to the Stanley Cup. This would’ve been a great chance to hand Mike Babcock the award. Babcock was also deserving the season before, but they only had 113 points though, which barely tied the President’s Trophy winning Buffalo Sabres mark. Maybe even the season before that one (05-06) where the Red Wings won 58 games and put up 124 points too…or even 2008-09…. although to be fair, Detroit slipped to second in the western conference that season. Unacceptable.
There are plenty of deserving seasons for Babcock. The issue is the NHL broadcasters who vote on the award narrow in on the of-the-year portion of (coach-of-the-year). Which is fine to some extent. But recently, their selections fall into the category described above: the overachieving team.
Or as clever fans point out, next year’s regression team.
Per the NHL, the Jack Adams award is given to the…“NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success.” The wording invites interpretation, so you can justify many different choices. It’s led to the situation where three consecutive Jack Adams award winners (Paul MacLean, Patrick Roy, and Bob Hartley) have all been coincidentally fired in messy instances merely a couple seasons later. But the messiness didn’t stop with the winners from 2013-2015 as the Florida Panthers proved this year.
Last year’s Florida team of high-flying youngsters and likable veterans like Jagr and Luongo were led by Gerard Gallant, runner-up to Barry Trotz for the coaching title. The hockey nerds with their predictive statistics pegged the Panthers to fall back to earth in the 2016-17 season, during the 2015-16 season. Sure enough, the Panthers regular-season division crown lumped plenty of expectations from the mainstream media their direction. Coupled with a mediocre start (11-9-1) Gallant was soon fired.
The reactionary firing of Gallant seemed strange. He was still the same guy with the same system in place, just lumped with injuries to Barkov and Huberdeau, his best two forwards. When going through a tough start like they were, shouldn’t the dialogue from the team been, “We’re lucky to have Gallant in Florida to help us survive the tough start since he’s one of the best coaches in the league.” I guess not.
To repeat, Gallant was the second best coach from a season ago. Twenty-one games into the season he’s fired.
The Calgary Flames and Bob Hartley followed a similar script. After leaping into the playoffs in 2014-15, Hartley was fired the next season after a regression of twenty points, matching a previous total. Isn’t it more likely Hartley wasn’t overly fantastic for one season, but instead got a few bounces, hot players and they collectively overachieved?
These coaches don’t suddenly get worse after winning the Jack Adams. Did Bob Hartley quit yelling at his team to come back from two-goal deficits in the third period to win in overtime in 2016 compared to before? I don’t think so.
It’s disingenuous for the league to have a circumstance like the 2014-15 season where Bob Hartley wins the Jack Adams by a mile, yet Bruce Boudreau, Michel Therrien, and Ken Hitchcock placed 13th, 14th, and 15th in voting despite leading their teams to division championships. It doesn’t add up.
The coaching award refuses to recognize the best in coaching.
Maybe as fans, we have the wrong point-of-view about the award. Although it’s hard to blame people for thinking the best coaches in the league should be given greater weight for the only coaching trophy, instead of the Roys or MacLeans.
Is hindsight 20-20? Yes, but the point is fans/analysts know whether these coaches are in charge of unsustainable situations. Why is unsustainability valued more in coaching awards than solid structured play and consistency?
For no other reason than Mike Babcock is the coach of the overachieving young-gun filled Toronto Maple Leafs – he should win the award. But outside of the fact he’s one of the best coaches in the world, won a Stanley Cup, and two Olympic golds, he’ll win because he’s finally taking the right path to Jack Adams victory.
Do more than people expect with a “limited” group.
But if the Leafs were coached by Joe Blow or, basically, not Mike Babcock, would his job be on the line if the Leafs miss the playoffs next year by ten points? Looking purely at recent track records, you would have to say it would be.
Joel Quenneville hasn’t won the Jack Adams since joining the Chicago Blackhawks. And frankly, that won’t change anytime soon unless the Blackhawks do something miraculous moving forward. Like, I don’t know, maybe having to change the makeup of your team every year while synthesizing role players with your proven core and still winning the division and playing at a high enough level that people don’t even notice a difference isn’t good enough for a nomination.
Why does Orval Tessier (82-83’s proud champ) have more Jack Adams’ as Blackhawks coach than Joel Quenneville? The closest Quenneville came was in 2012-13 when the ‘Hawks went 36-7-5 during the truncated lockout season. Winning 75% of your games is pretty good. Quenneville – who is second all-time in coaching wins by the way – earned his only title in 2000 with the St. Louis Blues.
From a historical point of view, it’s nice to have an award that represents the coaches. But why are overachievers over-represented, while lessening the impact of the best coaches of all-time? If you’re going to have an award for coaches, why don’t the best coaches consistently get it?
Maybe these aforementioned coaches prove their worth as time goes on, revitalizing their careers. It will be interesting to see how the triumvirate of Paul MacLean-Patrick Roy-Bob Hartley is looked on moving forward. Will Paul MacLean get another job after his stint on the Ducks bench? Will Hartley, who won a cup in 2001, get another call back into the NHL? Will Patrick Roy be given another chance in an environment where his former teammates aren’t the ones hiring him?
Time will tell.
Last season the award correctly itself as Barry Trotz, by all accounts, a mensch, won his first Jack Adams over 1200 games into his NHL career.
Luckily for Babs, the broadcasters won’t miss this chance to make things right this time around. Right?
