Tags
#BecauseItsTheCup, #IsItOctoberYet, Adam Larsson, Adam Oates, Damien Brunner, Dan Bylsma, Devils, GM, Jaromir Jagr, Lamoriello, Lou Lamoriello, National Hockey League, NHL, NJ, NJDevils, Patrik Elias, Peter DeBoer, Scott Stevens
Haven’t posted in a while — sorry to my 3 loyal fans out there.
Anyway, the New Jersey Devils fired head coach Peter DeBoer late last week. It was a move that almost came out of necessity for GM Lou Lamoriello, who has made 13 coaching changes over the past 15 seasons. When you think about that, it’s kind of ridiculous.
This season has not been pretty for “Jersey’s Team.” They’ve suffered countless injuries, multiple cases of the mumps and have been through numerous internal issues (i.e. Damien Brunner’s departure, dealing with a young group of defensemen, etc.). However, when you’re over 35 games into the season, haven’t made much progress and haven’t made it to the playoffs since the team’s magical Cup-run back in 2012, the only real option a team has is to make a coaching change. It’s a move that will hopefully spark the team and lead them to a decent second half of the season. I’m not one to root for a team to tank and give up on the season in hopes of landing a solid draft pick. The Devils had an early pick a few years ago and that hasn’t really helped them (Adam Larsson), so I’m more or less in favor of playing it out and seeing if they can somehow have the best second half of any NHL team in the league’s history… Although that is probably unlikely.
Saturday morning, Lamoriello announced that he would hold a press conference at 10:30am EST to announce his plans to replace DeBoer behind the bench. I don’t know if you’ll believe me if I told you this, but I actually almost perfectly predicted what he ended up deciding to do.
I was actually with a member of the Devils’ sales staff who happens to be a close friend of mine when I suggested that Lou would fire assistant coach Dave Barr, hire BOTH Adam Oates and Scott Stevens and coach the team from behind the bench in the interim. He thought my idea was crazy, but when it happened I kind of just sat there laughing for a few minutes. Lou’s idea, which happened to have also been my idea, IS crazy. It’s different. When else have you heard of a team putting multiple “co-coaches” behind the bench of a National Hockey League team? It’s weird, but in this case it makes sense.
Oates has always been a solid offensive-minded coach. His knowledge of how to run a Power Play is incredible, and he could hopefully help revitalize a Devils’ offense that simply doesn’t know how to put a puck in the back of the net.
Stevens is a Devils’ icon and has his jersey number retired up in the rafters at The Rock for a reason. He’s calm behind the bench, but if you remember him as a player, you know that he’ll bring some sort of intensity to this team that rarely shows emotion (outside of Jaromir Jagr and Patrik Elias).
Lamoriello is obviously experienced at being a General Manager and therefore building good hockey clubs. This also isn’t the first time he’s filled in behind the bench after removing a previous head coach of his duties. I’m interested to see how long he’ll “coach” for, but I can’t imagine him staying behind the bench for the rest of the season. Despite limited success in Washington, Adam Oates knows what he’s doing, and I can see him taking over officially as the team’s signal caller in the near future. It’s also possible that Lamoriello brought in Oates to groom Scott Stevens into being the Devils’ next head coach for the start of the 2015-15 season. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, I think this is the right decision for the team. While Lou Lamoriello has made some questionable decisions in constructing the current team’s roster, a change was necessary and bringing in a couple new leaders to guide this team should hopefully help [at least a little bit]. I do believe, though, that Lamoriello himself will need to be evaluated by the team’s new ownership group following the season. His player personnel decisions in terms of free agency, utilizing the trade market, managing his AHL squad, etc. have been interesting. I know Lou has been running the team forever, and some people may believe that he should be the GM until he literally dies, but I think it might be time to get rid of him as well. The Devils need to adapt to the fast-paced style of play that has come following the 2012 lockout, and right now, this team is not built to succeed.
For those speculating that the team will bring in a guy like Dan Bylsma to coach this team, I’m going to just tell you that he won’t succeed in Jersey. He was a great coach on a team with a ton of talent in Pittsburgh. The Devils lack that talent. They actually lack of lot of things.
As a fan, I’m ready for the 2015-16 season already. #IsItOctoberYet?