More than any other professional sport, the NHL is a results-oriented business. And that’s saying something.
Seven head hockey coaches were fired during the 2023-24 season. Think about that. Almost a quarter of the league’s top guys got the ax before the end of the campaign.
Over the last five years, 25 head coaches have been dismissed during the season. The NFL, NBA, and MLB had 32 over that same stretch combined.
The bench bosses let go by NHL teams aren’t exactly slouches, either. Craig Berbue is a good example. St. Louis gave him the boot in December, four years after he helped deliver the Blues their first Stanley Cup. St. Louis was one game below .500 when Berube was let go, this after missing the playoffs last season. But the Blues had made the postseason the other three years after Berube won that Cup.
None of that bodes well for Derek Lalonde.
Nearing the end of his second season in Detroit, Lalonde’s Red Wings are in a dogfight for the playoffs. They’re on track to improve by just a handful of wins and points over 2022-23, which is disappointing enough in a vacuum. But when those underwhelming results are considered in context with the $60 million Detroit spent in additions this offseason, the situation seems far more serious.
The Red Wings may still end up breaking their seven-season Stanley Cup Playoff drought. There’s no doubt that would lower the temperature of Lalonde’s seat.
But it shouldn’t.
The difference between qualifying for the postseason and not is likely to be a couple of points. Is that really enough to save someone’s job?
Think of it this way. Does Lalonde seriously deserve another year just because Detroit makes the playoffs, only to be immediately chased out?
All of that, though, is immaterial. Lalonde’s future with the Wings should have been decided (read: ended) a month ago, when his team went into a pitiful tailspin during the homestretch for the second consecutive season.
In mid-February, the Wings put together a six-game winning streak, something the franchise hadn’t done in five years. Lalonde and Co. immediately followed that up with a seven-game skid. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances – specifically, Dylan Larkin missing three weeks with a lower-body injury. But Lalonde said himself his captain’s absence wasn’t responsible for the nosedive.
At an eerily similar juncture the season prior. Lalonde’s Wings had climbed into playoff contention just in time for back-to-back games at the Senators, with whom Detroit was vying for a postseason berth. Not only did the Wings lose both of those pseudo-play-in games, they weren’t competitive. Detroit lost 6-2 and 6-1.
It was the beginning of a six-game losing streak. Sound familiar?
The utter dejection was so profound that Steve Yzerman elected to sell at the trade deadline, effectively giving up the ghost on the season.
How can a team bring back a coach who oversaw complete, abject collapses in crunch time in back-to-back years? How could the general manager giving that coach another season be taken seriously when essentially co-signing for consecutive swoons?
Say the Red Wings do bring Lalonde back in 2024-25. Say they get off to a good start, too. What would it matter? Who would believe in them? Detroit could be in the driver’s seat for the President’s Trophy all season, and everyone – media, fans, and, most importantly, the Wings themselves – would be waiting for the bottom to fall out right around March.
That’s why Lalonde has to be fired. His own players obviously don’t buy what he’s selling. Not anymore, at least.
Everyone knows that, in sports, there’s what should happen and then there’s what will happen. I fully expect Lalonde to be back behind Detroit’s bench next season, if only because it’s obvious Yzerman is under exactly zero pressure. The guy is seriously untouchable.
It’s Year 5 of the Yzerplan and there still hasn’t been a playoff appearance. There also hasn’t been any serious criticism or accountability for Yzerman from the media or fanbase here. The guy has more job security than close personal friends of Shohei Ohtani had until March 2024.
Yzerman isn’t going to do anything unless he wants to. (See: 2024 NHL trade deadline.) He has carte blanche and infinite capital with Detroit fans thanks to things he did as a player 30 years ago, and he knows it. The guy is so secure that, as his team hemorrhaged playoff positioning, he had the unbridled balls to explain his trade deadline inactivity away by saying that Detroit is still rebuilding. In Year 5. I know the guy was instrumental in building a dynasty in Tampa, but his lack of urgency with this Wings reclamation project is starting to feel awfully reminiscent of Ken Holland. You know, the guy who infamously said, with a straight face, that NHL rebuilds take 10 or 15 years.
Yzerman’s seat ought to be awfully warm. But this is Detroit, where loyalty always comes first. And making matters worse, we’re not talking about some under-talented-but-gritty, try-hard guy who embodies that Detroit Versus Everybody® victim mentality. This is The Captain, Stevie Y, an all-time great who has actual stats and hardware. Jerry Jones is more likely to fire his son from the Cowboys’ front office than Chris Ilitch is to oust Yzerman. It’s not even worth talking about.
But compare Detroit’s roster to the teams it’s log-jammed with on the brink of the playoffs. I get it — the Wings don’t have any legitimate star power. Their best ice-tilter is a 35-year-old who has more metal in his hips than my grandma. But Washington? Philadelphia? Buffalo?. Detroit has more potential than all of those teams, and yet the Wings haven’t been able to create any real separation.
That’s on coaching, plain and simple.
So the next time Lalonde is throwing his players under the bus after the Wings make a series of Bad News Bears-come-to-hockey mistakes and lose to a team they’re clearly better than, ask yourself if things would really be any different with another year of seasoning.