The Colorado Avalanche Hockey Club announced today that Joel Quenneville will not return to coach the team next season.
"After meeting with Joel, we mutually agreed that the best decision for both parties involved is to go separate ways," said Avalanche Executive Vice President & General Manager Francois Giguere. "On behalf of the organization, I want to thank Joel for his years of service and wish him the best in his coaching career."
More to come.
UPDATE: As PPPacknowledged in the diaries, this has major implications for the world's dwindling kitten population. Obviously, with the departure of Q, we will have to retire the Power Play Kittens meme, and come up with something equally vicious and mean-spirited for next season.
UPDATE 2:Adam Proteau at the Hockey News says Coach Q will probably have no trouble finding a new bench to stand behind in the NHL. Good luck to him.
Giguere doesn't have a timeline for when he'll hire a new coach, but he does have one requirement -- an up-tempo philosophy. He wants the Avalanche to play with more speed.
"We've always been an organization that's been a puck possession, upbeat, high tempo, high energy, attacking [team]," Giguere said. "That's the way the Avalanche have always played and I think that's the way I foresee this team continuing to play."
As evident from the comments, it's clear that we're all extremely happy with Giguere right now. It's obvious that our concerns this season were shared by him every step of the way. We all knew Coach Q's style of coaching wasn't right for the Colorado Avalanche, and the general manager was right there with us.
Sandy Clough, please feel free to email Mile High Hockey (or create a user account) and let us know how stupid we are.
UPDATE 4: Adrian Dater got some comments from Patrick Roy about the departure of Quenneville, suggesting that perhaps he could be a candidate for the job. Says Roy:
"Am I interested? Right now I am very happy in Quebec with the Remparts. I really haven't thought about one day making the move to the NHL. Right now this is only a rumor or speculation," Roy told RDS.
But Roy seemed to leave a little wiggle room that he might be interested.
"We'll see what's going to happen. Francois Giguere will certainly have a list of candidates that he would like to meet."
I'm thinking Patrick Roy is probably 1) not ready to coach in the NHL and 2) not right for the Avalanche at this point, but who knows what could happen? I'm not a big fan of putting Roy behind the bench, whatever that's worth.
UPDATE 5: Bernie Lincicome finishes off his last bit of credibility with this howler of an article, which includes such gems as this:
In a hockey season with enough man-hours lost to injury to overcrowd an outpatient ward, Quenneville was Mr. Fix-It, armed with spackle and spit, keeping a competitive team on the ice and, somehow, a reinterested Jose Theodore in goal.
It was one of the great coaching jobs of any year, and for that, Quenneville gets the door.
This little bit from Rick Sadowski over at the RMN wasn't posted until late yesterday afternoon so I didn't get a chance to link to it, but it's definitely becoming more clear that Avalanche general manager Francois Giguere is shopping his options. Or shoptions, if you will.
I spoke with Giguere the day after the season ended and, except for saying that he'd welcome Joe Sakic back "with open arms," wouldn't comment specifically about any player or coach.
Frankly, I didn't get the feeling that he was too enthusiastic about Quenneville.
...
Seems to me, if Giguere wanted Quenneville back, a new deal would already have been struck. And if Quenneville wanted out -- I don't really think this is the case -- it would have made sense for the two sides to make some kind of mutual announcement.
That hasn't happened, obviously, and now Giguere is heading to eastern Canada to check out the World Hockey Championship tournament.
Who's also in eastern Canada at the World Hockey Championship tournament? The sexiest of all the potential coaching prospects in the NHL: Pat Burns.
Now, Giguere could just be flying out there because he loves hockey and wants to catch a few games---or check out all the undiscovered talent on the Latvian team. But you have to assume he's scouting unemployed head coaches, and Burns has to be up there on his list.
Just so you know, Mile High Hockey will be sponsoring the Joe Sakic page at Hockey-Reference.com as soon as "the check" clears and the message is approved.
It's kind of pricey at first-glance but not really that expensive as far as advertising on heavily-trafficked sites goes.
Anyone who has ever been an athlete (or even just a casual game-player) knows that to avoid injury you need to increase your strength. The stronger you are, the less likely you'll be to get hurt.
I learned the hard way that bicycle racing had created a major discrepancy between my quad and hamstring muscles when I dislocated my knee in April 2007. One of the main reasons I got hurt was because the front of my leg was much stronger than the back, creating an imbalance that ended with me in surgery and then on crutches for a month. Live and learn, I suppose.
Another real-world example of the importance of strength training: the Colorado Avalanche.
I linked to it in the previous entry about Coach Q, but Adrian Dater's recent blog post (in which he joins the chorus of "nays" on Q's future with the team) was full of interesting tidbits. In response to a reader's comment that the team's entire training staff should be fired:
About the training staff thing: I’ve heard some whispers that the Avs are one of the most poorly trained teams in the league when it comes to weight training. I am not going to sit here and pretend I have any idea whether that’s true or not, but I will say that there were a few guys on the team I wouldn’t have sweated in an arm-wrestling match.
Now, nobody expects Marek Svatos or Jordan Leopold to become the next Rod Brind'Amour* or Raitis Ivanans, but some serious strength training would definitely come in handy for a team that spent much of the season being pushed around and/or sitting out due to injury.
Some injuries can't be prevented through training, like Ryan Smyth's shoulder separation. Getting hit full-speed into the edge of the boards is going to hurt, no matter what. But fatigue and stress-related problems like back spasms and groin pulls are all preventable through proper training. And by proper training, I'm not referring to the incorrect form of Milan Hejduk's squat routine, which resulted in a sore back and missed games early in the season.
The Avs need a solid program to increase their size, speed and strength. Not only would they be a harder team to push around on the ice, but it would also go a long way to preventing many of the injuries that sidelined them all season.
May I recommend the fine folks at Poliquin, who have a solid record of building strong hockey players:
When a coach loses the respect of his players and they start tuning him out, willfully ignoring his commands and decisions, it is said that he has "lost the room." Well, Coach Q lost the biggest room of all a while back when he lost the respect of the fans. But it's becoming more clear that Q lost the players, too.
Many fans and observers feel Quenneville deserves most of the blame, and it's true the Avs have been postseason underachievers the past three years, never advancing past the second round. But unlike the Nuggets players, whose frustration with Karl is well-documented, the Avs don't appear to hold Quenneville responsible.
"Desire to compete" is a thing tough to prove, and I don’t think this team lacked that. But, again, the constant switching up of personnel is something the fans - and some players, I can assure you - had ringing in my ears all year.
So it wasn't just Brunette that was frustrated by the lack of team chemistry caused by Quenneville's bizarre punishment and reward system of line changes. You would have to assume that there was a lot of grumbling in the locker room, just as there was grumbling among the fans. Anyone who has ever played or even just watched hockey for any extended amount of time knows the importance of team chemistry and how consistency fosters it and inconsistency weakens it. Those of us who complained about frequent changes didn't have to be in the Avalanche lineup to know they weren't helping anyone.
Not that we didn't take some serious heat for those observations (which are now proven to have been quite accurate and insightful).
Again, you have to come with something beyond saying that the coach is incompetent because he changes lines during games, but our standards aren't terribly high.
...
As to the line-juggling, tell me how that could conceivably affect the power play or penalty kill units? It would only have an impact in even-strenth, five-on-five situations, wouldn't it? An area in which the Avs have won the most favorable working margins across the entire league. I understand that this kind of analysis is rarely practiced by the "elite bloggers" because it requires the application of fairness, intelligence, and knowledge. None of which they have in abundance.
Ouch. That would have hurt a lot more if it hadn't been so ridiculously wrong. If something negatively affects the ability of the players on the ice to win games, it's important, and I think we can all rest assured that we had it right from the start. The players---we now know---agreed with us, and that's all that matters. Nobody but the players can win a game.
With the opening in Toronto, the obvious lack of loyalty among the players, and the painful sweep at the hands of the Red Wings, I'm really starting to doubt that Joel Quenneville will be back next season behind the Avalanche bench. Francois Giguere, the Avs' GM, is probably still pondering his options, but I'd imagine the Reign Of The 'Stache is just about over in Denver.
I named a few possible replacements in a recent post, but Mark Kiszla (sorry guys) offers a couple more:
Kevin Dineen, a former NHL player from a strong hockey family, has been touted as a man ready to make his mark as a coach. Grassroots supporters would shout it's time to see if George Gwozdecky could transfer his huge success at the University of Denver to the pro ranks.
For those of you who hadn't heard yet, the Toronto Maple Leafs fired their coach Paul Maurice today. Now, on its face, it wouldn't seem to have much of an impact on the Colorado Avalanche.
But it might.
We bloggers have use for actual journalists (even those disguised as bloggers), because journalists keep track of crap we usually forget---or don't even notice in the first place.
Well, what do you know, the head coaching position for the Toronto Maple Leafs just opened up.
And, what do you know, Joel Quenneville is without a contract to coach a team for next season right now. And, what do you know, the general manager of the Maple Leafs is Cliff Fletcher, the same man who gave Quenneville his first coaching job, as Marc Crawford’s assistant with the St. John’s Maple Leafs of the American Hockey League, in 1991.
And, gee, Quenneville grew up in Ontario as a big Leafs fan and was drafted by Toronto and started his NHL playing career there.
The coincidences are starting to pile up, folks. We could very well be seeing the process whereby our Coach Q leaves for Toronto.
Of course he qualifies it all as speculation, but he's got a point. The coincidences are indeed piling up.
Adrian, I knew we kept you around for a reason. Nice work, even if nothing comes of it.
While I've been focused this week on the Avalanche coaching situation, Draft Dodger over at In The Cheap Seats has been analyzing the free agency concerns facing each of the three player positions. What do the Avs do if Jose Theodore takes off? What about the limitations of Jeff Finger and Kurt Sauer? Should Colorado go after Brian Rolston? All these questions and more are pondered:
Worth noting in the comments section of the post on forwards is the brief discussion about possible captaincy replacements for Joe Sakic should he retire this summer (god help us all). My vote: a year (of mourning) with three alternates and no captain, and then Adam Foote if he's still around in 2009-10.
UPDATE: And please, before you waste your time trying to argue about whether or not Joe Sakic is a good leader (seriously, Thomas, please), remember that none of us has ever been in the locker room, on the team, to experience his impact as a captain. If you're not convinced by the fact that he's been a team captain for more than a decade and has never had a negative thing said about his leadership ability by anyone who has played with him (Mark Messier can't say that), then nothing will convince you. But please, don't argue about it. It's wearing me out.
I will close the comments off completely because the Net Nanny has a short leash.
UPDATE 2: Comments closed. Don't try to take the argument to other posts, either.
Denver has become the exception to the rule in pro sports. For whatever reason, local coaches are immune from the pressure felt by their contemporaries in other markets.
They say they're under pressure to win, but are they? If they don't win, it's not like they lose their jobs. Maybe they don't get a new company car or a ringing endorsement in the newspapers, but they don't lose their jobs.
The last coach of one of Denver's major pro sports franchises to get the gas? That would be the Avs' Tony Granato, who was replaced by Joel Quenneville in 2004 and promptly hired as an assistant coach.
So there you have it. Even when a coach gets fired around here, he doesn't get fired.
Presumably this piece has something to do with Coach Q's situation, except that not renewing an expired contract is not exactly the same thing as being fired. So even if Q finds employment with a different NHL team this summer, he wouldn't technically have been given the ax by the Avalanche.
Details aside, what if Coach Q does pack his bags and take that manly mustache of his into the sunset? Who would replace him?
Well, Tony Granato would be a top candidate, of course, having already briefly coached the Avs back in 2003 and 2004. He's had three more years as assistant coach and presumably has further developed his skills behind the bench (minus the power play). Don't forget, despite all the criticism he has faced, that he holds the best winning percentage of all four Avalanche coaches (.647) and a better playoff percentage than Joel Quenneville (.500 and .421, respectively).
Ron Wilson may be departing from sunny San Jose, so he could also be a candidate. Rumor has it that anything less than a very deep run in the playoffs by the Sharks would mean Wilson's ouster, and you have to assume that he will be highly sought by various teams if he is indeed let go in the coming days/weeks.
Another coach facing possible unemployment is Tampa Bay boss John Tortorella, he of the fiery disposition and preference for run-and-gun offense. He's currently coaching Team USA in the World Championships, but may find himself polishing his resume when he returns. If the Avs were to hire him, he would maintain one coaching legacy (sweet facial hair) and rekindle another (bat shit craziness) that have defined the Colorado franchise.
Facing Tortorella in the World Championships is Canada's assistant coach Pat Burns. Burns left the NHL in 2005 after a cancer diagnosis, but he's healthy again and showing the fire that drove him to three Jack Adams trophies and a Cup with the New Jersey Devils. While it is rumored that Burns could be seeking another head coaching job in the big league, he's still employed by the Devils and may not want to leave.
And let's not forget both Bob Hartley and Marc Crawford. Hartley is currently unemployed but rumored to be talking to Ottawa. Crawford's days in Los Angeles are surely numbered by now, even though you can't be expected to win many games when you have a junk lineup. Considering Avalanche GM Francois Giguere's recent bout of nostalgia (see: Forsberg and Foote), it wouldn't be outlandish to suggest he'd try to bring back either of the two Cup-winning, former Colorado bench bosses.
There is no doubt that Giguere would interview any of these individuals (and others) if Joel Quenneville were to depart from Denver. But that's still a big IF, and not all the possible candidates are currently job hunting.
Who would you prefer? Did I leave out somebody particularly noteworthy?
ADDENDUM: It's a landslide. The vast majority of respondents to Adrian Dater's call for a vote on Coach Q have chosen "nay." So I guess Sandy Clough has a lot more people to dismiss and shit on. Unfortunately for him, they all probably used to listen to his radio show. His advertisers are going to be pissed.
The correct plural of the word "Av" is "Avs," not "Av's." The apostrophe signifies possession, not plurality. If you're trying to signify possession as it relates to the Colorado Avalanche, you put the apostrophe at the end of the word, as in "The Avs' legacy of dominance in the regular season will continue to suffer as long as Coach Joel Quenneville is behind the bench."
One of the biggest question marks hovering above the Colorado Avalanche this offseason is the future of coach Joel Quenneville, who has been defended by the mainstream press as he's been attacked by me and the rest of the online Avalanche community.
So far, there is no word from the team.
Our take is that he's simply the wrong coach for the Avs. The lineup, at least on paper, was built for speedy, score-at-will offense. Paul Stastny, Joe Sakic, Wojtek Wolski, Milan Hejduk, with Ryan Smyth and Andrew Brunette down low, were the foundation of a run-and-gun attack that could have led the league in goals scored. Instead they spent most of the year below the goal line or dumping the puck and weakly chasing it into the corners.
Sure, injuries played a big role in the lower productivity of the Avalanche offense, but the replacements---TJ Hensick, David Jones, Jaroslav Hlinka---are all quick, shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of players. They're skill guys. And they suffered similar problems once injected into Coach Q's system of dump and give up.
For the most part, his defenders have only the horrendous amount of injuries to point to as reason to keep Coach Q around. "It wasn't his fault" is pretty much their only line of argument.
With everything on the plate of general manager Francois Giguere, why hasn't a contract extension for Coach Q been signed, sealed and delivered already?
You can quibble about Quenneville's tinkering with his lines, slam the lack of productivity on the power play or decry the coach's history of impatience with goaltending. Passionate detractors can be heard grumbling from the cheap seats of the Pepsi Center.
But after Coach Q gutted out adversity the hockey gods seemed to take great pleasure in giving the Avs via nasty crosschecks and significant injuries to Sakic, rising star Paul Stastny and big free-agent acquisition Ryan Smyth, it seems to me that Quenneville's performance has earned another term on the Colorado bench.
Coach Q "gutted out adversity," but the team failed to win. The best coaches are those that continue to win despite personnel losses. Coach Q didn't do that. In fact, at times the team seemed crippled by his line combinations, his atrocious power play strategies and the dreaded goalie carousel---the existence of which doomed the Avs in the early season and the non-existence of which doomed them in the post-season.
In fact, the Wings might even have done the Avs favors by giving them such a rude face wash and making it obvious that Detroit's strengths — including speed, puck control and movement; an ability to make opposing forecheckers look silly; proficiency at setting up in the offensive zone; and then awe-inspiring passing throughout the zone, and not just down low — highlighted Colorado's shortcomings. And then there was Colorado's hard-to-explain ineptitude on the power play, a problem that needs to be aggressively addressed.
Was this problem a lack of skilled personnel or a lack of coaching ingenuity?
So far, there has been no word as to what Avalanche general manager Francois Giguere is going to do with Coach Q. Says Dater:
I’m honestly a little baffled about what’s going on with Coach Q’s situation. Everybody is keeping real quiet about it, so I don’t have a great idea what’s going to happen at the moment. Coaches usually aren’t left hanging like this. I think he’ll be back, but it seems clear that Francois Giguere is at least still thinking about it some. The other question is, does Quenneville even really want to re-sign here? He’s not saying anything about it one way or the other, which is a little odd too.
If Giguere rehires Quenneville, he gets a coach who has led his team to the second round of the playoffs two years out of three (the other year they missed the playoffs altogether), but no division titles and a 2-13-1 record against traditional nemesis Detroit. And both those second round appearances were embarrassing sweeps.
On top of that, there's now word coming out that Coach Q had, to some extent, "lost the room" at times, at least with affable veteran Andrew Brunette. Brunette, who has worn the A as an alternate captain for the Avs and is generally very well-liked and respected by fellow players, apparently had some major problems with his coach.
From Dater:
I think Andrew Brunette will be gone. I hope I’m wrong on that, too, because he’s a great guy to talk to about the game. He’d probably make a great coach some day. But I think he’s done here. He didn’t always see eye to eye with Joel Quenneville...
And from Kiszla:
Maybe a good player doesn't mesh with a smart coach's system. If Quenneville returns, it probably makes sense to let winger Andrew Brunette go as an unrestricted free agent.
If Coach Q's system was so smart, why couldn't Andrew Brunette, a good player who played well under a similar-minded coach (Jacques Lemaire in Minnesota), mesh with it? Methinks the system wasn't so smart.
Hopefully Francois Giguere will do what's right for the team and seek a new coach, preferably one with a different background, mindset and style than Coach Quenneville. And hopefully Quenneville moves on to a team more suited to him.
Philadelphia finished off the surprisingly ineffective Canadiens 6-4, to win the series four games to one. Most likely there will be a battle of Pennsylvania in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Sunday's games: Rangers at Penguins, 12:00 PM Mountain time on NBC, and then the Sharks at Stars at 7:00 PM on Versus.
This is a game day open thread for anyone inclined to discuss these games. Have at it.
On the Coach Q show this morning, it was reported that Peter Forsberg suffered two torn groin muscles (there's one on each side for you non-medical students), Wojtek Wolski suffered five broken ribs and both Ian Laperriere and Scott Hannan were playing with broken bones in their feet.
What a bunch of divers.
The audio of the show should be posted before long here.
UPDATE:Dater confirms the damage, including the status of Paul Stastny---he tore his MCL and would have missed four weeks if the season was still going on. Luckily he'll have the off-season to recover fully.
HOCKEY BLOGS
HOCKEY BLOGS
