Coaches canned

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Boston Canucker
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Boston Canucker »

I don't care about Torts relationship to the media, it's whether he can coach this team in the playoffs. On that account, I'm not a fan.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Meds »

Topper wrote:My young son, he's three, I shouldn't be grandfather for at least another ten years, corrected me for using foul language the other day.

Think about it.

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Rickster, you are number 1 (one) in my books. A true
Someone actually managed to chase Thinker a way? Sorry I missed that.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Meds »

Arachnid wrote:
Mëds wrote: Maybe Gillis has finally woken up to the smell of stale shit that is coming from the locker room.

Hopefully he was also unimpressed with Bieksa's comments in the Province about not needing a coach to crack the whip.....generally I find that "employees" state what they want under the headline of what they need. I most cases employees prefer a comfortable and complacent work environment that minimizes pressure and consequences for failures.
What a load of crap. Flown Westjet lately? Employees are more than capable to rise above given the choice.
Fuck the boss/coach that treats others like shyte.
These players are adults, extremely well paid professionals and know what they need. Look what happened under Keenan...I don't know about you but I never want to go through that again.
That said. If a player or team is shit then they deserve a coaches/GMs wrath.
AV losty the room is all, it happens all the time. You do not fill the room with bile.
Well for starters I'll say that most places where employees get comfortable and complacent, make good money, and almost never experience any repercussions for mailing it in 75% of the time, those places tend to stay stale. Those are often places that started out with some real enthusiastic people who were comfortable if they didn't do their best because they knew that at the end of the day they were still getting their paycheque. Ironically, most of these people that sit in the under producing desks, or whatever, are seasoned professionals who are approaching mid-life, it's strange, but they have gone into coast mode and their real passions are elsewhere now (kids, spouse, hobbies, message boards, etc.), so they spend their energy where it best suits them. These working environments are where upper management suddenly realizes that the lower floors aren't actually getting it done, so they remove the middle management and replace him with someone who they feel can inject some fresh life into the current group. If that fails, heads start to roll. Sometimes that backfires and you upper management gets a little too excited about someone's resume and how he gave their competition an edge a few years ago, so they hire an over-zealous fellow who is secretly working on his own version of Mein Kampf and his head explodes with delusions of personal grandeur. Generally a few heads have rolled, sometimes the wrong ones, and you end up with a fairly disgruntled bunch of employees, so upper management rights the ship, kicks the ego maniac out, and gets someone else. The new guy comes in, has some relatively new faces to work with, and some of them have learned the benefits of slaving away, even if it is out of fear, and with some guidance they really flourish and the "floor" is producing again. Then the cycle may repeat itself depending on a few variables.

Sounds familiar eh.....

Oh and one more thing, it would be wise to remember that most, if not all, Westjet employees are also Westjet share holders. I believe it is still an employee owned and operated company, but all of them are expected to maintain a certain level of performance. They have a personal stake in it. NHL players (on one-way contracts) do not stand to lose a dime of their promised salary if they mail it in.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Meds »

I'm getting the impression that all of MG's talk about young players, developing for the future, looking ahead, modelling after Detroit, well all of that is more of his smoke and mirror act right now. I don't think he has abandoned his plan, nor do I think Aquaman would be OK with that. However, I do think that they are looking at the current group and seeing what we all see. A talented core that has hit the age where they might have one last gasp left in them. They know that there are only a couple of pieces that they can really move in order to get a worthwhile return that helps now and down the road, they also know they've handed out a few too many NTC's.

The answer? John Tortorella.

Tort is a bit of a shit show, especially in the media. I agree with everyone here who has said they would enjoy watching a guy like that whip our left-wing PC media into submission, or at least make fools of them.

Tortorella also knows how to motivate players and has proven that he does not play favorites. It's about the 2 points and then getting 16 wins once there are no more points to be had. He doesn't care about the name on the back of the jersey, he cares that the players buy in, execute, and leave it ALL on the ice.

Tort also has a shorter shelf life than many coaches, but that shelf life is generally an effective one.

Gillis probably sees Tortorella as a guy who can come in and get this team to play 60 minutes of hockey most nights. A guy that when the playoffs start will have his team ready to play at least 360 minutes of hockey, in any given 7 game series, in which they give their best efforts. With the talent level on this team, 6 games, where they don't even think about what the cost of postage might be, would be enough to win 4 games.

Gillis is hoping that Tortorella buys him time to re-tool the prospect cupboard and maybe even inspire a talented, but soft, group enough to win that last game.

For those who are about to ask why Tort couldn't get it done in New York with one of the best goaltenders and a star-studded cast, well it's because of those stars. Most of the players that the Rangers management went big on are players who have never really lived up to their billing, and most cases it has been because of a lack of effort or they thought there was an "i" in the word team.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by ukcanuck »

Mëds wrote:
Arachnid wrote:
Mëds wrote: Maybe Gillis has finally woken up to the smell of stale shit that is coming from the locker room.

Hopefully he was also unimpressed with Bieksa's comments in the Province about not needing a coach to crack the whip.....generally I find that "employees" state what they want under the headline of what they need. I most cases employees prefer a comfortable and complacent work environment that minimizes pressure and consequences for failures.
What a load of crap. Flown Westjet lately? Employees are more than capable to rise above given the choice.
Fuck the boss/coach that treats others like shyte.
These players are adults, extremely well paid professionals and know what they need. Look what happened under Keenan...I don't know about you but I never want to go through that again.
That said. If a player or team is shit then they deserve a coaches/GMs wrath.
AV losty the room is all, it happens all the time. You do not fill the room with bile.
Well for starters I'll say that most places where employees get comfortable and complacent, make good money, and almost never experience any repercussions for mailing it in 75% of the time, those places tend to stay stale. Those are often places that started out with some real enthusiastic people who were comfortable if they didn't do their best because they knew that at the end of the day they were still getting their paycheque. Ironically, most of these people that sit in the under producing desks, or whatever, are seasoned professionals who are approaching mid-life, it's strange, but they have gone into coast mode and their real passions are elsewhere now (kids, spouse, hobbies, message boards, etc.), so they spend their energy where it best suits them. These working environments are where upper management suddenly realizes that the lower floors aren't actually getting it done, so they remove the middle management and replace him with someone who they feel can inject some fresh life into the current group. If that fails, heads start to roll. Sometimes that backfires and you upper management gets a little too excited about someone's resume and how he gave their competition an edge a few years ago, so they hire an over-zealous fellow who is secretly working on his own version of Mein Kampf and his head explodes with delusions of personal grandeur. Generally a few heads have rolled, sometimes the wrong ones, and you end up with a fairly disgruntled bunch of employees, so upper management rights the ship, kicks the ego maniac out, and gets someone else. The new guy comes in, has some relatively new faces to work with, and some of them have learned the benefits of slaving away, even if it is out of fear, and with some guidance they really flourish and the "floor" is producing again. Then the cycle may repeat itself depending on a few variables.

Sounds familiar eh.....

Oh and one more thing, it would be wise to remember that most, if not all, Westjet employees are also Westjet share holders. I believe it is still an employee owned and operated company, but all of them are expected to maintain a certain level of performance. They have a personal stake in it. NHL players (on one-way contracts) do not stand to lose a dime of their promised salary if they mail it in.
Mëds is that how it works at the bc ambulance service? Shit floats down to the lowest common denominator huh? seems to me that floating at 75 % would be a one way ticket out of the NHL pretty damn fast unless your name is Yashin...oh wait...

Everyone has bad days at the office, performance might dip to 95 % now and again, but at the NHL level thats gonna stand out like a nazi in a ambulance drivers uniform.

Personally I don't think the Canucks need another Keenan, with messier in tow ripping up the room. but they could use some job uncertainty that AV never reall applied. For the past five years the core and vets of this team knew they were secure because rookies had to pay their dues first.

This training camp will be interesting because only a handful don't have to wonder if they will be on the starting lineup in October.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Lancer »

It seems to me that the room has lost its confidence in itself, has gotten into a funk and has run out of answers, so it just seems a little resigned to its fate and grabbing on to what positives are left. It's like a guy who gets left at the altar, and spends the next couple of years holed up in his apartment playing XBox and eating cheezies after work. The team seems to have settled for above-average instead of victory.

It needs a coach who will go boot camp on them: break them down and build them back up anew and better. They need somebody who will show them who they can be instead of who they've allowed themselves to be. The question is whether they need someone to shake them out of their funk or someone to rag-doll them out of it?

I don't think Arniel is capable of shaking them out of it. I don't think he has the credibility yet to handle that kind of team.

I think Stevens is capable of shaking them out of it, but can he do it enough?

Is Tortorella capable of anything but rag-dolling them out of it? No doubt he can break them down, but can he build them back up in a way that lasts?

Not that I'm his advocate and he's likely unavailable given the latest turn out of Phoenix, but where would Tippett stand in this spectrum?
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Arachnid »

Mëds wrote:
Arachnid wrote:
Mëds wrote: Maybe Gillis has finally woken up to the smell of stale shit that is coming from the locker room.

Hopefully he was also unimpressed with Bieksa's comments in the Province about not needing a coach to crack the whip.....generally I find that "employees" state what they want under the headline of what they need. I most cases employees prefer a comfortable and complacent work environment that minimizes pressure and consequences for failures.
What a load of crap. Flown Westjet lately? Employees are more than capable to rise above given the choice.
Fuck the boss/coach that treats others like shyte.
These players are adults, extremely well paid professionals and know what they need. Look what happened under Keenan...I don't know about you but I never want to go through that again.
That said. If a player or team is shit then they deserve a coaches/GMs wrath.
AV losty the room is all, it happens all the time. You do not fill the room with bile.
Well for starters I'll say that most places where employees get comfortable and complacent, make good money, and almost never experience any repercussions for mailing it in 75% of the time, those places tend to stay stale. Those are often places that started out with some real enthusiastic people who were comfortable if they didn't do their best because they knew that at the end of the day they were still getting their paycheque. Ironically, most of these people that sit in the under producing desks, or whatever, are seasoned professionals who are approaching mid-life, it's strange, but they have gone into coast mode and their real passions are elsewhere now (kids, spouse, hobbies, message boards, etc.), so they spend their energy where it best suits them. These working environments are where upper management suddenly realizes that the lower floors aren't actually getting it done, so they remove the middle management and replace him with someone who they feel can inject some fresh life into the current group. If that fails, heads start to roll. Sometimes that backfires and you upper management gets a little too excited about someone's resume and how he gave their competition an edge a few years ago, so they hire an over-zealous fellow who is secretly working on his own version of Mein Kampf and his head explodes with delusions of personal grandeur. Generally a few heads have rolled, sometimes the wrong ones, and you end up with a fairly disgruntled bunch of employees, so upper management rights the ship, kicks the ego maniac out, and gets someone else. The new guy comes in, has some relatively new faces to work with, and some of them have learned the benefits of slaving away, even if it is out of fear, and with some guidance they really flourish and the "floor" is producing again. Then the cycle may repeat itself depending on a few variables.

Sounds familiar eh.....

Oh and one more thing, it would be wise to remember that most, if not all, Westjet employees are also Westjet share holders. I believe it is still an employee owned and operated company, but all of them are expected to maintain a certain level of performance. They have a personal stake in it. NHL players (on one-way contracts) do not stand to lose a dime of their promised salary if they mail it in.
Wotta load of horse bile :evil:

I don't know where you've worked pal but it is top down in most companies (unless you are union then it's both ends that fuck up).

If you have good leadership then anyplace can thrive (including NHL onewayers who mail it in because a good Captain/coach would never accept that).

Nothing to do with employees or mid-management....that said Our Canucks must have some pretty shitty leadership right now.
I hope (new) Coach anoints a brand spank'n new Captain...perhaps that's what we should really be talking about...I fucking hated having the Art Ross winner as our C. It's just plain stupid.

We need someone who leads by example, every game.

Hamhouse? KB2? Gary? Poor Kes will never get respect enough from many to get the nod. Too young or to much of a whiney brat? Maybe he has an epiphany this Summer and will comeback and be The Man :eh:

We need 1 team leader not a room full of them. That is not the coach or the GM but he will be appointed by them.
I love every move Jim Benning makes 8-)
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by herb »

Regarding Tortorella’s alleged short shelf life; he coached in Tampa Bay for seven years and New York for five years. Both of those are pretty long stints in the NHL head coaching world.

As a comparison, Vigneault had a long run in Vancouver that lasted seven years.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by ukcanuck »

Does it make anyone else nervous that the coach we canned got rehired immediately and seemingly had his pick of jobs too?

Not that I think Gillis should be the guy to walk the plank exactly but wonder if/ when gillis is shitcanned will he land on his feet so seemlessly?
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by tantalum »

ukcanuck wrote:Does it make anyone else nervous that the coach we canned got rehired immediately and seemingly had his pick of jobs too?

Not that I think Gillis should be the guy to walk the plank exactly but wonder if/ when gillis is shitcanned will he land on his feet so seemlessly?
Why would it be surprising? AV IS a good coach. His record speaks to that. He has over 400 wins as a head coach and onyl one losing season. Of course he was going to be snapped up quickly.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by herb »

AV is an excellent head coach, but had clearly grown old and tired with this particular group of players. He wouldn’t have lasted this long if he wasn’t an excellent coach.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by coco_canuck »

I didn't post much this past season but here are my thoughts on what went wrong in the playoffs:

-Kesler wasn't the same two-way force. An incredible effort in game 2 aside, Kesler simply had not played enough hockey over the past calendar year to get his game to where it used to be. Offensively he actually was decent, but his dominant two-way player was nowhere near where it needed to be.

-Weak second line wingers. With Booth out, the Canucks rotated Kassian, Higgins, Hansen and Raymond through the 2nd line to little success. Higgins and Hansen are very solid top 9 wingers but they're not 2nd line mainstays. They can fill in admirably in the top 6, but they can't excel unless a bonafide 2nd line winger is already on that line.

-A weak as shit 4th line.

-Head scratching D-pairs. Why the fuck were Edler and Bieksa paired together for such long stretches, and why were they 1-2 in ice time on the team? Hamhuis and Garrison had been our most consistent Ds all season, and were the two best defensemen the team had vs San Jose.

-Starting Schneider in game 3 was a big mistake when Luo had been playing well and 35 was sitting out with a groin injury, and that decision blew up in AV's face.

-The Canucks took a more defensive posture vs San Jose when they simply didn't have the forwards to play that style, not with Kesler missing his two-way game and Roy shifting between the 2nd-3rd line, all the while we had an inept 4th line that got crushed in its match-ups. I was cringing before the playoffs when the Canucks were talking about how they thought their defensive approach would be lead to more success this post-season. We simply weren't built to play that style.


So the decision this off-season is whether to bring this team back to being a two-way force like in 2011, which means adding more skill and another two-way centre, or they have to go to a more grinding style with big wingers and solid checkers in the bottom 6.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by 2Fingers »

ukcanuck wrote:Does it make anyone else nervous that the coach we canned got rehired immediately and seemingly had his pick of jobs too?

Not that I think Gillis should be the guy to walk the plank exactly but wonder if/ when gillis is shitcanned will he land on his feet so seemlessly?
not at all, AV is a good coach but has gone stale in Vancouver. MG is MG, he does things in his own way and now 2 weeks away from FA I don't expect to see any bold moves. I expect RL to be traded but that is it. The core is the core and will remain once the season starts.

The question is if Torts is hired will he kick drive the country club boys into playing hockey and hold bad plays accountable. I cant wait to see if he sits Edler after one of his standard fire drills in his own end.

Bieksa must be having nightmares with Torts, someone to hold him accountable too.

The core on this team has 3 years left so after that a new coach can be hired to bring in to coach a new team.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by Lancer »

ukcanuck wrote:Does it make anyone else nervous that the coach we canned got rehired immediately and seemingly had his pick of jobs too?

Not that I think Gillis should be the guy to walk the plank exactly but wonder if/ when gillis is shitcanned will he land on his feet so seemlessly?
That fact doesn't really make me nervous, and doesn't surprise me either. Vigneault is a very good coach whose resume is probably the best among who was available (SC championships notwithstanding).

He just got stale in Vancouver and ran out of ideas with that group. It happens to the best of them. Vigneault had his pact with the leadership in the room, and either wouldn't or couldn't change that in order to snap them out of their funk. His tactics got old and he didn't have any new innovations.

No doubt he will do well in New York but that doesn't mean he would do as good in Vancouver or any better than before even if Gillis traded the Twins. He was set in his ways and needed a change of scenery, much like (I would argue) some of the core.

I see the necessary fix as two-part: fix the coaching and fix the core. You can't do one without the other. We'll see if, as I hope, Gillis does both.

As for Gillis' chances at future employment if he gets shitcanned, I don't see much prospect - if only for the reason that GMs don't get shitcanned nearly as often as coaches, and the old-boys club permeates that level much more regardless of competence. Having said that, Gillis managed to get himself hired without the benefit of the old-boys network so you never know.
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Re: Coaches canned

Post by ukcanuck »

I think the point I'm trying to make is that the fact that AV landed on his feet with a nice 5 year contract might prove that the "mistakes" that he was being blamed for here by some might just be overblown a little.

Perhaps and I am being devils advocate here to some degree, When its Gillis' turn to walk the plank, there won't be a line up of teams looking to grab what were so quick to let go...
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