Man, it happened even faster than I guessed it would. According to Five For Smiting, TSN's Dave Hodge asked the stupid question:If Bryan Murray gets fired before the end of the year, or even in the off-season, does Clouston keep the job?...and while conceeding that even contemplating the question three games in to Clouston's tenure is more than a tad premature, FFS responds in the affirmative. Why?
In May 2002, Bryan Murray, then GM of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks promoted a young head coach out of the AHL nobody outside of The Bryan's inner sanctum had ever considered as NHL Head Coaching material. A year later, the Ducks came out of nowhere before losing the Cup Final in seven to New Jersey. That guy's name? Mike Babcock. And that has to mean something....and oh yeah the team's been playing better the last three games, all of which can CLEARLY be credited to the change behind the bench, and has nothing to do with a bunch of players who have been shamed into putting in a better effort against three teams, two of three of which were playing the second night in a row.
Well, Murray's gone off the reservation since '02 in looking for head coaches, I seem to recall that neither this guy nor this guy worked out so well -- not to mention the clown he had finish out the end of last season.
Of course, this is all merely statistical clustering. To suggest that Murray merely got lucky by hiring the right guy at the right time for the right team, when he's managed to spectacularly fail to build all three of those conditions here in Ottawa, would be heresy.
Ottawa's problems were not behind the bench. They are on the bench. And that's the fault of the guy who watches from the front office.
Maybe Murray has a plan and a strategy. Maybe his hands are being aggressively tied by Melnyk. But right now I see a team which has been "tweaked" and "character-built" into a threat to the New York Islanders, and in hockey as in everything else it's "what have you done for me lately" more than reminiscing about past glories.
