Penton: NHL coaching improvement not always rewarded
By Bruce Penton
Duck! Here comes the axe!
Greg Cronin probably deserved better than to be fired at the end of the 2024-25 National Hockey League season. After all, he led the Anaheim Ducks to an 80-point season (35-37-10), which was a league-leading 35.5-per-cent increase over the previous season’s disastrous 59-point campaign.
Cronin, probably among the least-recognizable coaches in the NHL outside of southern California, will deservedly get some coach-of-the-year votes but his relative success this season didn’t carry enough weight with Ducks’ general manager Pat Verbeek.
“I think I see this team at a point to where my expectation of this team is to make the playoffs next season,” Verbeek told Yarkbarker.com.
Coaching the Ducks for two years, Cronin’s record wasn’t great, but the talent he had to work with wasn’t so hot, either. His teams finished 25 games under .500 and the playoff drought for the team goes all the way back to 2018. Still, a 21-point improvement from one season to the next usually results in a contract extension with a big raise, not a firing.
Verbeek wasn’t happy with the team’s offence, which ranked 30th of the NHL’s 32 teams. Mason McTavish and Troy Terry tied for the team lead in goals with 22, and finding more firepower is at the top of Verbeek’s to-do list. With that in mind, high-scoring free agents Mitch Marner of the Leafs and Nikolaj Ehlers of the Jets are on his priority list.
So who will be the NHL’s coach of the year? Washington’s Spencer Carbery got a lot of attention this year for leading the Capitals to an Eastern Conference title and improving their points’ total from 91 to 111. Ottawa’s Travis Green will get a few votes for the Senators’ vast improvement from last year, in which they garnered 78 points, to the 97 and a wildcard playoff position this year. Scott Arniel of Winnipeg should get some consideration for the season-long consistency that earned his team the President’s Trophy, but the Jets' season-over-season gain was not that spectacular (110 to 116). Another top candidate is Montreal’s Martin St. Louis, who guided the Habs to the playoffs for the first time in four years. Montreal was second-last overall in early December before something magic started to happen in Montreal. Whether it was the team’s core finally coming together, the emergence of rookie flash Lane Hutson on defence or the coaching strategy of St. Louis working its magic, the Habs were red-hot down the stretch.
But the best of them all might be Dean Evason of the Columbus Blue Jackets, who didn’t make the playoffs, but went right down to Game 82 before being eliminated. The Jackets’ point improvement (66 last year to 89 this year, a 34.8 per cent increase) was impressive, even more so when you consider that their best player, Johnny Gaudreau, was killed in an August car-bicycle crash. But Evason’s percentage improvement still didn’t match Cronin’s 35.5, and look where it got the ex-Ducks’ bench boss.
Vancouver comedy guy Torben Rolfsen: “Tiger Woods’ design firm is going to build a nine-hole short course at Augusta National. Prediction: They’ll hold a tournament there called the Mistresses.”
Super 70s Sports: “I cannot emphasize how little I care what the speed of a home run was. ‘He crushed a 105.8 mph homer!’ means nothing to me. To paraphrase Satchell Paige, ‘Did it go over the fence, wild child?’”
From an X user called Thank the Stars: “If they do speed and launch angle for HRs they should do it for every ball in play. Let the people know about that 60 mph soft grounder with a launch angle of seven.”
Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com, after the first day of the NFL draft: “Imagine being Cam Ward, No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. And all the media is about the guy who HASN’T been drafted yet.”
Columnist Norman Chad: “Shedeur Sanders has fallen so far down in the NFL draft, he’s watching it with me tonight.”
Another one from Chad: “President Trump just signed an executive order placing Shedeur Sanders on an undisclosed NFL team.”
Super 70s Sports, on Shedeur Sanders not being drafted in the NFL’s first round, as had been expected: “If 32 teams individually decide your talent isn’t worth you being a migraine headache, that’s not getting ‘blackballed.’”
Comedy guy Torben Rolfsen of Vancouver: “No phones are allowed on the course at the Masters. It’s like a Salvadorean prison for Tik-Tokkers.”
RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com: “The Canucks recently banned the video game Fortnite during their road trips. I'm thinking that might actually be the game Vancouver was playing this season — it didn't look like hockey.”
Headline at theonion.com: “Masters Crowd Whispering Its Lungs Out”
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