Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Watching all these NHL clubs pick their new coaches from the same cast of has-beens that were all in the same recycling bin, and I've made a mental note to remember this the next time Montreal gets ragged on for wanting a coach who can speak a bit of French!
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One of the great mysteries in sports. Why the same guys get hired over and over again for a very specific profession that doesn't require very specialized expertise and experience. In fact, it's often better when you have less of those things.
Actually, it's not so much the same well-known guys getting hired several times over but rather the term and dollars they give to re-tread coaches. And you know a good chunk of them are going to be fired and bought out of their contracts.
I'm waiting for the day there's an against the grain owner in a big league that upsets the apple cart and signs coaches to one year contracts and pays them no more than a million bucks a year. And if that proves to be successful, the whole coaching industry will be flipped upside down. Not that I'm rooting for pro coaches (particularly ones who weren't millionaire players) who sacrificed so much of their working lives and family time to coach in far flung places and junior levels, I'm just curious to see what would happen and I wonder why it hasn't happened yet. And I most definitely am not rooting against the lifelong assistant coaches who have never seen the big pay day. Those guys have also sacrificed so much, but don't have the same financial security.
The professional sports coach has a big "old boys club" element to it. In every sport I'd say there's only a handful of guys that have proved it at so many levels and at so many stops that there must be something about them but the for the vast majority, they are very much replaceable by guys from a very large pool of candidates from former players, current junior or AHL coaches and even the average hockey fan (or whatever sport) as long as they have the necessary personality.
Re-tread coaches who didn't win the SC can still will the SC at another club, but so can Joe Blow who was never a HC before. So the point is, no need to give long terms and big dollars to all but a handful of guys. And you have to be careful with that or you foolishly end up giving an eight year deal to Babcock. It was always a dumb idea but hey, MLSE has money to burn.
And hockey isn't even all that bad compared to some other pro sports and college.
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