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Coach Kirk gone

Shouldn't Daniels have been fired today as well, or will that be another conference for another day? It makes no sense at all to keep him, in my opinion. Go ahead and start grooming your future ex-coach down in Charlotte!
 
Worth stressing again ... this is Ronnie's show now and he's going to run it HIS way. Throw out all the old presumptions that you've been left with by so many years of Rutherford's approach to the job. This is Francis, not Rutherford. I feel certain that if he does end up hiring somebody with a connection with the club, it won't be because it was cheap, easy or whatever everybody assumes.

Say it ends up being Dineen ... he's got NHL experience as a bench boss and a solid resume as an AHL boss. Say it ends up being Ulfie ... he's got the well earned reputation of being a lifetime hard-ass as an NHL player, solid experience as an assistant in the NHL and a couple years as the bench boss at Modo in Sweden. Say it ends up being Daniels ... OK, that's where I would draw the line. You might as well hire a jar of Duke's mayo. Still. Ronnie's not given us any reason to doubt his judgement or to suspect nepotism as a guiding factor. I'm sure he'll make a well reasoned decision that I will commit to judge entirely on the candidate's actual merit.

Personally, I'd just like to see a proven commodity of some sort. We reached to the next hot thing with Muller and missed. No reason to rinse/repeat. Go find somebody who's proven they can do the job, even if they failed due to circumstances. Plenty of current NHL coaches have done just fine in their second job after failing in their first one.
 
They did ask if they had spoken to any coaches, and Ronnie made a comment along the lines of "can't say, don't want to get in trouble with other teams". I wonder who the coaches were, who called and asked to be considered? That quoted comment made me immediately think of Ulf...who is still working for at least another week.
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That was in response to a stupid-assed question about currently employed coaches. Stupid, as all know that would be tampering and big-time trouble or stupid in hoping RF would be stupid and give something away. But pretty typical per your 1st paragraph. Recall that our old friend Brian L. as a reporter then for a radio station asked a rather pointed question, I think of JR, and all of the others looked at him 'like he had two heads'. I think you meant cajones but with this press bunch, huevos seems more appropriate - eggs, fragile and brittle.

Any interested coaches who called RF would be former coaches and probably not anyone we'd want.
 
I don't believe Kirk Muller got his player's best effort often enough and it cost him his job. But he's the one steering the ship while the players are supposed to be rowing. Trouble is that they weren't in synch or hitting it as hard as needed to go anywhere. I hope RF keeps up his house cleaning on the front side of the bench too. There's way too much debris & clutter on critical parts of this team that needs to be removed and replaced with better & meaner. JR's retreads and bargain basement pickups (except Malhotra) just ain't getting it done. I want to see the Hurricanes become a team that's feared and hard to play against.

While you're at it, take the C back from #12 until he starts living up to it and proves he's worthy. There's no whining, whinging, or pouting in hockey. Shame on him for doing it. That s#!t needs to stop right [Polar's word] now. Man up, lead by example, and show some heart, or find somebody who can handle the job.

*spits on the ground in disgust before stepping off the soapbox*

Jim
 
Pucking Lamplighter said:
While you're at it, take the C back from #12 until he starts living up to it and proves he's worthy. There's no whining, whinging, or pouting in hockey. Shame on him for doing it. That s#!t needs to stop right [Polar's word] now. Man up, lead by example, and show some heart, or find somebody who can handle the job.

*spits on the ground in disgust before stepping off the soapbox*

Jim
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That is the absolute WORST thing that could happen right now. That's a coach's decision, not a front office decision. You want to scare off a candidate? Dictating who his captain should be is a great way to do it.
 
It's one thing for an aging vet to give up the C at the end of his career, it's quite another to strip the C from someone. The Whalers stripped Ronnie ' s C when they couldn't come to a contract agreement. That is not something to take lightly.
 
The last two active players I recall losing the C, not including Brind'amour, were Modano, aging vet and Patrick Marleau with San Jose. I think in marleau's case there was a lot of anxiety, but it worked out because he realized he was not handling the stress and added pressure well. It did, however, take a bit of time for wounds to heal. No way should Staal be stripped and if they decid to go that route, god help 'em, there must be stability to balance it out and right now, this org is trying to get its bearings. My 2 cents
 
ThinIce said:
Ken Campbell's piece in THN is bizarre. Although you can't argue with the Canes penchant for inbreeding, he writes as if Brindy is the heir apparent to Muller, which really was the furthest thing from my mind.

http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/muller-firing-signals-more-of-the-same-in-carolina/
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A buddy of mine who is a Flyer fan (hey, it happens!) and who loves to rag on the Canes sent this to me today and I told him it was delusional. Rod is in a player development role and has generally not--nor will likely be--in any type of coaching role going forward, outside of his work with the Junior Canes.
 
ThinIce said:
Ken Campbell's piece in THN is bizarre. Although you can't argue with the Canes penchant for inbreeding, he writes as if Brindy is the heir apparent to Muller, which really was the furthest thing from my mind.

http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/muller-firing-signals-more-of-the-same-in-carolina/
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The piece seems a bit premature to me since they have not named a new coach yet, but if they do name Dineen, Daniels, or Samuelsson as head coach it would appear spot on. Time will tell........
 
From the article:

But here’s the thing that rankles a little. Assistant coaches Dave Lewis and John MacLean were fired along with Muller. None of the three had any ties to the Hurricanes before they were hired. But Rod Brind’Amour, a loyal Hurricane who captained the team to its only Stanley Cup in 2006, was kept on.
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Has he ever covered a firing of any coach in any sport? When a head coach gets fired, how many times do his hand-picked assistants survive? Would MacLean have ever been hired by the Canes if he hadn't been Muller's teammate? He was in the middle of building a new house in New Jersey and his family never moved here.

There is one other misleading tidbit in the article. Mike Vellucci was indeed drafted by the Hartford Whalers. In 1984, 11 years before PK bought the team. However, his entire coaching career has been in PK's organization, with the Compuware Ambassadors and Plymouth.
 
Bottom line on Brindy ... he's never been willing to commit the time away from his kids to even become a full time member of the staff as an assistant, so now we're being told he's the heir apparent to the head coaching job? Makes no sense whatsoever unless you live in the hockey media's land of assumptions. Try REPORTING guys.

That said ... in response to direct questions about Brind'Amour, Francis said that if a guy like Roddy expresses interest in the job then you're pretty much obligated to sit down and talk to him about his vision for the job. I respect that. I just don't think it's happening.

As far as speculation and links go ... I think the assumption that Ronnie will reach out to Samuelsson are much more believable.
 
andyt said:
From the article:



Has he ever covered a firing of any coach in any sport? When a head coach gets fired, how many times do his hand-picked assistants survive? Would MacLean have ever been hired by the Canes if he hadn't been Muller's teammate? He was in the middle of building a new house in New Jersey and his family never moved here.
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And if he watched the whole press conference, he'd see that RF was asked about that (Rod) and what his response was. I hate to even attempt to paraphrase (and I know everyone here watched it anyway), but he described what Rod's role had been and had not been and that he wasn't directly responsible for much (any?) real coaching.

Almost seems like they got tired of handing out "Direct of [something] Development" and gave Rod a coaching title when that's not really what he was.
 
stilltheman said:
Almost seems like they got tired of handing out "Direct of [something] Development" and gave Rod a coaching title when that's not really what he was.
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Yeah ... Rod was attached to the coaching staff but was really more like a special consultant. He did in game strategic scouting, worked with individual players on individual skills and took on special short term assignments. By no means was he a full time member of the staff and he rarely if ever traveled with the team on the road.
 
I think Rutherford was specifically careful about naming all of the former players to positions that would earn them a good chance of being fired if things went really south. When you hire your good buddies to jobs like "coach", you have to understand that one day, you will likely have to fire them. I hope Francis understands that when thinking about his new coach. If you're comfortable HIRING Ulf Samuelson, you better be comfortable FIRING Ulf Samuelson, etc.
 
RF was right on the money when he said you hire a new coach who is allowed to bring in his own assistants, that gives you more leverage in your search for a new coach. Lewis and McLean do not deserve to be back in my opinion, they stunk up the joint almost more than Muller.

Francis in his two short weeks as GM has already been well spoken and I like what he has shown so far. He did not by any means let the players off the hook for their play even after removing the coaching staff.
 
Yeah, all goodness so far with Ronnie. Sounds like he plans to have a coach in place before the draft in late June so it might be a wait here before something else happens. But the ball is now rolling with Ronnie, lots to look forward to I guess as he works through what he would like to do.
 
cmaleski2 said:
Sounds like he plans to have a coach in place before the draft in late June so it might be a wait here before something else happens.
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And that makes sense.

A. No reason to rush too much. There are other openings, some of which will be more attractive. So we're not in the race for some established guy who's looking at a chance with the Canucks or somebody like that.

B. There are several attractive candidates tied up in the NHL playoffs if we're looking at a current assistant. Samuelsson being but one of them. There's some other guys with experience that you might want to talk to ... Tom Renney, Mike Kitchen, maybe even Brad Lauer with the Ducks. There are some interesting guys in the Assistant ranks.

C. You might be looking at an AHL head coach who may or may not be in the playoffs ... including guys not named Jeff Daniels.

So sort through the options and take your time. No need to break some sort of land speed record here, since it's the off season and Carolina has plenty of work to do to get ready for the draft and any roster moves they might want to work on before then.
 
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