Two articles of interest for Capitals fans are making their ways through the internet today:
…or: Why the Caps Might Turn Things Around. Okay, maybe that’s not best title, but I really like those ‘or’ titles, you know? Like Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.
Anyhow, per Tarik at Capitals Insider Brian Pothier will be watching tonight’s game from the press box. Boudreau is no joke - he clearly expects the team to win and man, is it refreshing. I still think Hanlon did a great job when he was here but his “Aw, shucks, it’s okay, we all make mistakes, let’s just go out and try to do better next time” attitude, which was perfect for a rebuilding team, wouldn’t suffice for situations like this. Boudreau has clearly brought a little instant respectability with the way he holds players accountable, demands they play their best and expects to win.
Hanlon’s buddy-buddy attitude and constant encouragement were great for a team full of players trying to find their way in the NHL who needed to go out and play relaxed every night. Now, the team is not so young and most of the players have enough NHL experience that they ought to be able to step up and have more expected of them without “gripping the stick too tight” as the expression goes.
Interesting Hockey News article about the coaching change. My favorite quotes:
“I’m fairly demanding,” Boudreau said. “I may smile and joke with them, but if they don’t do what is needed and necessary, they know they’ll have to pay the price.”
Hanlon… in a brief statement released through the team he called his time with the Capitals’ organization, “the best years of my hockey life. … I will be rooting for them.”
Class right up to the end. It’s too bad things didn’t work out here for Hanlon, but he’s a good coach and a good guy. Best of luck, Glen.
The Caps have fired Glen Hanlon and replaced him (on an interim basis) with Hershey’s Bruce Boudreau (press release). I don’t think anyone is surprised in the least bit at this point (least of all me, I predicted after last night’s game he would be shown the door this morning).
Some Caps fans are already up in arms about two things: (1) the firing on Thanksgiving and (2) replacing Hanlon with Boudreau (”not another AHL coach”).
I have no problem with either. The team plays Friday and Saturday and with the way things were going a coaching change was needed immediately. It’s just unfortunate the day it became obvious the Capitals could wait no longer.
As for Boudreau, I think he’s the logic choice for the short term.
The “not another AHL coach” cries don’t make sense at this point. The team needed to hire someone on an interim basis; it’s not like they were going to conduct interviews and make a hiring between 2 and 8 in the morning the night before Thanksgiving.
As for Hanlon, in a way I am sad to see him go. He did a very good job keeping the team’s spirits high, getting the most out of the players and interacting with the media and fans during the rebuild. I’m sure he’ll catch on somewhere else before too long. Best of luck to him when he does.
So much to write about and so little of it is good…
With the Caps reeling but most people still viewing injuries and bad luck as legitimate excuses, and only one game removed from upsetting the Senators in Ottawa 4-1, the team began its ten games in sixteen days stretch on November 15th. At the outset I expected that the stretch would determine Glen Hanlon’s fate, but that no matter what happened the team would hold on to him until the 
end of the busy stretch on December 2nd. Now I’m not sure he will make it that far.
Say what you want about McPhee (so many Caps fans are at this point), but he’s no idiot. Hanlon isn’t going to make it much further as the Capitals head coach; by this point it’s gone well beyond a question of “if” become a question of “when”. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Bruce Boudreau behind the bench in Philly Friday afternoon. I would be shocked if Hanlon is still here after December 1st. If that happens, it’s time for McPhee to go (this coming from a guy who devoted so much space to defending McPhee yesterday).
In losing tonight the Capitals faced their usual three obstacles against the Thrashers: failure to score, stupid play at especially inopportune times and bad luck.
The stupidity was courtesy of John Erskine’s cross-checking penalty on Slava Kozlov at 14:59 of the second. Moments earlier Kozlov had established position and Erskine (not the most agile skater) had gone down; it was not a cheap shot by Kozlov. Erskine’s response was to level Kozlov (who weighs about 175 pounds) with a cross-check, to the back, right in front of the referee. It’s hard to overstate what a stupid penalty that is, even with its impact being magnified as the Thrashers scored their second goal on the ensuing powerplay. If Milan Jurcina is watching from the press box for a bad turnover then Erskine should be without a sweater for a while for his play, which was simply inexcusable.
The bad luck resulted in the Thrashers third goal; those watching at home saw a good breakdown of the play by Al Koken. Watching in real time I’m sure many people were, like me, wondering “how the hell did Havelid get so open for that pass?” The answer was that the man who supposed to be on him, Chris Clark, had gotten into an altercation at least ten second earlier and was being held against the boards in front of the Capitals bench. Not only did the officials not call a penalty (or penalties), they didn’t even stop the play, letting Ilya Kovalchuk find Niclas Havelid wide open in the Capitals’ zone.
The Capitals aren’t losing games because of single breakdowns or bad plays anymore. Simply put, they’re playing like losers. They no longer have that attitude or physicality they carried the last couple years and they no longer expect to win. As soon as the opposition scores, they fold and their body language sends the message “well, here we go again, let’s just get through this and go home”. The biggest offender is Viktor Kozlov. If you’re as skilled as Semin, Nylander or Backstrom you can get away with not playing a particularly physical game and still being a very solid contributer. But if you’re not (and you are 6′4”, 225) you need to play physical.
Let’s be realistic now. The season’s done unless something amazing (a 10 game win streak or something) happens. All I can offer is that, no matter how poorly the Capitals play this year, they have the talent to compete in 2008-09.
Quick Hits
The Capitals are struggling mightily and their fans are (reasonably) upset and calling for either Glen Hanlon or George McPhee (or both) to be ousted. As I’ve mentioned before, I think it would be appropriate to fire Hanlon. It pains me to say so because I respect what he’s done for the organization over the last couple years, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that he is not the right coach for this team right now.
But I don’t think McPhee deserves the boot.
If you’re consider a coaching or management change you have to go beyond the knee-jerk reactions I think many people may be having, which take two forms: (1) “Well the team is struggling, it must be the [coach, GM, owner]’s fault, get rid of them!” or (2) “The team is struggling and I’m pissed off and I want blood, damn it!” Each reaction is understandable and to an extent warranted, but if you’re going to make a change I think you have to go beyond these reactions and consider the situation more carefully. That’s what I did with Hanlon and that’s what I did with McPhee that led me to this conclusion.
What I’m going to do to make my case is lay what I think were crucial periods for the Capitals and how McPhee responded to them.
I. Initial Success
II. Two Bad Decisions
III. The Fire Sale
IV. The Rebuild and the Draft
V. Trades
VI. Summer of 2007
I. Initial Success
The Capitals started well under McPhee, who took the helm at the start of the 1997-98 season, which ended in a Stanly Cup Finals loss to Detroit. Critics here say that this wasn’t McPhee’s team; it was David Poile’s and I think that is a fair assessment. Following a Stanly Cup run hangover in 1998-99, the team won its division in both the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 seasons.
II. Two Bad Decisions
I think most Capitals fan would agree that the reasons this team crashed and burned were twofold. One was the signing of Jaormir Jagr to that ridiculous contract for $77 million over 7 years. The other was the hiring of Bruce Cassidy as the head coach. Either of these would be enough to put a GM on the hot seat and both should be automatic grounds for dismissal. So why does McPhee still have his job and why do I think he deserves it?. Simple. The overwhelming impression given to Caps fans was that each was move was a brainchild of owner Ted Leonsis.
It’s generally accepted Leonsis wanted to ink Jagr to huge extension as an effort to make a splash and garner more support for the team. If I remember correctly Leonsis boasted after the signing that Jagr would retire as a Capital and we heard a lot about the season ticket base expanding. As for Cassidy, his hiring was directly inspired by the job Paul Maurice had done with Hurricanes, taking them on a run to the Cup finals in 2001. Cassidy was supposed to be a coach in the Maurice mold - young, hip, play-friendly and decidedly different from defense-oriented taskmaster Ron Wilson.
Of course the Jagr contract became an albatross (even more so with the labor uncertainty surrounding the NHL in the next couple years), even while enshrined Jagr as the franchise cornerstone and hence lead to other bad signings (most notably Robert Lang). Meanwhile Bruce Cassidy turned out to be a world-class S.O.B.
After these failures McPhee was instructed by Leonsis to tear down and rebuild, resulting in….
III. The Fire Sale
Capitals fans remember the names that were shipped out well: Jagr, Lang, Peter Bondra, Sergei Gonchar, Brendan Witt, Michael Nylander. Fire sales are tricky, especially this variety. McPhee was ordered to tear down the team mid-season (giving him less time to search for buyers) and had to do it amidst labor unrest, as the CBA was soon to expire (making it hard to deal vets with big contract like Lang and Jagr). Given that, I think he did well, amassing the following: Jared Aulin, Kris Beech, Shaone Morrisonn, Brooks Laich, Tomas Fleischmann, three first round picks, three second round picks and a fourth round pick.
What else is there to say? It is what it is and all things considered I think McPhee did a good job.
IV. The Rebuild and the Draft
Caps draft history available here.
I decided to combine these sections because they are, in large part, on and the same. Let me preface this by saying that how much of draft success and failure is because of skill on the GM’s part and how much is because of skill on the scouts’ part is up for debate and can vary widely. That said, I think McPhee has done fine, picking players like Fehr, Eminger, Semin, Schultz, Green, Backstrom, Varlamov, Bouchard, Neuvirth and Bourque (and Ovechkin, but he doesn’t count because, c’mon, that was a slam dunk). Not all of those guys are going to be great NHL players or even have sustained NHL careers. But looking at this it’s hard to say that the Capitals haven’t been getting useful players from the draft, or to say they haven’t built up depth amongst their prospects. And yes they’re all first and second round picks. But the reality is that it’s very rare to get a productive NHL-caliber player past those first two rounds, especially these days. When it happens it’s just as much luck as anything else.
There’s always one argument I hate and it goes something like “[General Manager’s Name] is horrible! Look at [draft year], he drafted [Player A] when he could have had [Player B]”. In some instances this is fair. For example I think saying “McPhee should have picked Ryan Getzlaf over Eric Fehr” is reasonable, even though Fehr’s effectiveness has been limited by his compressed nerve. When it bugs me is when people say something like: “We passed on Pavel Datsyuk in 1998! How could we do that?” because every team passed on Datsyuk. Several times. Credit where credit is due - the Red Wings made a great pick when the drafted Datsyuk. But it’s not like any of the other 27 teams knew how good Datsyuk was going to be in 1998, so it isn’t fair to vilify any one GM for passing on him. The fact is that with almost every pick in every draft you can look at it and find guys who “should” have been picked instead, that’s the way it goes for any general manager.
To demonstrate this I’ve done the following: I decided to chose a high, but not top-10 draft spot and look at who was, and who should have been, picked there. I chose the 20th overall pick, when most of the top prospects were off the board but still early on that there theoretically shouldn’t be that much luck to it. The drafts I chose to look at were 1997-2001, as these are the ones I think most people will have familiarity with that can be looked at using the conventional rule-of-thumb to wait at least five seasons before evaluating a draft class.
1997: Mike Brown (Florida). Picked ahead of: Scott Hannan (23), Brendan Morrow (25), Ben Clymer (27), Kristian Huselius (45), Henrik Tallinder (48), Maxim Afinogenov (69), Mike York (136), Brian Campbell (156), Ladislav Nagy (177)
1998: Scott Parker (Colorado). Potential better picks: Simon Gagne (22), Scott Gomez (27), Jonathon Cheechoo (29), Mike Fischer (44), Mike Ribeiro (45), Brad Richards (64), Erik Cole (71), Brian Gionta (82), Shawn Horcoff (99), Pavel Datsyuk (141), Michael Ryder (216).
1999: Barrett Heisten (Buffalo). Better picks: Nick Boynton (21), Martin Havlat (26), Mike Commodore (41), Jordan Leopold (44), Adam Hall (52), Niklas Hagman (70), Niclas Havelid (83), Mike Comrie (91), Martin Erat (191), Henrik Zetterberg (210).
2000: Alexander Frolov (Los Angeles). I picked a number (20th overall) at random and went with it. Honestly I think Frolov was the best player available at this point in the draft.
2001: Marcel Goc (San Jose). Potential better picks: Derek Roy (32), Fedor Tyutin (40), Mike Cammalleri (49), Jason Pominville (55), Tomas Plekanec (71), Jussi Jokinen (192).
So what’s my point? Everyone misses players, everyone makes picks that don’t work out. That is the nature of the draft
Go back to 1998, McPhee’s first draft after having been with the team for a year and look at his first and second round picks. Some have failed (Jomar Cruz, anyone?) but for the most part if you take out the guys who either look like good prospects, have proven themselves to be quality players or who have had unforeseen injury issues, how many busts are there? Not a lot. And that’s really all you can ask a GM to do in the draft after the first ten picks or so - pick up quality players and not waste your picks.
Of course, I don’t think the draft is a great indicator of skill for a GM. As an aside, who knows who the Caps would have drafted if they’d had a top 4 pick in 2005 like they should have had (they tied for fewest points in 2003-04). The top four picks in the draft that year were Crosby, Bobby Ryan, Jack Johnson and Benoit Pouliot. Gilbert Brule, Marc Staal and Anze Kopitar would have been available. Instead the Caps wound up with the 14th pick and Sasha Pokulok. Nothing against Pokulok, but the I’d rather have one of those other guys. Like the Caps should have had. You know, teams could only move 3 spots in the regular lottery, why not have the same rule for the post-lockout weighted lottery?
V. Trades
Okay, not a time period but an important part of the GM’s job nonetheless.
I really like what McPhee has done in the trade market. As bad as the Jagr extension was I still maintain the trade for him was not a bad move, given that the Capitals picked him up for Kris Beech, Michal Sivek and Ross Lupaschuk. The best offensive player in the league at that point for three guys who never amounted to anything in the NHL. That’s a good trade.
VI. Summer of 2007
I bring this up to make one last point: going in the offseason the Capitals needed to fill three holes: a center who could play on the top two lines, a defenseman who could skate a lot of minutes and another top six forward, preferably a right wing. He filled all those holes quite well with Nylander, Poti and Kozlov, especially given the money available and the general low desirability of Washington for free agents.
My goal is not to exclude McPhee from criticism. Steve Konowalchuk shipping off for Jonas Johansson and Bates Battaglia wasn’t a great move. Failing to sign Nick Boynton was a huge mistake (although it was almost ten years ago). I know that; McPhee probably knows it as well. But any GM is going to make mistakes.
So in closing then I guess I’d just have to say, where has McPhee gone so horribly wrong that he deserves to lose his job? After the Jagr/Cassidy fiasco Leonsis told McPhee to tear everything down and start over, which he did. He hasn’t made horrible picks or horrible trades and hasn’t signed any free agents that are going to be albatrosses for this organization. There’s really nothing you can point at and say it was a mistake and that someone else could have been reasonably expected to do it better.
The Bottom Line: McPhee’s had to try and rebuild this organization from scratch and the reality is that takes longer than three years. To expect anything else is to be unrealistic, thus it doesn’t make sense to look at the Capitals current problems and automatically decide it’s time to fire the GM. To me, once you look deeper, there’s nothing to point at to show McPhee needs to go.
It has to be frustrating to be Glen Hanlon these days. After more than two seasons of struggling through a complete rebuild you finally get a chance with a team that has a decent amount of NHL talent. Then injuries hit, the refs seem to make a lot of questionable calls that go against you and every bounce is favoring the opponents. You finally get your lineup back from injuries and you lose again - in large part because of a horribly unlucky bounce. And poor referring. And the fact that your captain can’t put away a golden powerplay opportunity early in the game when the powerplay seemed to be working well. And that your captain later took a needless penalty to erase another powerplay.
All that said I still think it’s time for a coaching change. In addition to Hanlon’s earlier questionable decisions, the fact is the Capitals look lost. Whenever they go down, especially by more than one goal, the feeling is palpable and it’s obvious in their body language that the Capitals don’t think they can win. They’re just hoping to somehow pull it out. I can’t say for certain if they’ve lost faith in Hanlon’s system, if the early losses in games they deserved to win have brought about a defeatist attitude or if they players are just starting to think they’re cursed. But no matter what it is the most obvious answer is a coaching change.
Realistically it would be a mistake to change coaches during a stretch as active as the one the Caps are going through right now, but unless the Capitals go on a three-plus game winning streak (provided they don’t lose all the other games) December 1st is going to be the last night you’ll see Hanlon behind the bench.
Quick Hits
More commentary about Hanlon’s job security from one my favorites, CapsChick of A View from the Cheap Seats.
The issue was also addressed in Tarik’s weekly Caps chat, which also provided a perfect example of why people on the internet don’t get taken seriously:
Herndon, Va.: Tarik, why doesn’t Johnson play more often? I think — I am sure you will disagree — he is better than Kolzig.
Tarik El-Bashir: You are half right. I absolutely disagree.
Update: two perfect examples:
Portland, Ore.: Has Hanlon considered putting Green on Ovechkin’s line (as a forward)? He’s the only other player who consistently makes me move to the edge of my seat when he’s got the puck recently.
Tarik El-Bashir: Green has definitely made huge strides this year. He’s still got a ways to go, especially in his own end, but he’s going to be a player.
With the Capitals off to a 6-10-1 start and tied for fewest points in the NHL it’s not surprising that there have been a decent number of fans (especially on the internets) calling for Hanlon’s dismissal. Let me say that for most of the season I have not been one of them. In my opinion the team was outplaying it opponents most nights even if the results did not reflect it and to call for the coach’s head was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction and a bit of scapegoating. Plus, as both Cory from the Washington Times and Tarik from the Washington Post pointed out, if you look at the Capitals from 2006-07, take away Poti, Clark and Semin but add Nylander and Backstrom you get….the Caps from 2006-07 (essentially). My argument for giving Hanlon more time (aside of the injury troubles) was that when deciding whether to fire a coach you have to look not just at results; not just whether the team is winning or losing but how they’re winning or losing and that since the Capitals were playing well but getting bad results it wasn’t fair to pin it on Hanlon.
Well in this regard I’m nothing if not consistent. I still think the most important thing to look at is how a team is playing and recently, with the way the team have performed and the decisions Hanlon’s been making, I’m starting to lose faith that he will be able to have success even when this team gets reasonably healthy.
The causes for alarm are:
I do hope Hanlon can turn things around because I really like the guy. He was the anti-Bruce Cassidy when he came in and helped steer the team through two miserable seasons while keeping morale relatively high. He clearly knows how to get the best out of checking line players and over the last couple years the Caps have built a reputation as one of the toughest teams in the NHL to play against. Plus he’s always seemed like a classy guy. But the reality is that when he does things like throw Brashear on the powerplay, seemingly pick lines out of a hat and fail to make necessary in-game adjustments, it seems like he isn’t going to be successful even with a healthy team because these look like bad coaching decisions.
Poti’s back. Clark is supposed to be back Thursday. Semin is still out, but you can’t blame massive underachieving on missing one player unless it’s the goaltender. It’s possible the injuries were to blame for some of the odd decisions and that the scrambled lines and failure to make adjustments came as a result. That’s why it’s not time to throw Hanlon under the bus yet. But if this team starts into another downward spiral that’s going to wind up being another 2-8-0 stretch it will be Hanlon’s time to go, not because the Capitals have had a disappointing and injury-plagued season, but because Hanlon has looked lost behind the bench.
It’s not too far fetched for the Capitals to pick up five, or even six points on their upcoming three game road trip (Carolina, Atlanta, Ottawa), and the team should pick up at least four.
The Capitals are sitting at 5-8-0 through their first 13 games of the season. On the down side they are 14th out of 15 teams in the Eastern Conference. On the plus side they’re still only two points out of a playoff spot (although this is held by a team with three games in hand on the Caps) and three points out of the 7th spot (on whom the Caps actually hold a game in hand).
The team has played better than it’s record and if we were going to go by who who has played the all-around better game I would say the Caps should be 8-4-1, even with Clark, Semin and Poti missing the time they have.
The Capitals have allowed only 35 goals in 13 games - 2.69 per game. And that’s including the 7-3 loss in Buffalo (without that it’s 28 goals in 12 games; 2.33 GAA). Defense hasn’t been the problem for the Capitals, scoring has, which has been exactly the opposite of what most people expected going into the season.
The Capitals generally outwork their opponents and control the play, and with the team playing like they have defensively if they can do a better job of putting the puck in the net, they’ll start winning. But it’s not going to happen with the lineup the Capitals have been putting on the ice the last few games.
The lines need to be changed. Now.
If everyone were healthy I could see the logic in playing Ovechkin with Kozlov and Clark, given that Ovechkin and Kozlov like playing with one another and Ovechkin and Clark have such great chemistry. But with Semin and Clark out of the lineup, Nylander needs to be on the top line.
By putting Nylander on the top line the Capitals will give Ovechkin a great playmaker to play with. It also allows Kozlov to play the wing, where he’s had 18 shots in his last four games (how many have gone in? Zero, but it’s still nice to get the shots on net). Since Steckel has been so good on draws and has been on the ice for, I believe, one even-strength goal against he should be fine playing on a checking line. Thus, Hanlon could move Gordon to the second line. This way Backstrom can stay on the wing if the coaching staff feels he isn’t ready to move to center. Fleischmann can go on that line too, since he’s the most offensively talented right wing left. Pettinger and Laich would play with Gordon/Steckel to form a respectable checking line. The result would be:
LW/C/RW
Ovechkin/Nylander/Kozlov
Backstrom/(Gordon or Steckel)/Fleischmann
Pettinger/(Gordon or Steckel)/Laich
Brashear/Sutherby/Bradley
Tell me that isn’t top-to-bottom better than what the Caps have been throwing out recently.
I’ve always liked Hanlon. He’s been positive with his players, stood behind them and helped the Caps establish a respected reputation as a team that works hard night in and night out. But I am starting to question his common sense and ability to throw together solid lines. He’s an NHL caliber coach in my mind, no doubt. But if he can’t see the writing on the wall and put together lines than make sense he may be better suited for an assistants role.
Here’s the bottom line and the fearless prediction:
If the Capitals come out on the their road trip with these lines they will pick up at least five points.
Unless of course they decide to get lazy or a goalie has a terrible game or something. So I guess I should say if they come out with these lines and otherwise play the way they have the last five games, they’ll pick up at least five points.
The Caps need to have a successful road trip (at least four points). Let’s just hope the coaching staff has the sense to put their forwards in a position to succeed.
