denisdman wrote:
I am on record as not being a big Q fan. He did way too much line flipping, had no use for young players, ran through assistant coaches like crazy, and generally had a crappy power play for the level of talent.
1) this is every coach
2) this is every coach
3) This is interesting because I haven't given it much thought. If anything, I thought he stuck with guys too long. He started with Torchetti and Haviland, whom he inherited from Savard. Rick Dudley left for Atlanta after 2010 and took Torchetti with him, then everyone in coaching and management got purged by the Winnipeg ownership at the end of the year, whoops. Quenneville brought in his longtime buttmonkey Mike Kitchen to replace Torchetti and he was there for what seemed like forever. When he was fired in 2017, that came from Bowman, not Quenneville, because everyone was in a tizzy that the Hawks broke their chain of command. He was replaced by another ex-Whaler in Ulf Samuelsson who was fired at the same time as Q.
Haviland got sent off in 2012 because if I remember correctly there was some issue with him being a management spy and the players mutinied. Jamie Kompon replaced Haviland and no one seemed to like him much, he went off to go run a team in the Dub and no one exactly stood in front of the door. Kevin Dineen was available after getting fired in Florida and you can't say no to yet another ex-Whaler. He lasted till Q got fired.
So in one assistant slot you have three guys over 10+ seasons with tenures of 2 (inherited), 7, and 1+ (fired en masse), and in the other you have 4 (inherited), 2, and 4+ (fired en masse). I think that's reasonable turnover for assistant coaches.
I think the real indictment of his assistant coaches would be what they go on to do when they leave. Torchetti has bounced between AHL head and NHL assistant as many do. Haviland's been at Colorado College, I think. Dineen's star has tumbled since his second season in Florida and the shame of it is he doesn't even have a Hartford Whalers to go back to as Vice-President of Hangin' Out and Doin' Stuff. Mike Kitchen is probably cleaning Joel Quenneville's house right now. Hockey doesn't have quite the same tradition football has of coaching trees, but no NHL team sought any of these guys out for promotions.
4) yeah that drove us all nuts but at least a good penalty kill correlates with postseason success better than a good power play does
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