NHL Coaches Who Should Be on the Hot Seat

NHL head coaches get fired too often. A major league team is a complex organism with a lot of moving parts, and a coach can be fired for any number of problems that aren’t really his fault.

Having said that, there are at least three coaches around the league for whom the clock should be ticking.

That number may seem small, but in a lot of cases, firing the coach is a move with no discernible payoff. Peter Tanner of FiveThirtyEight demonstrated this convincingly in 2014 when he found that on average teams that kept their existing coach in the summer improved or declined the following year by the same rate as teams that hired a new one.  

Additionally, many bad teams have burned through coaches in quick succession, doing themselves more harm than good in the process.

When a new coach comes in, the existing problems with the roster remain, but now the new guy has to start from scratch learning all the lessons the old guy had already absorbed. Likewise, the team now has to adapt to the demands of their new bench boss.

Nevertheless, sometimes a move is necessary. In these three cases, we think that point is either close or already passed.

Glen Gulutzan, Calgary Flames

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Of the three coaches on this list, Glen Gulutzan is the most deserving of a longer look. After all, the Calgary Flames have played just 16 games this season, and while the record (5-10-1) is ugly, plenty of good coaches have had that kind of run with a mediocre roster.

The case against him is twofold.

First, he was a debatable hire in the first place. His two years as head coach in Dallas were unremarkable, with both his predecessor and successor (with different rosters, it must be said) having more success on the ice.

Prior to that, he was an AHL head coach for two years, which is less top-level minor league experience than most NHL coaches have. Following it, he was an assistant coach for three years on a Vancouver team in steep decline. 

Second, areas where we expect coaching to shine through have been weak. Entering action Tuesday, Calgary’s power play was the second worst in the league, despite talent up front and an enviable collection of point men. The penalty kill was also mired in 29th. Add in things like star players suddenly misfiring and Dougie Hamilton playing on the third pair, and it’s easy to be critical.

On the other hand, the Flames are in enough of a hole now that the year may already be lost. Management liked Gulutzan enough to give him a job in the summer, and it would be understandable if it was felt he deserved more time to right the ship.

Willie Desjardins, Vancouver Canucks

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There really isn’t much choice here. Although it’s reasonably likely that Willie Desjardins isn’t the problem in Vancouver, the Canucks are now at the point where they need to find out before making more drastic changes.

Vancouver is trending south in a hurry. Just five years after falling in seven games in the Stanley Cup Final, the team had a top-five selection in the NHL Entry Draft.

Score-adjusted Fenwick (a plus/minus of shots and missed shots, adjusted for score effects) shows how the team has gone from spending most of the game in the opposition end to being trapped in its own zone:

Year	Points/82 GP	Result	Fenwick%	NHL Rk.	Coach
2010-11	117	Lost in Round 4	53.3	3rd	Vigneault
2011-12	111	Lost in Round 1	52.6	8th	Vigneault
2012-13	101*	Lost in Round 1	51.1	11th	Vigneault
2013-14	83	Missed playoffs	51.5	10th	Tortorella
2014-15	101	Lost in Round 1	49.8	19th	Desjardins
2015-16	75	Missed playoffs	46.2	28th	Desjardins
2016-17	67*	TBD	46.9	27th	Desjardins

*Denotes projection, due to lockout-shortened 2012-13 season and 2016-17 season being still in progress

The results bounced around a little before falling into a steep decline. The shot metrics have been in a straight decline since 2011, a slump that grew more rapid once Desjardins was hired.

This may not be—probably isn’t, actually—Desjardins' fault. He’s been a very good coach at other levels, and the Canucks’ key players are, for the most part, well past their best-before dates. However, the results are so bad that there’s little choice but to engage in a full-scale rebuild, tearing down the roster and tanking for high draft picks.

The problem is that before taking such a radical approach to the roster, the prudent thing to do is to find out if there’s a simpler, quicker fix on offer. Unfortunately for Desjardins, that means seeing if another coach can get more out of these players.

Jack Capuano, New York Islanders

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There’s no time to waste here. The Canucks appear to be heading into a rebuilding cycle, while the Flames are still trying to emerge from one. However, the Islanders are in that pivotal moment where the rebuild has come to an end and it’s time to make the next step. Instead, the team has imploded.

Jack Capuano has been there for all of it. Hired midway through 2010-11 after a nondescript AHL coaching career, he was tasked with taking a young core built around John Tavares and molding it into a contender. The closest he came was last season, when his mediocre puck-possession team managed to knock off the Panthers before being dispatched in five games in the second round.

This season has seen a total collapse.

The Islanders are one of the NHL’s worst teams by the possession metrics, by goal differential and by the standings. Newcomers Andrew Ladd and Jason Chimera have been ineffective. Key young players like Anders Lee and Ryan Strome appear to be moving backward in their development. Both the power play and penalty kill are disasters.

The core of this team is in its prime. New York has never been a particularly good puck-possession team, and if Capuano isn’t at fault for that, it simply means general manager Garth Snow hasn’t built a good enough team. Looking at the roster, though, it’s hard to believe that Tavares and Co. don’t have more to give.

To find out, it’s imperative that the team try things with a different coach.

Statistical information courtesy of PuckOn.net and Hockey-Reference.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.