Sad news: By lossing his contracts with the Ottawa Senators , He just almost commited suicide ,the ottawa former coach.
A mistake, at least for the time being, would be to fire head coach D.J. Smith as many Ottawa Senators supporters are calling for. The management of the Senators should allow him more time to prove that he can lead his struggling team to success this season—and that success includes a postseason berth.
Related: 5 Reasons the Senators Might Not Advance to the 2024 Playoffs
A visitor from Mars would have inferred, based on the chants of “Fire DJ” from every corner of Canadian Tire Centre (CTC) earlier this month, that Smith is solely to blame for the Senators’ dismal start to the current campaign. He has to depart because he alone has the ability to turn this squad around.
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It is pure imagination to believe that Smith’s head on a pike on Parliament Hill will make a run-of-the-mill team like the Senators great. Without a doubt, many fans find it satisfying when a struggling team fires its coach in the middle of the season, but it usually doesn’t work. The “Fire DJ” screams are really a knee-jerk reaction from fans who want quick satisfaction and easy solutions to difficult problems.
D.J. Smith, head coach of Ottawa Senators
Head coach D.J. Smith of the Ottawa Senators (Sean Kilpatrick, THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Examining the data about the efficacy of NHL coach firings during the season.
Limited Success of Senators During Seasonal Coaching Changes
This is a list of coaching changes made by the Senators during the salary cap era, starting with the 2005–06 season (from Corey Masiak, “Does the in-season coaching change really work in the NHL”, The Athletic, 13/12/2019). While the ranking indicates the Senators’ standing in the conference they were playing in during the relevant season both before and after the coaching change, the number in brackets represents the points percentage (PTS%) the team registered under the coach in question.
Date Out Before Postseason 2/27/08Paddock, JohnBruce Murray36-22-6(.609) 3rd 7-9-2 (.444) Seventh First Round
February 2, 2009Craig HartsburgTracy Clouston17–24–7 (427). 13th, November 4, 1868 (0.618) 19th Not a Single
11/8/14Paul MacEwanDave Cameron11-11-5 (.500). 10th 32-15-8 (.655) th Round, First
January 3, 2019Guillaume BoucherMarc Crawford;27-37-5 (383). The sixteenth is 7-10-1 (.417). Thirteenth None
The Senators are among those who frequently fly the coop when it comes to coaching changes during the season. With their four coaching changes from 2005–06 to the 2018–19 season (the most recent season the Senators made an in-season coaching change), the team was among the top six teams in the NHL for coaching changes made during the season.
Related: Coaching Staff of the Ottawa Senators
By any measure, firing coaches during the season has produced only mediocre outcomes for the Senators. Both the Senators’ points percentage and conference ranking fell after Murray took over for Paddock at the conclusion of the 2007–2008 campaign. Their.609 PTS% under Paddock was a big part of why they qualified for the playoffs.
In 2013–14, the Senators saw the most success from an in-season coaching change when Cameron (currently the head coach of the Ottawa 67s) took over for MacLean. Cameron helped the team go from a.500 to a.655 PTS% and make it into the playoffs for one round.
PTS% increased somewhat when Crawford took over as bench boss from Boucher and dramatically when Clouston took over from Hartsburg. Still, none of it was important because neither new coach saw the team reach the postseason.
Do NHL Coach Changes Made During the Season Work?
Yes, sort of, is the quick answer. 46 of the 58 in-season coaching changes in the NHL from the beginning of the salary cap era to the conclusion of the 2019–20 season that The Athletic looked at produced a higher PTS%. Teams who changed their coaches during the season averaged.479 with the previous coach and.535 with the new one.
That is still only a nine-point difference; overall, the teams scored 78.6 points previous to the coaching change and 87.7 points after. And these days, that is hardly what teams need to qualify for the postseason.
That doesn’t stop all the Ottawa general manager aspirants from clamoring for a new coach in Bytown, either. How about just take a look at the St. Louis Blues under Craig Berube in 2018–19? November 2018 saw Berube take charge, and presto! In the spring of 2019, he guided his last-place squad to a Stanley Cup victory. The management only has to select the appropriate coach.
Next, they will cite the Vegas Golden Knights, a disorganized expansion squad led by the outstanding Gerard Gallant, who made it to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018. (Never mind that he flamed out coaching the 107-point New York Rangers squad in the first round of the playoffs the previous season.)
Henderson Golden Knights Gallant, Gerard
Manager of the Vegas Golden Knights Gallant, Gerard (David Becker/AP),
In December 2011 former Calgary Flames coach and rancher Darryl Sutter left his cows behind in Viking, Alberta, and moved to glitzy Los Angeles to coach the Kings. That season and the next one, he guided them to their first Stanley Cup. Remember Mike Sullivan, who took over as bench boss in December 2015 and led his Pittsburgh Penguins to two straight championships?
As it happens, there’s more to these quick success tales than first appears. Though it’s difficult to determine how much of the credit goes to Berube’s coaching and how much goes to the team’s twine minder Jordan Binnington, St. Louis did win Lord Stanley’s mug in 2019. Backstopping the Blues in 26 postseason games that year, the Richmond Hill, Ontario native posted a 2.46 goals-against average (GAA) and a.914 save percentage (SV%) to win his first Cup in his rookie season.
