Weekend rankings: Who’ll be the next coach to be fired?

We had our first coaching change on the 2019-20 season last week. You may have missed it since it came in Toronto and that team tends to fly under the radar. But with Mike Babcock handed his walking papers and Sheldon Keefe installed behind the Leafs’ bench, we can now settle those “first coach fired” bets from October.

Great. So who’s going to be second?

It’s kind of a macabre question – we’re talking about people losing their jobs, after all – but it’s unavoidable in a league where midseason changes are taking on increased importance. This time last year, we’d already had four, including one by the eventual Cup winners. The Babcock firing came one year and one day after the Blues replaced Mike Yeo with Craig Berube, en route to becoming the fourth team in a decade to fire their coach and win a Cup in the same year.

The Leafs hope they can pull off the same sort of turnaround. But history tells us that they won’t be the only candidate. We’ll probably see another coach sent packing before long. But who is the most likely candidate?

It’s a tricky question, and perceptions can shift quickly. Go back even a few weeks, and the odds-on favorite was clear: Dallas coach Jim Montgomery, whose Cup-worthy roster was spinning its wheels. But the Stars have been on fire lately, so Montgomery suddenly seems as safe as can be. At least until the next losing streak.

A few of his Central division colleagues may not be so lucky. Bruce Boudreau’s Wild continue to flounder, and with an expiring coaching contract and a new GM in place who didn’t hire him, there’s little reason to think he’ll be Bill Guerin’s long-term answer. It feels like more of a when-not-if situation in Minnesota, so the question might be whether somebody else beats them to the punch.

Another Central candidate: the Predators, whose recent losing streak dropped them all the way out of a playoff spot. Adam Vingan explored the question of Peter Laviolette’s job security last week, and the coach doesn’t seem overly worried. But as the league’s third longest-serving coach, and with a veteran roster that’s built to win it all right now, he probably should be.

The only other two coaches with longer tenures may have worries of their own, although Paul Maurice has his Jets hanging around the wildcard race. Jon Cooper and the Lightning have been underwhelming, but he feels like a guy who’d be in danger after another first-round exit, not during the season. Then again, we all said that about Babcock too.

The Pacific offers up a few candidates, with Peter DeBoer’s Sharks and Bill Peters’ Flames both underachieving. San Jose is at least trending in the right direction, and you’d think Peters would get the benefit of the doubt after last year’s turnaround. But six straight losses were starting to feel like a crisis, so somebody getting fired in Calgary no longer feels impossible. The question might be who.

Shifting to the East, the bottom of the standings reveals a few candidates. Jeff Blashill’s been showing up on hot seat lists for a few years now, and while we thought he’d received a vote of confidence last year in the form of an extension, that was under a different GM. Furthermore, the extension reportedly includes a club option, so he isn’t as secure as it looked. The question in Detroit might be whether Steve Yzerman would bother with a midseason change, rather than waiting out a rebuilding year, banking some high lottery odds and then making a change in the offseason.

David Quinn’s Rangers are underachieving in what was supposed to be a transition year back to contention, although he’s only in Year 2. John Tortorella’s Blue Jackets are outside of the playoff picture, although most of us expected that after their offseason exodus. And then there’s John Hynes, who is somehow the fifth longest-serving coach in the league now. His Devils continue to be inconsistent at best, and while he can’t strap on the pads and play goal, you get the sense that patience is running out in New Jersey.

Did we miss anyone? I’m not counting any first-year coaches, on the assumption that nobody’s going to get Sparky Allison’ed. We’ll assume that anyone whose team is overachieving or securely in a playoff spot is safe for now, although two bad weeks can change that. And while his team is playing below expectations, I can’t imagine Gerard Gallant being in any danger, so we won’t call a cab for him anytime soon.

Who’s the favorite? Of all the candidates, Hynes stands out – he’s been around forever, his team looks awful and there’s pressure to win right now thanks to the looming Taylor Hall decision. But Babcock’s availability could shift some equations; we’ve seen teams make surprise moves to grab recently fired coaches before, and Babcock speculation is already popping up around some of the teams on our list. A veteran, win-now team like the Sharks or Predators could make sense if he wanted to jump right back into the mix. And if he doesn’t, a Maple Leafs turnaround after making a switch will just ramp up the pressure on anyone else who seems to be on the fence.

We’re at that time of year. It’s officially no longer early. And as the Blues showed us last year, a big move at the right time can save a season. One team’s already taken the plunge; let’s see who’s next.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.

Under Babcock, the Leafs had won just two games over teams currently holding a playoff spot, and neither of those had come in regulation. Under Keefe so far, the Leafs are 2-0-0, with impressive road wins over the Coyotes and Avalanche. Thursday’s win over the Coyotes was a strong 60-minute performance, while Saturday’s victory against the Avs was more of an up-and-down affair. Still, the two wins snap a six-game losing streak, and combined with Keefe’s strategic shifts, they offer some hope that the season can be salvaged, or maybe more than that.

Is that enough for a top-five spot? Well …

5. Toronto Maple Leafs (11-10-4, -3 true goals differential*) – I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Calm down everyone. The Leafs aren’t in the top five based on two games. I’m not that much of a homer, come on.

(But check back next week.)

5. Tampa Bay Lightning (11-7-2, +8 true goals differential*) – They’ve won two straight and five of seven, and looked at least a little like their old selves while rolling over the Ducks on Saturday. They’ve played the fewest games in the entire league, with just 20 on the books, so the point total isn’t impressive. But in terms of points percentage, they’ve already climbed back into an Eastern playoff spot. In fact, they’ve passed by the wildcards and are sitting in third in the Atlantic.

4. St. Louis Blues (14-5-5, +8) – How did you celebrate Mike Yeo Anniversary week? The Blues recognized the occasion with home wins against last year’s top two regular-season teams, as they beat the Lightning and Flames. Then they lost to the Predators on Saturday; they’ll get a rematch tonight.

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Grab Bag: Toronto Maple Leafs excuses, no spitting allowed and a Norris Division coach fight

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My spies have compiled a list of Maple Leaf excuses
- Should you spit on people? A debate
- An obscure player who recently put up an epic stat spoiler
- The week's three comedy stars
- And the only worse thing for a Leafs coach than getting fired: Having Jacques Demers try to strangle you

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Puck Soup: The Babcock firing

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Mike Babcock firing, and his potential next stops, where the Leafs go from here
- Garnet Hathaway's three-game suspension for spitting
- Does the NHL need to change the rules after the scary Matt Calvert incident
- Some final thoughts on the Hall of Fame, including predictions for next year's class
- We play "Hell Yes or B.S." with the Islanders, Senators, and David Pastrnak's goal-scoring
- Baby Yoda
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

The story behind the Hall of Famer who played the fewest games for your favorite team

The Hockey Hall of Fame welcomed six new members this week, including three men in the player’s category. So congratulations to Sergei Zubov of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Vaclav Nedomansky of the New York Rangers and Guy Carbonneau of the St. Louis Blues.

OK, maybe those aren’t the teams you associate with those guys. But I’ve always been kind of fascinated by legendary players who briefly show up on weird teams. It always just looks wrong. You might even forget about those stints altogether. If you’re a new fan, maybe you’ve never heard that it happened.

So today, let’s say goodbye to another year of Hall of Fame festivities with a simple question: Which Hall of Fame player spent the least amount of time with your favorite team?

In some cases, the answer might seem easy. In others, we’ll have to dig a little. There are two teams that have never had a single Hall of Famer at all, one of which is obvious (Vegas) and one of which we’ll get to in a bit. Take a minute and see if you can figure out the answer for your favorite team before you read any further.

To be clear on the ground rules, we’re looking for guys who were inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player; no builders or other off-ice types who happened to have a cup of coffee in the big leagues. They have to have played for the team, not just worked there in the front office or behind the bench, and we’re looking at regular season games only. And we’re of course looking for somebody who played at least one game, so apologies in advance to everyone who was going to answer “Vladislav Tretiak” or something equally clever. We’ll be using the invaluable hockey-reference.com franchise histories, because I already spend eight hours a day on that site, so what’s a few more?

Do you have your guess for your favorite team, and maybe a few others in your back pocket? Think you’ve figured out the identity of that one non-Vegas franchise that’s never had even one Hall of Famer? Want to take a crack at the one outlier team that’s had multiple Hall of Famers, but somehow never a single one who played fewer than 500 games? And can you figure out which players will manage to show up as the fewest games “leader” for multiple teams?

Then let’s dive in. We’ll do this alphabetically.

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks are a good team to start with, since they demonstrate the concept. You might think of Chris Pronger or Scott Niedermayer, but they both played several seasons in Anaheim. You probably remember Sergei Fedorov’s 85-game stopover, but maybe not Jari Kurri’s 82. But the winner here is a guy who dropped by for one season near the end of his career: Adam Oates, who had a forgettable 67-game regular season in 2002-03 but helped the team to a surprising playoff run that spring.

For what it’s worth, those 67 games from Oates will end up being one of the higher totals we’ll see on this list. Our next team can hit the under on that score by a decent margin.

Arizona Coyotes

The Coyotes have been a popular destination for veterans on the tail-end of their careers, and that’s even if we don’t count quasi-retired stars like Pronger and Pavel Datsyuk who wound up on the roster as cap-related paper transactions. Mike Gartner might come to mind, but he lasted two seasons. None of Owen Nolan, Tony Amonte or Curtis Joseph are in the Hall, at least not yet. But even if they were, they couldn’t beat out our easy winner: Brett Hull, who lasted just five games in a post-lockout comeback attempt in 2005 before abruptly calling it quits.

You might figure that it will be a while before we find a team that can undercut Hull’s total. As it turns out, we don’t have to wait long at all …

Boston Bruins

As you might expect, the Original Six teams do well on this scale; they just have more history to draw from. In Boston’s case, that history includes two Hall of Famers who played over 1,400 games for the franchise in Ray Bourque and Johnny Bucyk. It also included far briefer stopovers at the other of the scale, from guys like Mark Recchi (180), Sprague Cleghorn (109), Brian Leetch (61) and Paul Coffey (18). But you’ve got to keep scrolling all the way down to Sylvio Mantha, a Hall of Fame defenseman who played 13 seasons with Montreal in the 1920s and 1930s and then four games with the Bruins at the very end of his career.

Buffalo Sabres

The Sabres have a couple of classic “Oh, I forgot they had that guy” names, including Doug Gilmour (82 games) and Clark Gillies (86). But the winner here is Dick Duff, whose two partial seasons with the expansion Sabres in 1970-71 and 1971-72 add up to 61 games, narrowly beating out Grant Fuhr’s 64.

Calgary Flames

You might be expecting to see Brett Hull stake his claim as our first repeat winner here, and his 57 games puts him in the running, ahead of Martin St. Louis’s 69. But the winner, for now at least, is Grant Fuhr, whose 23 games in 1999-2000 take the crown. That “for now” is important, though, since Jaromir Jagr’s 22 games will steal the spot as soon as he goes in – unless Curtis Joseph and his nine games can sneak in before that.

Carolina Hurricanes

Are we counting the Whalers here? I’ll leave that call to Canes fans. If we are, then it’s Bobby Hull’s nine-game stint on the 1979-80 team that also featured Gordie Howe (80), Mark Howe (213) and Dave Keon (234). If you’d prefer to keep it in Carolina, we can go with Mark Recchi’s 20 games after coming over at the 2006 deadline.

Chicago Blackhawks

Another Original Six team means plenty of options, including Coffey (10), Lionel “Big Train” Conacher (48) and maybe most notably, Bobby Orr (26) and Dominik Hasek (25). But the crown here goes to Barney Stanley, a star from the pre-NHL days who was inducted based on his career in the PCHA but who appeared in his only NHL game with Chicago while coaching the team in 1927-28. If you’d prefer a player who was inducted based on his NHL career, we could also use the delightfully named Herb Gardiner, who won the Hart in 1926-27 with the Canadiens before appearing in just four games with the Hawks a few years later.

Colorado Avalanche

The Avs have had a few short stints by notable names, including the ill-fated 2003-04 duo of Teemu Selanne (78) and Paul Kariya (51). Their most famous temporary star was undoubtedly Ray Bourque, who stuck around for 94 games. But the winner here is a guy who tagged along in that famous Bourque trade – Dave Andreychuk and his 14 games.

Columbus Blue Jackets

Admit it, the Blue Jackets were your prime suspect for that other team that had never had a HHOFer, weren’t they? They’re close, since they’ve had only one. But let’s not forget the Sergei Fedorov era, which lasted parts of three seasons and 185 games.

Dallas Stars

Eric Lindros is probably the biggest name that comes to mind, at 49 games. Mike Gartner shows up too, with 80, as long as we’re counting the North Stars days. But we can aim way lower than that and find Sergei Makarov, a Russian star whose seven seasons in the NHL included 134 goals, the 1990 Calder Trophy and four whole games with Dallas in 1996.

Detroit Red Wings

Hoo boy. The Red Wings aren’t just an Original Six team, they’re the franchise that specializes in squeezing one last year out of other team’s franchise players. You might be thinking of names like Mike Modano (40), Borje Salming (49), Darryl Sittler (61) or Bernie Federko (73) here. But none of them end up coming all that close. Instead, it’s Doug Harvey, the five-time Norris winner who sadly did not earn the honor based on either of his two games as a Red Wing in 1966-67.

Edmonton Oilers

Edmonton’s a bit of a strange one, since it’s usually longtime Oilers who end up making brief appearances with other teams late in their career. There’s also the Chris Pronger factor; he stuck around for 80 games. But they’re notable here for giving us our first repeat winner: Adam Oates doubles down on his Ducks honors thanks to spending the final 60 games of his career in Edmonton.

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Weekend power rankings: Which team represents Canada’s best hope to end the Stanley Cup drought?

Did you know that a team from Canada hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1993? It’s a little-known fact that almost never gets brought up. If you’re a Canadian, you probably haven’t heard anyone mention it in minutes, maybe even hours. (Squeezes bottle of maple syrup so tightly it shatters in his hand.) Yeah, we really enjoy hearing that little fun fact. Sure do.

Since we’re already just a wee bit on edge up here these days, let’s steer into the skid. A quarter of the way into the season, which Canadian team looks like they have the best chance to win the Stanley Cup?

That’s a fitting query for this column since the Cup question is the big one we’re trying to answer each week. So far this season, only one Canadian team has appeared in the top five. That was way back in week one, and it’s fair to say that team isn’t going to be invited back anytime soon. But even if Canadian teams aren’t showing up here often, some of them have to be at least quasi-contenders, right?

Well, maybe. We’ve got seven teams to work through, and it feels like we should mention all of them, just for the sake of completeness. So … the Ottawa Senators. They’re a team. So far, even a slightly better one that we may have been expecting. But they’re not winning the Cup. Next.

If we keep working our way up the standings, we get to the middle-of-the-pack before we run into a four-team Canadian traffic jam. (For American readers, a Canadian traffic jam is a lot like one of yours, only with more apologizing, moose and Zambonis.) All four teams are within three points of each other, hanging right around the wildcard race. That isn’t the worst place to be, but doesn’t exactly scream “Cup favorite.”

Of those teams, two are probably right about where we’d have expected. The Canucks were one of those early-season surprises that have been coming back to earth, hitting a November speed wobble after a very strong October. There’s a general sense of optimism coming out of Vancouver these days, and rightly so, as the future looks bright. But that future isn’t here yet, though, and a Cup run this year still seems like a longshot.

The Jets are heading in the opposite direction; a recent contender that now feels like a borderline playoff team at best. We know the blue line situation by now, and it certainly doesn’t sound like Dustin Byfuglien is walking through that door any time soon. But it’s also fair to say that the total disaster some of us saw coming hasn’t happened. The Jets are a perfectly decent team so far, albeit one with flaws. And we know from 2018 that this core is capable of a long run if they can heat up at the right time. They won’t be anybody’s playoff favorites, and they still have a tough fight just to make it that far, but if they ever did … I mean, you never know. But it feels unlikely.

We also have to mention (deep sigh) the Maple Leafs. They’re probably the most hyper-analyzed team in the league right now, partly because there are so many Leaf fans and partly because everyone else loves a good train wreck 18-wheeler cliff dive. They’re a mess right now, coughing up a winnable game with the slumping Bruins on Friday and then getting their teeth kicked in by the Penguins on Saturday. They’re a team built to play one way with a coach who wants another, with frail psychology and too many injuries and no backup goalie and a long road trip that still has five games to go. Panic time? It might be.

I can’t recall a single season drop in offence like this year’s leafs compared to last. pic.twitter.com/vHL9mmHkGl

— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) November 17, 2019

The Leafs are getting most of the attention these days, as per Canadian law. But they aren’t the country’s only supposed Cup contender that’s underperforming; the Flames were a 107-point team last year, and they’re on pace to fall well short of that. A few weeks ago on the podcast, I described the Flames as a team where almost everyone was performing just 10 percent worse than you’d expect, and it was all adding up to an ugly start. That’s overly simplistic, but they’re still giving off that underachiever’s vibe. It’s a mixed message in terms of optimism; on the one hand, there are no glaring problems here that can’t be solved, but on the other hand, there’s also no easy scapegoat who can be shipped out and replaced in an easy fix. One thing worth remembering: as Eric Duhatschek points out, their record at this point last year was pretty much the same as it is now. They haven’t impressed so far, but I’m not taking them off the contender’s list yet.

Next up are the Canadiens, who had one of those statement games in Friday’s win over the Capitals and then lost a weird one to the Devils in which we learned you can’t kick a puck with your hip. They haven’t been getting much Cup talk outside of Montreal, and even a few weeks ago I had them pegged as just about the prototypical stuck-in-the-middle team. But the buzz is building, and rightly so. The Habs aren’t dominating, but they’re banking points, and staking a solid claim to one of the Atlantic’s top three spots. The schedule gets tough now, and we’ve seen hot starts disintegrate in Montreal in recent years. But right now, Montreal is the first Canadian team that’s playing like a legitimate contender.

And that brings us to the country’s best team, at least according to the standings. The Oilers are still camped out on top of the Pacific, with few signs that the inevitable plunge back to earth is coming. They had a weird week, losing to the lowly Sharks, beating the Avalanche and then dropping an OT decision to the Stars. The story is still Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl; they’re unstoppable, and so are the Oilers when they’re on the ice, but when they’re not this team is pretty ordinary. Can you win a Cup with two forwards carrying the team? Probably not, although you can bank enough early-season points to get a firm grip on a playoff spot while you figure the rest of it out.

Back to our original question: Which team is the most likely to end that Canadian drought? The unfortunate answer is that nobody jumps out as an obvious choice, although we can make a few cases. For all their problems, the Leafs certainly have the talent, and probably more than any team in the country. The Flames and (maybe) Jets are in that boat too, looking like teams that aren’t especially dangerous right now but could be by the end of the season. The Canucks are feisty, and young teams sometimes make sudden leaps that we don’t see coming. And while the Oilers might have too much recent baggage for anyone to feel confident, they’re playing great and will eventually have to be taken seriously.

But out of everyone, I think the answer might be the Canadiens. They look good, they have a goaltender we know can catch fire and Shea Weber might be a ninja. They don’t feel anything like favorites right now. But at 26 years and counting up here, we may have to take what we can get.

So after all of that, did Montreal make this week’s top five? They did not. Let’s go figure out who did …

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.

It’s Hall of Fame induction night in Toronto tonight. Congratulations to all the honorees – yes, even Guy Carbonneau – on their big night. Be sure to check out our recent features on Vaclav Nedomansky, Jerry York, Sergei Zubov and Hayley Wickenheiser.

5. Tampa Bay Lightning (9-6-2, +4 true goals differential*) – They had a chance to come into the weekend rankings on a four-game win streak and make my life easier, so of course they dropped a 4-3 decision to the Jets on home ice. Come on guys, let’s work together here.

By the way, I thought Justin Bourne’s take on the Lightning was insightful, although it may not make Tampa fans feel especially optimistic.

4. New York Islanders (14-3-1, +14) – I guess they didn’t like their last ten-game win streak and have decided to start over with a better one.

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