Keenan on coaching changes
“That part of the industry has always bothered me – that you try to find a solution and success by making a coaching change, and often times it does not work,” said Keenan. “Probably more often than not it does not work. But it’s a desperate measure at a desperate time when you feel that something of that magnitude has to happen in order to jump-start your team. It’s a little bit of a gamble by a manager to a certain extent, but the manager has to read the situation as well as he can and rely on his own experience and review the history of the team and what he thinks his chances are, what the results might be.”
Obviously this is coming from a biased person. It is an interesting distinction to make — something Keenan hints at here — that sometimes these changes are made because a manager thinks something major could stir the pot, like the year the Devils fired Ftorek with less than 10 games remaining in the season and went on to win the cup. There are also times when it seems a manager is trying to say “it ain’t my fault.” The Renney situation seems like one of those. The Rangers, for all of the money they have spent, have a very unimpressive roster. The players that are solid, like Lundqvist, are products of the system. It wasn’t all that long ago when Glen Sather pledged to build from within, only to quickly go out and spend money on aging veterans.
I remember when Sather was a frustrated manager for the Edmonton Oilers. He had lost a few key players to free agency and spewed that if he were managing the Rangers (with all of their financial resources) he’d never lose a game. Years in, he still hasn’t won a Cup. Have a look in the mirror, Slats.
