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February 4, 2010
Well, though I know one of my readers will not care and will take several comments to point out how little he cares, the Blue Jackets announced tonight that they have fired coach Ken Hitchcock.
The Jackets, fresh off of their franchise-first playoff appearance last season under Hitchcock, are languishing at 14th out of 15 in the conference (22-26-9, 53pts). The season started out well—12-6-2 in their first 20—but has been spiraling out of control for most of the last 10 weeks or so. At one point, the Jackets had lost 21 out of 24 games. From a release from GM Scott Howson:
This season has been very disappointing for the Blue Jackets organization and our fans and the responsibility for that rests with all of us from management to the coaches and players. Hitch worked tirelessly to build an identity for this team that was missing before he arrived and deserves a great deal of credit for those efforts. He earned and received the opportunity to turn things around this season, but unfortunately that has not happened and it has become apparent that change is in the best interest of our organization.
I myself wrote that the team would build a statue for Hitch at the end of his career, thinking there was no way he would ever wear out his welcome here in Columbus. But, all it took was three disgruntled young stars and a terrible losing stretch to seal the fate of the only coach to ever have even a modicum of success with the Jackets.
Hitchcock will be replaced by assistant Claude Noel on an interim basis. Hitchcock’s career record stands at 533-371-136 career record.
I’ll have more on this tomorrow when I have a chance to do some digesting and writing, but for now we’ll let team Captain Rick Nash sum things up at the moment:
“It’s terrible news. It’s terrible news, it’s terrible we couldn’t play better, and the coach had to be fired. Hitch put this market on the map. We didn’t really have an identity before he got here.”
12 Comments
if anyone saw his post-game interview last night he looked and sounded like he knew he could get fired. its too bad.
I really don’t see the logic in firing a coach in February. At this point, why not wait until the end of the season. I’m also not cconvinced that this waste-of-a-season was necessarily all Hitch’s fault. Im worried that this might be the beginning of the end of the NHL in Columbus.
Of course, no one cares…its just a sport that no one watches in a second-rate city that no one pays attention to…
I know we’ve talked about it many times and I continue to have mixed feelings on it. It’s certainly reasonable given the extremely poor performance after last year, but he is still the best coach that will ever coach here.
Howson should not be without blame as he seemingly refused to draft or get guys that fit Hitch’s system. Though Hitch’s system might not be the best for the NHL anymore… and certainly not in an olympic year.
WHOCAREZIDONTCAREWTF.
Also, too bad, he didn’t deserve that. The lady to the right in the picture knows what I’m talkin’ about.
Typical hockey move…fire the head coach when things start to go bad. Hitchcock will be fine though, he will for sure catch on someplace else
A few things:
Hitch is the scapegoat, for sure, but he’s not without fault. The other two teams he’s coached have had similar issues: he was rough on young guys, and the players got tired of being yelled at after three or four years. This same scenario basically played out in Philly four years ago. Brassard and Voracek are guys that have world-class talent/potential, but are playing with no confidence; both have regressed this year. Some of that’s on them, some of it’s on Hitch.
The players definitely deserve some blame, but they’re not built to play dump and chase. It’s not Hitch’s fault that guys like Commodore and Mason have both admitted to having less-than-productive off-seasons, but just the same I don’t feel like Hitch is putting them in the best position to win right now.
I agree with brwnsgrl, though, in that the timing of this is odd. If they were comfortable firing him, they should have done it two months ago when the team was bottoming out. Much like what the Penguins did last year, the playoffs were not out of the realm of possibility.
Howson is catching some heat, but I don’t put the blame on him, personally. This is almost the exact same roster that made the playoffs last season. They lost Michael Peca, who while being a solid dressing-room contributor, was doing nothing on the ice; they lost Manny Malhotra, who has been more than replaced by Sammy Pahlsson; they lost Jason Williams, who was a numbers-game loss but wasn’t irreplaceable. They had a full season from Mason and Antoinne Vermette. They added Anton Stralman, who has helped their Power Play immensely. They drafted John Moore, who should fill a need in a year or two. He signed a solid backup goalie (who’s been better than the starter all year, honestly). To me, Howson is not the problem, and when you look at the roster now versus when MacClean left, there’s no comparison.
Finally, I wouldn’t worry about the Jackets leaving. They have a better fan-base than the Coyotes, better financials (even in spite of losing all that money each year), and the league STILL bent over backward to block the Coyotes from moving. The Jackets have a lot of young talent and potential, and as teams like the Avalanche have shown this season, you can turn it around in one off-season with the right tweaks.
Glad he’s out. Maybe Nikita Filatov will come back to play for the Blue Jackets now that Hitchcock is gone.
Filatov hasn’t done anything in Russia since going back. Until proven otherwise he is the BJ Mullens of the NHL.
I thought the Jackets were on the right track, especially after last year’s playoff run (short lived) and the fast start this year. I moved out of the Columbus area shortly after the aforementioned fast start, hadn’t been following them except to know that they started tanking. Hope they can put it all together one of these days. They get and have always received quite a bit of direct and indirect support from the Columbus community, both the public and business communities, and the franchise needs to put it all together for more than the stretch last year (out of seven) otherwise that will be one empty arena (district)…
When Mason lost his swagger, it seemed like everyone else followed suit. A team with all of the talent in the world and zero confidence will play poorly. I dont think Hitchcock was good at rallying the young troops. He loved veterans and generally they are self-motivated.
I think hockey is still a great fit for Columbus. I think a large part of the population doesnt fit the “football-beer-okay USA!” mold.
WBC, you’re right. A lot of the young guys lost their mojo this year. Voracek looks lost right now, Brassard struggled mightily for a good chunk of the year, and Filatov–though he is a bit of a punk–couldn’t exactly figure out what it was Hitch wanted from him. You could see it the last two losses: they dominated the first 10 minutes of both games, and once one bad thing happened they packed it in. They were playing tentative, over-thinking, panicked… name your cliche. That’s not a recipe for success on the ice.
[…] we passed along last night, the Blue Jackets and coach Ken Hitchcock have parted ways; Hitchcock was fired yesterday, and assistant Claude Noel was named the interim coach for the remaining 24 games of the […]