Gerard Gallant Getting Fired In Vegas Just Proves That The NHL Is Drunk Off Their Ass This Season
There might not be a single worse job on the planet right now than being a head coach in the National Hockey League. We could bring back Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe and he'd refuse to be an NHL head coach for a day. Now granted, some of the firings that have happened this year are definitely warranted. Bill Peters doesn't deserve to be working in the NHL. Mike Babcock seems to be the most hatable man in all of hockey.
But that's now 7 coaches fired this season alone. I'm not a big math guy but that means that over 20% of the coaches in the NHL this year have gotten fired. And 2 of them have already been re-hired after the Vegas Golden Knights are replacing Gerard Gallant with Peter DeBoer. Which is hilarious given his previous history with Vegas.
But it's been a wild year in the NHL and I'm almost certain that nobody actually knows what they're doing. I mean replacing Gerard Gallant with Peter DeBoer is like replacing Skippy peanut butter with Jif. Essentially it's the same exact thing, with Skippy probably being a little bit better. But in the grand scheme of things, these teams are just addicted to any sort of change right now. It's like everybody just locked themselves in a room, got belligerently angry drunk, decided to start firing guys and now they woke up the next morning trying to piece together what happened the night before and figure out a way to fix it.
And has anybody in the league been more disrespected by management than Gerard Gallant has? I realize that Vegas has lost 4 straight games, but my god. This man took an expansion team to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, and won the Jack Adams in 2018. He had them back in the playoffs again last year and lost in a game 7 after a wild penalty sparked an even crazier comeback for San Jose. 2 straight years in the playoffs, a Stanley Cup Final appearance, and now he's getting fired after a bad 2-week stretch in the first half of January. Right now they're still tied for a wild card spot and only 3 points behind Arizona for the top spot in the Pacific. And they're just going to fire this man to replace him with Pete DeBoer, who was doing a significantly worse job in San Jose just a month ago? All of this coming after Gallant was left on the side of the road by the Panthers when he got fired by Florida just 22 games into the 2016-17 season, just one year after he had the Panthers win the Atlantic Division. Never forget:
By the way…
Hilarious.
But yeah. If I'm one of the remaining 24 coaches in the NHL who hasn't gotten fired already this season, I'm keeping a suitcase packed for at least the next month or so. Because now that a guy like Gerard Gallant is available, I feel like there are going to be a bunch of teams out there right now figuring out a way to get him. DeBoer and Hynes were both unemployed for 34 days, my guess is that Gallant gets scooped up well before that.
Best case scenario and the one that everybody should be hoping for is Seattle. Gallant has already proven he can coach the shit out of an expansion team right away so why not lock in Seattle for the 2022 Stanley Cup Final? If I'm Ron Francis, I have the bag en route to Gallant's front door about 20 minutes ago.
Oh and when the Golden Knights finally break out of this funk that they're in and start to rip off some big win streaks, just keep in min that it's not the coaching change that made the difference. It's just water finding its level.
The Golden Knights just fired a great coach because they can't get any goaltending. Like I said, the NHL is absolutely #InOne this season.
Sidenote: interesting that Hynes and DeBoer have already been re-hired before Babcock, and I'm sure that Gallant will find a new team before him as well. Would love to know just how deep the despisal for Babs goes.