How Is Jaromir Jagr Not The #1 Candidate To Be A Player/Coach In Florida?
The Florida Panthers shocked just about everybody last night when they fired Gerard Gallant just 22 games into the 2016-17 NHL season. Just last year, Gallant got a contract extension and was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award. It’s pretty tough these days to find a guy who is well respected all across the board in the hockey community. Respected by the players, by the fans, by the analysts who actually know the game and by Hockey Twitter who decide to randomly hate everybody at some point. But Gerard Gallant has earned the respect of everybody, of course, besides the Panthers’ management team. Who brought in Tom Rowe as their new GM this year and will be replacing Gallant on the bench for the rest of the season with Rowe. So if that sounds a little suspicious to you, it should. Don’t think that the decision to fire Gallant was made after the Panthers’ 2-1 loss to Carolina. That’s just when they decided to pull the plug. And if you’re wondering how the players are reacting to this decision, here are some of Vincent Trocheck’s most recent likes on Twitter.
There are very few teams around the league who have a better situation than the Panthers. They have all the young talent they need in guys like Trocheck, Barkov, Ekblad, Huberbeau and Bjugstad. Then they have guys like Jagr, Luongo, Shawn Thornton and Yandle to lead the way with that veteran presence. It’s almost impossible to go nuclear and fuck up a situation like that, but the Florida Panthers’ management have found a way to do that. And now they’re in a total disarray and the team is falling apart at the seams. There’s really only one way to fix it…..
He is… the most interesting man in the world.
Think about it. There’s no better candidate to be the NHL’s real life version of Reggie Dunlop than Jaromir Jagr. Tom Rowe spent 3 years as an assistant coach in Carolina. He coached in Lowell. He coached Lokomotiv in the KHL. He spent the past few seasons as the Panthers’ AHL coach in San Antonio and Portland. His coaching resume is about as impressive as somebody waking up in the morning. Why put him on the bench? The players clearly don’t respect the guy. It’s not like he’s some whiz kid who is here to completely reinvent the game. So why not let Jagr take the reigns? As much as this pains me to say, he doesn’t have much left in the tank to keep playing. We’ve been saying that for years and he still keeps coming back. But it’s real now. He may only have a season or two left. So let him be a player/coach for a while and then once he decides to hang up the skates for good, he can trade in the jersey for a suit and takeover behind the bench permanently. There’s literally never been a plan that makes more sense than this.