Obviously the readers might expect that I will
pinpoint to the quality-differences of the great NHL-lockout-players to the
„normal“ Swiss league players. Yes, this quality-difference is a fact but I did
put this into one of my blogs earlier on. This time I turn the page and want to
focus onto the wise fact, that so far in our Swiss league just one team did
change the coach and this might be at least partly because of the NHL lockout.
In our league we have unbelievable rollercoasters in
the standings, some weeks with somehow surprising leaders and underachieving
teams on the other hand. Weeks later the leaders and underachieving teams are
others and right now at least at the bottom of the standings everything is more
or less as expected at the beginning of the season.
Dramatic changes in the standings, bad weeks and
polemic media usually leads to a lot of unnecessary and expensive
coaching-changes. Not so this time and this is the learning-effect of our GMs.
A few examples:
The pure results of the HC Davos in the early going
would definitely lead to a coach-change if you would take the Swiss
soccer-league as a measure-stick. Davos has clearly a top2 team on paper but
did find themselves out of the playoffs not so long ago. What happened?
Keyplayers were injured (Nash, Sykora, Von Arx). What can the coach do if your
key-players are injured? Nothing. Davos management did realise this and didn’t
fire Del Curto.
SC Bern had some tough weeks also. Especially the
media-pressure to the coach was pretty high towards firing the coach. The
management wisely didn’t do so. Instead they hired John Tavares and shortly after they play much more
attractive and much more succesful... with the same coach.
SC Langnau Tigers have one of the worst teams on paper. The
roster depth is weak and so the quality of the „normal“ import players is even
more important than in other teams. They didn’t do a good job in the off-season
in this category. Then they did lose their most important Swiss player, Simon
Moser, due to injuries for most of the games, did hire just mediocre lockout-players
compared to other teams. All this did lead to a crystal clear situation: The
Tigers team on the ice was just plain bad. Not so long ago their coach, John
Fust, got celebrated as a true magician – as in Switzerland many hockey-guys do
again and again with the Davos coach Arno Del Curto – did lose game after game,
sometimes in a really sad manner. Fire the coach? Not so the Tigers, right they
were. Also the Tigers did probably learn that the coaches influence to success
or failure is much smaller than many people think.
EV Zug
EV Zug did lose Raphael Diaz and Damien Brunner in the
last two years. It was just a question of time until these substantial losses will
lead to much worse results and logically it happened in the beginning of this
season. Last years regular-season champion Zug did find itself in a non
playoff-spot, with the same coaching-staff. Then the NHL-Lockout did spread out
and finally Zug did hire Diaz, Brunner and Zetterberg...and just weeks later
Zug is in the rankings already very close to the top. By the way: Still the
same coaching-staff.
Servette Geneva
According to many, Geneva has a great coach in Chris
McSorley. In my mind he maybe is a great coach but I don’t want to discuss
this, maybe he is just an average coach and being an average coach is just
enough to win a championship if you have the right players. Chris McSorley is
the GM of this Geneva club at the same time and responsible for all
player-moves and acquisitions. In this he is a master! A master not as a coach
but as a GM. Last season too many key-players did suffer serious injuries for
too long and even the „great“ coach Chris McSorley did find himself in the
relegation round where he even did lose the first round – maybe he did lose
this first round on purpose because so he did win additional money from
ticket-sales in the secons-round (against relegation). Keyplayers injured,
McSorley Coach, no success. In summer McSorley did manage to get some great new
players (e.g. Romy, Almond, Walker), started the season with nobody injured and
dominated the league with ease! He also did hire Yannick Weber und Logan
Couture from the lockout shopping-list. Not long ago, Almond got injured and
Couture did go home to North America. I guess you know what comes next: Yes,
Geneva started to lose game after game and as of today, they even did lose the
top of the rankings already. By the way: Same coaching-staff as early on.
Change of scenery:
The NHL is an open book. Everybody knows how much
money everybody makes and I guarantee you that these figures show a lot about
the value of employees in NHL-franchises. Because of the great
salary-cap-system all GMs have to deal very careful with money. The result:
NHL-GMs did find out looooong time ago that the most valuable assets in a team
are the star-players and so they get paid so much more than average or below
average players. Why is that? You always can easily replace average or below
average players, in this category you take the one who is prepared to play for
your team with a lower price-tag. More or less the same goes for coaches. NHL
coaches are by far not as well paid as the star-players in their teams. They
have good salaries and – don’t get me wrong - they deserve to have good
salaries but NHL-GMs know very well that the coaches are NOT the most important
employees in the hockey-business, the star-players are. For some softies and
social romantic brains in European leagues this is a tough fact to swallow but
it’s just true. Also in our country there is sometimes a too big team-hype and
even worse: A „our star is the coach“ hype. This views are too excessive and I
guess what happened in this lockout-season did open a lot of eyes in the local Swiss
hockey-business. The lesson learned by our GMs is good and bad for our
head-coaches. The bad: The importance of a head-coach is not as overly “hyped”
important as it is judged in some media again and again and this means the GMs
will also learn that they shouldn’t fall into a trap of excessive
salary-demands of coaches, resp. their agents. The good: Our GMs did also learn
that it is wise to keep contracts with coaches. Coaches don’t get fired anymore
that fast and this is a very wise development in our league. The coaches
deserve to do their job in a stable and trusted surrounding. Judge your
coaching-staff after the contract is finished and not after 10 bad games. Also
the other way round: Never fall into the trap to extend a coaches contract
after 10 surprisingly good games.
So, our Swiss league history 2012/2013 will be written
all over again very soon. The NHL will start in January and all our teams have
to get judged again without their lockout-players. This will be an exciting
time again... as hockey-times actually always are...
…last but not least… while I’m writing this column
maybe the Langnau Tigers already did fire their coach, John Fust. In the full
interest of the Tigers, of John Fust and in the interest of my esteem of the
Tigers management I desperately hope that they don’t fire him. They can only be
better than now if all their key-players are and stay healthy. In addition they
should probably upgrade their import-player “roster”. If both will happen the
Tigers will be well prepared to fight successful against relegation. If they
change John Fust it will change nothing.
Zurich, 9 December 2012 / Thomas Roost
Good post and I agree generally, however, I think you should have included Ambri as an example where changing the coach actually did work...
ReplyDeleteBut I like your post as a counter-weight to the general view here that Coaches are very important and as such counter-weight, I can understand that you left out Ambri.
And Hartley might be another example of a very important coach in the specific situation that Zurich was in before last year.
These examples can be viewed as exception to the rule.
Thank's for the "flowers", much appreciated. Ambri is not much better since the coaching-change and nobody knows the results Constantine would have had in these weeks. They are significantly better since they have Cory Schneider and in the meantime all of their imports seem to be injury-free - this is the major-impact, coach probably a minor-impact. Hartley had bad results in the regular-season but excellent results in the PO. If he can repeat such things again and again then he would be be a magician in my eyes, but now...nobody will ever know. In my maybe a bit exaggerated opinion. PO success is mainly luck. Regular season success tells more about a coaches job. I do know that I'm pretty lonely with this view but this doesn't necessarily mean that I change my opinion... ;-)
ReplyDeleteThere was an impulse after Ambri changed the coach prior to the arrival of Cory Schneider. Those two events were independent.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that Pelletier is the better coach and you are right, it is always completely impossible to predict what would have transpired without the change. But it is unlikely in my mind that Ambri would have had the same (short-term) success that they had without the coaching change.
A coaching change also does not necessarily relies on the actual qualitiy of the coach, but can change the dynamics in a team. That's why I think you should have acknowledged the fact that a coaching change can lead to a positive development, even if it is not necessarily because of the qualitiy of the coach (this would be in line with your argumentation, without having to "bend" reality to fit your argumentation ;-)).
PS: I do not expect you to change your opinion, but I would love to think that you are open to change your opinion as a general principle
I will make you happy: I'm very open to change my opinion as a general principle because an opinion is usually based on knowledge you have today and should change if this knowledge changes tomorrow. The coach-changing-effect is scientifically researched in the American Pro-Sports and the result is: No effect in the mid- or longterm, a very small effect in the short-term. This is fact. I would be very surprised if in European sports the result will be different, although - to be fair - there is no such a study in Europe. Of course there is the one or the other example who shows different but people have to realize that a single example proofs absolutely nothing because you will ALWAYS find one or two examples for whatever opinion you have. Keep on being happy ;-)
ReplyDelete