Fire Michel Therrien! Or, you know, trade for some offense
A cursory search for “FIRE MICHEL THERRIEN” finds two subsets of results: Articles from 2009, when he was actually fired by the Pittsburgh Penguins after he coached them to the Stanley Cup Final, and then a slew of articles written at the midpoint of last season after a brutal 20-game stretch.
Some attacked the Canadiens’ passive forechecking, which didn’t generate enough offense. Others, like this one from a plucky young blogger named Tyler Dellow, spelled out the diminishing returns when Therrien takes over a team: “A very disturbing pattern in Therrien’s career. When he comes in, things seem to get worse. When he exits, they improve.”
Where do Therrien’s 2014-15 Habs stand?
An offensively underwhelming team. Their 2.08 GAA in 12 playoff games is misleading: In fact, the Canadiens scored seven goals in five games in this series, the ones that were 6-2 pile-ons like Game 4. Their 2.61 GAA in the regular season placed them 20th and was actually up from their 2.55 GAA in the previous season; and yet it felt like Carey Price had to do more heavy lifting this season than last, hence his Hart Trophy nomination.
Their power play was at 17.2 percent last season and dipped to 16.5 percent this season. The Habs aren’t the first team in hockey to struggle mightily in the playoffs on the power play, but 2-for-36 is a special kind of terrible.
After the Montreal Canadiens were eliminated on Tuesday in Tampa Bay in Game 6, there were a few disturbing comments to emerge from the room.
P.K. Subban, one of the team’s small cadre of captains, on leadership:
“This is the playoffs. It’s about emotions, it’s about elevating your game physically and making sure your battle level is at a point where you can be a difference-maker on the ice.
“You can’t afford to have passengers. Everybody’s got to be a leader, and today I don’t think we had enough. We didn’t do enough to beat a good hockey team. We knew they were going to come out with their best effort tonight, and we didn’t match it.”
“I felt that physically and mentally we were drained. It’s disappointing but I guess those things happen.”
A lack of leadership and an inability to meet the emotional benchmark needed to win Game 6, after riding a wave of momentum from Game 5. Well, that’s not good.
Then again, neither is losing the first three games of a series, or losing seven of nine games against a division rival.
So what becomes of the Habs this offseason? And what, if anything, becomes of Therrien?
The first answer GM Marc Bergevin needs to find is on offense: Is Montreal’s inability to score a result of a roster he constructed that can’t generate goals, or is it about a system Therrien plays that doesn’t activate the goal-scorers on the roster?
The Canadiens were the top defensive team in the NHL this season, backed largely by Price, and that became their identity. When you are facing 29 other teams once at a time during the regular season, you can get by on that. But in the playoffs, when every team takes just as much pride in its defensive play, you need something else to lean on, and the Canadiens didn’t have it.
Players like Alex Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher, and even Pacioretty and Subban, are still on the upswing of their careers and have room to develop. But the infusion of some established offensive talent would fill a void this team had all season.
From Ken Campbell of The Hockey News, who calls Therrien one of the most polarizing coaches in the history of the Habs:
But Therrien has been criticized as a pedestrian coach when it comes to playing style and strategy. He steadfastly refused to stay with Alex Galchenyuk at center and is blamed for a style that focuses on dump and chase with a team that isn’t physically suited to playing that style. The Canadiens play without the puck an awful lot and P.K. Subban was bang on when he suggested the Canadiens have made goalie Carey Price’s job more difficult, not easier.
… Whatever the Canadiens do, they need to upgrade themselves at forward, particularly at center. Even though Plekanec is very good on faceoffs and plays a responsible game, he disappeared offensively during these playoffs, as did Desharnais. And in the absence of any help on the free agent market and trades being too difficult to make, the time is now for either Therrien or his replacement to make Galchenyuk a full-time center. Perhaps he won’t be the bona fide No. 1 guy for a year or two and that might mean the Canadiens take a step backward, but they’re never, ever going to know whether Galchenyuk is capable of doing the job unless they give him the chance and stick with him for an extended period of time.
From Marc Dumont of Habs Eyes On The Prize:
Predictably, as the dust settles, the yearly debate surrounding Michel Therrien has already commenced. It will be discussed ad nauseam. One camp will claim that the Habs have never been better, and that results are what matter in sports. The other camp will point to the lack of strategic adjustments, the poor regular season possession numbers, and the performance of Carey Price.
Essentially, both arguments hold water. I don’t think Therrien is necessarily a bad coach. His team produced fantastic numbers throughout the playoffs, and it’s tough to overlook where the Habs landed in the standings in the past two season. On the other hand, I do believe his grinding system is one of the reasons Montreal ran out of steam. It’s an incredibly taxing strategy that takes its toll on players as the season goes on. There’s also the worry that Therrien may be wasting the prime of several stars.
That’s a legit fear, as Price and Subban and Pacioretty inch closer to 30 years old. So is the idea that Therrien’s system drains the tank in the same way another old-school coach, Ken Hitchcock, does with the St. Louis Blues. Therrien is essentially coaching a roster he doesn’t have, and no amount of moves from Bergevin will provide it to him.
Bergevin is credited as being of the best GMs in the NHL. He’s attempted to add offensive in the past – remember Thomas Vanek? – and the results have been middling. There isn’t a team in the league that isn’t searching for offensive help in the middle. The problem is most of the ones available are of David Desharnais dimensions, and they already have that.
Getting to the second round spares Therrien’s job; I think he’s on his “soff” behind if they had allowed Ottawa to rally in Round 1. But that doesn’t change the fact that this team’s offensive struggles can be traced to his system; a system that puts entirely too much on the shoulders of Carey Price.
(There should be talk about Mike Babcock, no matter how insulting that might be to Therrien.)
But it’s not an easy call. Therrien has found success in Montreal. He has his champions, like Jack Todd of the Gazette:
Win or lose in this series and beyond, Therrien deserves to be commended for a terrific season and a solid job behind the bench in the playoffs. That so many in this town refuse to give him credit isn’t a reflection on him — it’s a reflection on them.
The essential question is if he can find more of that with some roster tweaks, or if that success can only come as it did in Pittsburgh: Without Michel Therrien behind the bench.
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