By plenty of measures, Randy Carlyle didn’t get the most out of his players. The Maple Leafs have known this for some time, and on Tuesday, they acted. Carlyle is out of a job.
"It's not that we have players who can't (consistently succeed),” GM Dave Nonis said on Tuesday. "It's that our consistency hasn't been there, it's been trending downward for the last little while — where our consistency has been waning even more.
"You can chalk that up to players not listening if you'd like," he said. "but I don't think it's that they're not capable — because they are. And that's one of the reasons we're making this move."
The next move: hiring someone who can fix it. Peter Horachek and Steve Spott will tag-team it for the time being, with a long-term decision presumably coming after the season. It’s not an easy situation to walk into, either; putting “Toronto” and “hockey” in the same sentence is going to light a fuse. There are also other factors to consider, though. Here are looks at seven names you’re going to see a lot over the next few months, and how they’d potentially fit.
Mike Babcock
Babcock, for a certain contingent of the Toronto hockey hive mind, is the Leafs’ white whale. The hypothetical inevitability of a marriage between the two sides has been, at minimum, a Twitter punchline since the summer.
Whether it’s actually feasible is another question. Babcock, whose contract expires at the end of the season, reportedly wants to be the highest-paid coach in the league. That shouldn’t be a roadblock in Detroit, where owner Mike Ilitch has more money than he knows what to do with, but it’d be just as understandable to imagine Babcock simply wanting a change in scenery and more of a say in player personnel.
Does he get that in Toronto? That’s tough to say. Brendan Shanahan runs the show, and Dave Nonis remains the general manager, though it’s tough to imagine him surviving further failure of the team he’s had a hand in building since 2008.
If nothing else, the Leafs learned the importance of having a coach and a front office on the same page. Carlyle’s style didn’t mesh with the Leafs’ new mindset; he didn’t have the sort of players he preferred, and he didn’t use the guys he had appropriately. Whoever replaces Carlyle long term is going to be a better fit.
Babcock’s bona fides as a coach are tough to question — he has a Stanley Cup, a pair of Olympic gold medals as Team Canada's boss, and the job he did last season should’ve netted him a Jack Adams. Would the Wings let that slip away? And if there’s nothing they can do to stop it, would he get the power he’s looking for in Toronto? It’d be a lot easier to find in other spots. If you look beyond the fact that Babcock is a huge name and Toronto is Toronto, the fit gets a little less simple.
Dan Bylsma
Bylsma, fired last summer by the Penguins, is similar to Babcock; he’s a huge name with a Stanley Cup, which — rightly or wrongly — will get him close to his choice of available jobs.
At the moment, Bylsma is hanging out in Pittsburgh with his kids, periodically doing TV work with the NHL Network and cashing the Penguins’ checks. It’s a good deal, but he’s going to get back into the game, on his terms, at some point fairly soon.
Does that come with the Leafs? Like we said, he’s got a name that’ll attract attention, and he’s clearly a good coach, but he doesn’t come without any baggage. His system stagnated in Pittsburgh, and he coached a dump-and-chase style, at least on the bottom six, that doesn’t jive with analytically inclined types. Beyond that, it’s impossible to say what he’d do with a forward group that doesn’t include Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
He also loves starting the rush with stretch passes; young defensemen Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner are a key to whatever the Leafs do in the future. Their skating ability sets them apart. Does it make sense to place them in a system that focuses less on skating and more on flinging 110-foot passes?
Like Babcock, Bylsma is a good coach; his teams, partially because of Crosby and Malkin, outplayed their numbers during the regular season, but Bylsma also showed a knack for navigating drama and injuries. The problems came in the postseason, particularly when Crosby and Malkin went cold. Part of that is because of a thin group of forwards. Another factor, though, was a system that didn’t stress puck possession up and down the lineup. That should be something of a red flag.
Peter DeBoer
DeBoer is a logical fit. He’s currently out of work, since he was fired by the Devils late last month, and has both a track record of analytically-backed success and some preexisting relationships within the organization.
His biggest success in New Jersey came in 2012, when he led the team to the Stanley Cup Final. The Devils missed the playoffs in each of the ensuing two seasons and cratered early this season, which led to DeBoer’s exit.
As is usually the case, he wasn’t without blame; he seemed to mishandle the goaltending situation two different times (first by playing Martin Brodeur too much, then by running Cory Schneider into the ground). His teams also, in recent years, failed to convert solid underlying numbers into goals, though given the caliber of talent (Ilya Kovalchuk, Zach Parise and, yes, David Clarkson) that left town, that can be explained.
DeBoer also coached Clarkson and Nazem Kadri in the OHL, is close friends with Spott and has the endorsement of Lou Lamoriello.
In short, he’s a good coach with strong connections to the organization, and he’s both gettable and a good philosophical fit. Sounds like the leader in the clubhouse.
Dallas Eakins
The Oilers, understandably enough, fired Eakins earlier this season — they’re the worst team, record-wise, in the league, and that’s nothing new.
Edmonton’s process, if not results, showed signs of turning around this season, though. They controlled more shots than in the past, but were done in by a lack of finishing ability and some brutal goaltending. The situation was toxic enough for that not to matter for Eakins, though.
Now, one of the most in-demand coaches of the 2013 offseason is without a job. Ironically, the thought was the he’d eventually replace Carlyle. That’s how long Tuesday’s move was a discussion point.
In a few ways, he’s the most interesting hypothetical candidate because of the success he had in the AHL with current Leafs like Jake Gardiner and Nazem Kadri — but whether those guys are around long-term is anyone’s guess. Still, it’d be fascinating to see Eakins land with the Leafs. He’s got a reputation as a progressive thinker — the anti-Carlyle, in plenty of ways — and he’s an easy fit with the mindset of Toronto’s front office.
Peter Horachek
Horachek, who will help run the team in the interim with Steve Spott, finds himself in another weird situation. For the second straight season, he’s an interim coach without much of a perceived chance to wind up with the full-time job.
Still, he shouldn’t be discounted. Last season, poor goaltending and special teams railroaded Horachek’s Panthers. He deserves blame for the latter, if not the former. Still, Florida's 5-on-5 on play, was pretty good. One of the best indicators of that: Fenwick Close, the percentage of unblocked shot attempts a team takes when the game is tied or within a goal in the first and second periods. That accounts for when the team with a lead goes into a defensive shell and, theoretically, allows more attempts.
As we said when the Panthers announced that he wouldn’t return:
Florida's Fenwick Close was 49.6, 20th in the league. Given what Horachek was working with, though, and stuff like goaltending, which was out of his control, that's not bad, either. He seemed to positively impact his team, and not everyone can say that.
And now, depending on what moves the Leafs make or don’t make, he’ll have a chance at putting that to work with some better players. If he rights the ship from a process standpoint — that means winning in a sustainable way, rather than relying on hot shooters and goalies — he should be a serious candidate.
Guy Boucher
Boucher, currently coaching SC Bern in Switzerland, has been out of the NHL since Tampa fired him in March 2013.
During two-plus seasons with the Lightning, Boucher assembled a 97-78-20 record and led the team to the '11 Eastern Conference finals. He has a reputation as an innovator and will continually pop up as a potential candidate until he actually takes a job.
The question with Boucher, though, is how responsible he was for the Lightning’s success in '11. Tampa’s possession numbers, talented as the roster was, fluctuated under his watch, and he missed the playoffs in '12 and '13. If he’s as innovative as his reputation suggests, though, he’ll come back better — whenever that may be.
Paul MacLean
Like Boucher, MacLean had some serious early success with the Senators. Like Eakins, he was fired earlier this season in the midst of a messy situation that wasn’t all his fault.
MacLean, the Jack Adams winner in 2013, made his name as a player-friendly coach with a high-paced, high-event system. His mindset changed, though, as did the Senators’ payroll. No team pays its players less. It’s tough to win games when that’s what you’re working with.
Plus, you’d be giving the guy who coached Erik Karlsson to a Norris Trophy the reigns for Gardiner and Rielly. That’s attractive. Still, something about a MacLean-Leafs marriage doesn’t fit.