The Columbus Blue Jackets announced yesterday that they had dismissed head coach Ken Hitchcock and replaced him on an interim basis with veteran minor league coach and Hitchcock assistant Claude Noel. Noel was a minor league forward who had a cup of coffee at the NHL level, and during his time as an AHL coach he won a Calder Cup and a coach of the year award, so he’s certainly a good choice to carry the load until G.M. Scott Howson decides on a permanent replacement.
Hitchcock’s firing has been met with little surprise, and while he’s generally regarded as a good coach, there’s a sense that his style and personality clashed with the team. I’m not sure that’s a viewpoint I agree with, because as far as I can tell the biggest contributor to Hitchcock’s firing was imploding goaltender Steve Mason.
Last season, the Blue Jackets snuck into the playoffs with a minus-4 goal differential; they scored 226 goals while allowing 230. This year, they’re on pace to score 212 goals and allow 273, for a minus-61 goal differential. In short, more than three-quarters of the difference in their performance this season can be attributed to allowing more goals.
Some of that can be attributed to slightly less effective defensive work, as the Blue Jackets have seen a slight increase in shots against this season. However, most of the blame can be pinned on Mason.
In 2008-09, Mason was spectacular with a .916 save percentage. In the 40 games he’s played this season that number has dropped to .890. Had Mason continued his performance from last season over those 40 games, the Blue Jackets would have allowed 28 fewer goals – a number that projects to 40 goals over the remaining schedule. That’s 70% of the drop in goal differential for the Jackets this season; and the best part is that’s underselling things, because had Mason posted those sort of numbers he would have started more than 40 games (Hitchcock was forced to turn to backup Mathieu Garon given Mason’s struggles).
So all that talk about Hitchcock’s taskmaster style, his grating personality, his obsession with defence wrecking team morale – it’s overblown, because at least 70% of the blame for the Blue Jackets record this season can be pinned on Mason. Of course, that does Hitchcock no good; he’s out of a job, although Columbus Dispatch reporter Aaron Portzline tells us he may take on another role with the Blue Jackets.
For more on Hitchcock, I highly recommend Scott Reynolds’ post at Copper & Blue.
It’s what happens, you can’t simply fire all your players and bring in a bunch of new ones. So the axe always falls on the coaches head and not the players. Mason is what the Jackets are hoping is just a sophmore slump and a minor bump in his young career. And not a sign of things to come. It’s basically a ripple effect the players suck and don’t preform like they did in previous years so coach is fired. If the losing still continues another coach is brought in and some players are changed. If it still continues eventually the ripples get big enough that it gets to the GM and it’s bye bye.
Anyway as for Hitchcock he’s a very good coach and is probably highly regarded around the league. It’s likely that he won’t be out of coaching job long as likely more teams will fire their coaches between now and the off season. And Hitchcock will probably be number one on most GM’s wish lists.
I agree the goaltending has been bad but I don’t think it’s quite fair to blame Mason entirely. Tyler pointed out that his “stellar” season last year was basically one ridiculously good month in his debut followed by a bunch of below average play. This year? More below average play. It’s something the Jackets could have and should have planned on. Maybe that’s what they thought they were doing with Mathieu Garon but he’s also been poor this year and didn’t have a particularly good track record before they signed him. At least some of this failure should fall on Howson. He’s the one that didn’t bring in a goalie.
I cannot understand why coaches aren’t given more of a chance, really. I mean, the business side of the sport makes an owner and GM demand for immediate results, but without some continuity there’s no way any team can work. Of course, each coach has his own style, so different coaches for different teams, and I don’t have enough hockey knowledge to assess whether Hitchcock was the best type of coach for the Jackets, and for that GM I’m hoping he was right cause in my humble opinion Ken is a great coach.
lol man you cant blame it all on mason, theres 19 guys that play in front of him everynight, there all having bad years, look at detroit, there golaies are struggling but the guys in front of them play alright and they still have a decent record, columbus has had some injuries problems and the west is alot tougher than it was last year, LA, phoenix,colarado, nashville,, all 100x better than they where last year, Hitcock is a solid head coach, but he was unable to keep motivating them and get them to preform, i also blame there GM, why didnt he try and shake things up with a trade or two, last year he made the simple move for vermette and lit a fire under them, something like that woulda done it, but to blame it all on mason and garon is unfair, if garon had gone in and played well, than sure maybe mason is having a bad year, but when both goalies play bad, you have to look at the guys infront of them too!!!
Jimmy howard has the 4th highest save percentage in the league, i fail to see him struggeling.
re clb: Maybe hejda stopped forcing low quality shots? Heh