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Poulin's Firing and Other Head Scratchers |
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I know we all have those moments when your read something, hear something or see something and your first reaction is "What?!" Well, this happens to me all the time. My head-scratching moments are not limited to the world of hockey but all sports; business falls into this category as well; governments and most certainly politicians do.
Since this is a hockey blog, I’ll stick to hockey... well, maybe.
Minor Hockey Politics
Recently, I was asked by a minor hockey association to be a coach mentor. While I wasn’t sure whether or not that I would take this position, I was in the process of reading and re-working the lengthy contract. The contract spelled out the job description, responsibilities and expectations that the mentorship position would require. I was actually at the computer getting ready to send my comments / changes / suggestions back to the President of the Association and the VP of Development, when I received the e-mail that the position was no longer available.
Hmm... interesting.
Did I get fired or replaced even before I indicated to them whether or not I was going to take the job? The e-mail to me stated that they (the association) had held a coaches meeting the night before and that only one coach was in favour of having a coaching mentor. OK, who is running the show or steering the ship? The association who is paying the coaches or the individual coaches?
If you look at any successful person or in this case a successful coach, one of the reasons that they are successful is that they never stop learning or they never stop seeking out ways to be better. I guess that rule of thumb doesn’t hold true everywhere!
NHL Free Agency
I have already written about this in previous blogs so I won’t spend too much time on it. To date - the 30 teams in the NHL have spent $583,900,000 million dollars on free agent contracts.
Hmm…
I would suggest that someone with more time on their hands then I do a follow up on some of these contracts given out. The follow up needs to take into account how much value they actually brought to their new team. Perhaps one of these new Stat geeks can work it into an equation of some sort. My old time guess is that very few of them will earn the money, especially over the length of the contract that some of them signed!
Which leads me to my next Hmm…
Advanced Stats
My head is spinning with all of the new lingo on "hockey analytics." Perhaps I really am a relic of yesterday's game. I am not sure this old dog will ever adapt to it. All I know is this: I'm glad I played in the National Hockey League. I'm not sure I'd ever have made it to the National Corsi League.
Whenever I hear a team being praised or criticized because some player they acquired has good Corsi (or Fenwick) numbers, I ask myself what has happened to the criteria that were valued in the game I played. Astute hockey people have always asked these questions:
Can the kid play?
Is he a two-way player?
Can he play in traffic?
Does he get nose dirty?
Does he have guts?
What is his make up?
Is he a leader?
Does he have hockey sense?
When he is on the ice, is he in charge? Does he take control?
For the players for whom you can check off "yes" answers to most or all the above questions, I want them on my team!
Look up your favourite team. Check each player’s Corsi and Fenwick rating, does it correspond to the actual value they bring to the team? Or do the old-time questions truly reflect the leaders on the team?
I don't know the answer to this question, but I suspect that old-fashioned observation by experienced hockey people still holds value in ways that can never be quantified with a statistical chart. Is that just my age showing as an old-school hockey guy? Maybe, maybe not.
Dave Poulin
I was with a number of NHL Alumni guys, (several were actually Leaf Alumni) when the news of Dave Poulin being fired by the Leafs was made public. Every single one of us was surprised and shocked by the announcement.
I guess the Leafs had their own thoughts on the situation, and so does the media. Well, here are mine, as someone who knows Dave well and holds him in the highest esteem:
What are the timeless descriptive words that you hear all the time in the work world? The words honesty, integrity, intelligence, courage and loyalty come up all the time, right? I think we all can agree that those are traits that one would look for in any employee let alone a coach, manager or athlete. You would think that an employee that had those traits would be a valuable asset to any organization.
I am sure that everyone knows -- or truly knows anything about -- Dave Poulin knows he has those traits in abundance. He was my teammate and captain in Philadelphia. He brought honesty, integrity, intelligence, courage, loyalty and more to work every single day. He did so in everything he did as a player, and he has continued to do so in everything he's done since his playing days.
He would make a great general manager in the NHL, actually. I shook my head in disgust when I heard people say after the fact that Poulin wasn't equipped for today's game. I would say the
sports world needs more Dave Poulins.
I don't really know what Brendan Shahanan and the rest of the Leafs organization was thinking in letting Dave but I can tell you my thoughts: 1) the organization's problems had nothing to do with him, and 2) it’s their loss that they let him go.
Politicians or the Voters?
Okay, I can't resist. I have to put in one final head scratcher that is not hockey related.
I am sure that everyone, regardless of where you live has heard of, The Honourable Rob Ford, yes that is how anyone in his position is referred to. The Honourable Rob Ford is Mayor of Toronto, Canada’s largest city. If you have never heard of him, just Google his name. He has been accused of pretty much everything and he has admitted to pretty much everything: being an alcoholic, public drunkenness, driving while intoxicated, using crack cocaine and other drugs, mocking minorities… the list could go and on.
The next election in Toronto is this fall and so the race is on to see who will be the next Mayor of Toronto.
The latest poll results show the Honourable Rob Ford, the current Mayor in a statistical tie for first place??? What?!
I chuckled when I first saw Ford's announcement that he was running again. He’s got nerve. Now I’m shaking my head thinking that the people of Toronto may return him to power. I guess the Leafs brass aren’t the only people in Toronto delivering a few of those head-scratchers.
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