Who cares about the Jack Adams award? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything about any of the coaches who are up for the award or who are not up for the award ie Mike Sullivan. The Penguins coach isn’t going to lose money over it. His standing with the team isn't impacted by it. The way the award is voted on is rubbish. So many times it is the coach who got great goaltending award. I don’t feel this way because “the Penguins coach… isn’t getting his due. In fact, I don’t think Sullivan deserved to be a finalist this year.
Sullivan is a good coach and gets enough out of his roster to justify praise even though he has it easier than most with the roster he’s been provided the majority of his time in Pittsburgh. In theory the Jack Adams Award is supposed to go to “the best… coach in the NHL. For me there are really simple tasks a coach has at any competitive level of sports and that is to get the most out of your players holistically, but definitely get the most out of your best players. The last two seasons Mike Sullivan has knee-capped two of his best players. Last year it was Evgeni Malkin when he was tied to Jack Johnson. It was so bad that we still have terrible media narratives thinking Malkin needed to “come back… this year. He got put up for the Masterton Trophy on the back of this narrative.
It’d be a surprise today if Geno’s named a Masterton finalist. But you can still appreciate his bounce-back anyway. https://t.co/8wURYABeaF
— Matt Vensel (@mattvensel) July 16, 2020
He bounced back from really bad deployment from his coach. His quality of teammate was way better this year. It remains insulting to Malkin this narrative lives on and gives Sullivan a pass on a glaring mistake.
This year Mike Sullivan crushed the value of his top defender in Kris Letang… who was tied to Jack Johnson on the top pairing for a few months. I don’t believe “the best… coach in the best league in the world would consistently make those kinds of choices. In fact, one of the finalists for the Jack Adams (John Tortorella) famously wouldn’t even play Jack Johnson on his bottom pairing. Remember all the way back when Rutherford proclaimed:
I don’t think he had a bad year, he was a healthy scratch at the end of the season. I know the reason why. It wasn’t because of how he was playing.…
Then what happened…
The Penguins are in a play-in game because they did a really horrible job finishing the year. They went 3-8 in their final 11 games. So while Sullivan absolutely deserves credit for how he managed injuries this year along with his deployment of the shutdown line of Tanev-Blueger-Aston Reese he also has to own the bad 3-8 record down the stretch. All of it counts.
The actual nominees are, John Tortorella, who took a team that was written off after losing key players in the offseason and kept them a legitimate playoff threat all the way until the season was cut short. This team was supposed to be a bunch of pretenders but finished as a top ten team in xGF% (9TH). Also, goaltending which is usually a the theme for the award.
Alain Vigneault brought the Flyers to a second place finish in the Metropolitan Division which not many people had happening this year yet here they are. Last year they finished 22nd in the league and this year they are sixth overall in the NHL with a bye in the first round.
Finally, Bruce Cassidy who coached the team with the best record in the league. Also the goaltending thing. They are first in save percentage in the NHL.
Ultimately, the coaches who win it coincidentally had really good goaltending the majority of the time in the salary cap era.
So over the years coaches winning the award average the sixth best goaltending in the league with nine of the 14 winners in the top five. The overall save percentage among winning coaches was .918. League average for the salary cap era being .910. This year the Bruins and the Blue Jackets are 1st and 5th in goaltending so potentially bad news for Alain Vigneault.
Also, given the recent history of the award it is probably not a bad thing for Mike Sullivan being left off as a finalist. The latest trend sees coaches winning the Jack Adams moving on from their teams sooner than later. Five of the last seven times the coach winning award were gone from their team within two years. Barry Trotz has won twice in that sample and on the first occasion jolted from the Capitals immediately. He appears destined to stay with the Islanders and outliving this recent hex. John Tortorella is the other exception and two years later he is up for the award again. Fate was not kind to Gallant, Hartley, Roy, and MacLean (and Trotz first time).
Mike Sullivan should keep doing many of the things he is doing as coach of the Penguins. He’s been good. He could also afford to get better at making some of the layup decisions as a coach like not crushing the values of his best players. Things “the best… coach in the world shouldn’t be doing. Things a two-time winner and current nominee of the award didn’t do.
Thanks for reading!