You can't win unless you play. We have all heard that about winning the lottery of course. Well that same theory applies to winning the Stanley Cup, you can't win unless you make it into the playoffs first.
There are 30 teams in the NHL and only 1 will win the Stanley Cup. I know some amazing words of wisdom here, but let's look at this before we judge a coach as a winner or a loser.
Give me a coach that has winning teams and gets his teams to the playoffs. Once they are in the dance they have a chance to be the last team standing when it is all said and done. The rest of the teams are left to assess their own shortcomings while trying to copy the formula of the team that is celebrating.
The team that ultimately wins the championship is not always the most talented or the most well coached. There are so many factors that go into winning a championship.
Injuries, match-ups, scheduling, breaks, good calls, bad calls are all factors and the most important factor is luck. Luck is a factor and yes great teams and great players create a lot of their own luck, but at the end of the day luck is just that, it is luck.
Chuck Fletcher is challenged with finding the right coach who has the right personality to work with the core group he has in place. Next challenge is to upgrade that core group either through trade or free agency to build the right team for that coach to succeed with. Again there are a lot of factors at play not to mention the salary cap issues.
So hold your judgement on who the next coach should or should not be. The proof will be in how that next coach molds his team and how well he communicates his message to them.
We so often hear when coaches get fired, "his message just wasn't getting though anymore" or "you can't fire the team so you fire the coach." "Hired to be fired" is another all too common a phrase. They seem to be used to mask the real issues.
All the great coaches lost before they won.
Let's hope that Chuck Fletcher makes the right decision for the next coach of the Minnesota Wild. And after Fletcher makes that decision he gets to work on giving his new bench boss the right mix of players to achieve great results.