For taking a team that was last in the NHL soon after he took over to St. Louis’s first Stanley Cup, Craig Berube received a three-year extension and no more. Three more years is all GM Doug Armstrong is guaranteed, why would the coach get more?

We can think of a few reasons. Barry Trotz, who has won the exact number of Cups as Berube – one—struck directly off that championship for a five-year deal with the Islanders. Joel Quenneville, four seasons removed from his last of three titles with the Blackhawks, got five (at $5.25 million) from the Panthers, and so did Alain Vigneault (at $5.0 million) with the Flyers, apparently off finals appearances in Vancouver and New York that now seem even longer ago than Benoit Pouliot.

Trotz, who coached the Caps to a Cup at last in his walk year, indeed had to walk to gain any long-term security. See, the way it works is that you are more attractive to another team than to the one to which you have given five years of heart and soul, squeezed every last goal possible out of Devante Smith-Pelly, developed migraines watching video of Taylor Chorney and won a 43-year-old franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

Gratitude runs shorter than even Mats Zuccarello. Berube, using mind control, bent some iron wills on that Blues roster like the Gateway Arch and the buy-in paid off in the Cup, the only unadulterated happy ending there is. This should make him the coach of St. Louis until he can’t remember his players’ names or they run out of toasted ravioli on The Hill. But no, he can stay three more years because he’s been a good boy and ended a 52-bleeping year drought, the last 48 of which were without even the enjoyment of being in a final.

Such is the thanks you get. Or, at least the ones Berube got, which were a lot better than Scott Gordon received. Vigneault has won a lot of games, knows what he is doing, but had no pedigree that meant anything to anyone in Philadelphia, yet Chuck Fletcher threw five years at him and sent Gordon back to the farm, treated like just a guy who fell off the turnip truck. Never mind the interim coached a 19-5-2 surge out of a team with more holes than there are on Ralph Krueger’s hockey resume before exhaustion from the impossible uphill climb to a playoff spot set in on the Flyers the last couple weeks. Gordon did well with a team dead at mid-season and was just a placeholder all along.

Life is not fair, as Mike Keenan used to tell his fourth liners. It ended up being unfair to Keenan too, as in four straight jobs-from the Rangers through the Bruins-the guy who hired him was gone before Keenan had been in the job for a year, leaving his fate to those who had their own ideas about who they wanted.

The handwriting on that wall hasn’t changed and never will. So after missing the playoffs three straight years Jeff Blashill might as well start packing immediately, now that he is answering to a new sheriff, Steve Yzerman, in charge of bringing back the glory.

Every new GM (Bill Guerin) talked by an owner (Craig Leopold) into keeping an incumbent (Bruce Boudreau) ultimately wants his own guy. Like Ron Hextall did when he fired Berube and brought in Dave Hakstol, like John Chayka did when he parted with Dave Tippett, like Jim Rutherford did in letting go Dan Bylsma, like Kyle Dubas might already like to do with Mike Babcock, if not for a $6.25 million per season contract that is even bigger than a list of Garth Snow enemies in the media.

All the above guys can coach, so far in a more proven way that some of these managers have managed, but competence seldom has anything to do with anything. It’s interesting how experience gets you a job but, once the wheels start to come off, rarely seems a reason they should let you keep it. Ultimately, it’s not about Xs and Os, or teaching, bench management, or talent, more about the won-loss record, which can be fair, sort of. Even more, though, it is about restlessness and the vague perception that nobody is listening anymore. And rarely is that fair at all.

When the rebuild is going to take more time than D.J. Smith likely will get in Ottawa,
and fans, media and players grow tired of not winning, the posse forms faster than did a market this summer for Luca Sbisa, that’s for sure. The sad reality? There is little consequence to a bad firing by the people doing it, the only thing holding them back being a sense of decency, which unless you are David Poile and have had two coaches in the 21-year history of the Predators, rarely lasts.

After all, why not make a move? You never are going to lose the players, who, when asked, will give a few insincere expressions of guilt about a good hardworking man losing his job and then resume judging any coach mostly by whether or not he puts them on the power play. From the standpoint of a GM who will be next to go if he doesn’t do something, the more teams, the more jobs, the more guys out there with experience who are anxious to get back in. Thus, the more reasons you can’t really go terribly wrong with making the change that the owner or the fans increasingly demand.

Your time is up whenever the ultimate bosses–the paying customers-think you have had enough time. In the case of Dave Hakstol, this nobody Hextall found in North Dakota or some place – but definitely not in South Philly because we can tell he’s not one of us–this was about two months, even though he twice brought fair-to-middling’ teams buried at mid-season back to the playoffs to put up a fight for a round; all told a pretty good job.

With the talent so spread out over soon-to-be 32 teams, it’s easer than ever to blame your failures on the perceived failure to motivate or on a power play, never mind the absence of a good point man; or the failure to develop some kids who, it will turn out, weren’t very good picks after all.

Or, you just fall back on that tried-and-true catchall that explains nothing and buries nobody¬¬: It was just time for a change. That is the only way to try to justify getting rid of winners like Quenneville and Claude Julien, who has a Stanley Cup ring and four 100-plus points seasons, but has been fired three times, including once with three games to go in a 107-point year. Absurd. There is an even better reason to form a partnership with your best player(s) than getting your message across in the locker room. He may have the GM’s ear.

So to all the guys with one foot out the door as the 2018-19 season dawns – Blashill, Boudreau, Travis Green, Paul Maurice—keep in mind that there is no shame in being let go and never really has been. Enjoy the relief when it comes, and the paychecks that keep coming, at least for a while, and the escape. Ask most ex-coaches still working in the game-scouting, advising, second-guessing or whatever–what was the worst job they ever had and most will tell you it was coaching.

So why is it that most of them can’t wait to get back in? Reminds us of the joke about the guy whose job at the circus was giving enemas to the elephants. ‘That sounds horrible,” said a fellow to him. ‘Anything’s got to be better than that. Why don’t you find another line of work?”

“What? And quit show business?”

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