It’s a good thing the current hockey season is winding down (you know, except for the draft, and the opening soon of training camps).
I don’t think we could stand much more of the craziness we’ve had this year and, especially, the last week or so.
I mean, we’ve got a first-year team, the Vegas Golden Knights, heading to the Stanley Cup finals. If I’m the people in charge of the yet-to-be-officially-announced team in Seattle, I’m feeling a little nervous about this.
Are fans going to expect this sort of thing from every expansion team? I saw one post on Facebook where someone said this shows that any coach or general manager who says he has a five-year plan in place should be fired.
Well, maybe, as long as you don’t mind that coach or GM being allowed to get rid of every player on his roster and start from the ground up, because that’s what Vegas did.
And I also suspect you won’t find a single person associated with the Golden Knights who will say they knew they were going to make the Stanley Cup finals.
So don’t expect this to happen with every expansion team.
On the other hand, if I’m the coach of a team that’s hosting the RBC Cup, I may be a little nervous about what happened in the past couple of weeks. After losing to the Spruce Kings in the first round of the BCHL playoffs, the Chilliwack Chiefs sat around for about three weeks, waiting to host the national championship, then fired coach Jason Tatarnic about a week before things started.
So all new head coach Brian Maloney did was lead the Chiefs to the national title.
Let’s not even get started on what’s going to happen to the Team Canada executive after losing to Switzerland (yes, Switzerland) in the semifinals of the IIHF World Championships, then losing to the U.S. in the bronze-medal game.
Anybody else ready for baseball to start heating up?
