NHL highs and lows: Coaches come and coaches go, but Jaromir Jagr is forever

Tumult in Florida, turnaround in Brooklyn, signs of life in Buffalo, and would coaches please stop waiting so long to pull the goalie? The National's ice hockey writer, Rob McKenzie, reviews last week's highs and lows in the NHL.

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A coach’s life, part one

The hockey world was appalled as the week began. The reason: the Florida Panthers had fired Gerard Gallant after a 3-2 road loss to Carolina that brought their record to 11-10-1. Last season Gallant coached the Panthers to their best-ever regular season with 103 points and was runner-up for coach of the year. His dismissal seemed rash. And Florida’s management seemed mean-spirited because they left Gallant to make his own way home after the game, standing in a taxi line with the rest of the public.

Florida’s front office, at the impetus of team owner Vincent Viola, is being taken over by stats-driven thinking (aka analytics). But Gallant, a former player known for his toughness, valued grit and hard work foremost.

The new coach, Tom Rowe, was met with some scepticism. Last Monday morning his Wikipedia page had been modified to read: “He is currently checking himself into Central Florida Behavoiral (sic) Hospital proving himself to actually be insane.”

A coach’s life, part two

Crazy or not, Rowe made his debut for the Panthers on Tuesday night in Chicago. It was the Blackhawks’ first home game after a seven-game road trip.

The Panthers had more jump than the Hawks in the early going and Rowe looked at home behind the bench. He has been an NHL assistant coach before but never the head guy. When he gave some pointers to Michael Matheson, the rookie defenceman appeared attentive. On the other hand when he gave Jaromir Jagr a pat on the butt after Jagr’s goal tied the score, the veteran did not respond in any way; but that is not uncommon in hockey. Florida lost 2-1 in a shoot-out. Later in the week they beat Detroit and lost to Ottawa.

The Panthers have games in Boston and Philadelphia before returning to home ice on Thursday. By then all that the fans will care about is whether Rowe is winning games or not.

A smile grows in Brooklyn

The New York Islanders started last week as the league’s worst team. What a comedown for a squad that won a first-round play-off series this past spring, beating Gallant’s Panthers in six games.

But in 2016/17 their 6-10-4 start meant the Isles had little time to lose if they wanted to save their season.

On Monday they beat the visiting Calgary Flames 2-1 in overtime. As usual, John Tavares led the way. He scored the opener and, in overtime, drew the attention of three Flames in the high slot and backhanded the puck towards the net, where a wide-open Thomas Hickey tipped it past Brian Elliott.

On Wednesday they kept it going with a 5-3 win over Pittsburgh in which five Isles scored goals. On Thursday they upset Washington 3-0 behind 38 saves from Jaroslav Halak. On Sunday they slipped, losing 4-3 to Detroit. But at least they aren’t the league’s worst team anymore.

Jack is back

Remember Jack Eichel? Amid the league’s torrent of young stars he had become something of a forgotten man. The player selected ahead of him atop the 2015 draft, Connor McDavid, is leading the league in scoring and has his Edmonton Oilers tied for first place in their division. This year’s top two picks, Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine, are filling the highlight reels. Eichel, meanwhile, missed the Buffalo Sabres’ first 21 games this season because of a sprained ankle.

He returned to action Tuesday and the Sabres are far better with him back. In the first period of a 5-4 win in Ottawa he contributed a goal and an assist, the goal coming on a blast from the face-off after some pretty power-play passing among four Sabres (the fifth, Sam Reinhart, was creating traffic in front of the net). On Thursday Eichel scored two third-period goals as the Sabres rallied to beat the Rangers 4-3. But Tuukka Rask kept him pointless in a 2-1 Boston win on Saturday afternoon.

Short and sweet

Some games go to the bitter end and some are over before they barely begin. The Calgary Flames’ defeat of the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday was of the latter sort (unlike Calgary’s 5-3 loss in Philly on November 27, a third-period melee from which is shown in the attached photo). The game in Toronto was all of 19 seconds old when Dougie Hamilton scored for Calgary. Half a minute later it was Kris Versteeg’s turn.

Final score: 3-0.

Beauty, eh?

In a moment of Canadiana run amok, the Grey Cup dropped the puck for the ceremonial face off at the Ottawa Senators’ home game against Philadelphia on Thursday.

The Grey Cup — which like the Stanley Cup was bequeathed to Canada by a British-born governor-general of the then-colony — is the champions’ trophy in the Canadian Football League (American football), and Ottawa had won it the prior Sunday in what was, by CFL standards, a run-of-the-mill title game: the Redblacks beat the Calgary Stampeders 39-33 in overtime.

On Thursday, tipping the Cup sideways so that it could “drop” the puck were the title game’s hero, 41-year-old quarterback Henry Burris – who despite being injured in warm-ups threw for 461 yards and three touchdowns – and the game’s most valuable Canadian, Brad Sinopoli. Sinopoli wore a red plaid shirt, aka “Kenora dinner jacket”.

The hometown crowd went nuts with the biggest cheers coming for the beloved Burris as he hobbled out on crutches. The Senators, apparently pumped up by all this, took a 2-0 lead before Claude Giroux led a Flyers comeback that culminated in a 3-2 overtime win.

Pull the goalie!!

One area where hockey is behind the times is in coaches’ reticence to pull the goalie. A perfect example came in Montreal’s loss in San Jose on Friday.

The Habs were down 2-0 when San Jose’s Logan Couture took a four-minute double-minor for high-sticking/drawing blood with 4:06 left in the third. Such penalties are served consecutively: if you score a goal in the first two minutes, the offender still has to stay in the penalty box for another two minutes. With a face-off in the San Jose zone, Montreal should have pulled the goalie right away, because to have a chance to tie, they realistically needed to score during the first two minutes of the penalty. But they hesitated and did not pull Carey Price until 2.05 was left. Forty-eight seconds later they scored, but by then Couture was serving the second of his penalties, which meant that he came out of the box. Moments later San Jose had won 2-1.

NFL coaches have come a long way in recent years in taking risks earlier and more often when they are losing. Patrick Roy was the only NHL coach who got it but he was a hothead rather than a trailblazer and he quit his job with Colorado over the summer.

A big loss

The Blackhawks will be without their inspirational captain, Jonathan Toews, for a while. He has a back injury and the club placed him on injured reserve Friday, which means they can replace him on the roster but can reactivate him anytime. Toews last played on November 23 in San Jose. He came out for the second-period face-off but was moving gingerly. He left the ice in mid-shift and was bent over in pain on the bench. In the six games he has missed since, the Hawks are 3-2-1, including Sunday’s 2-1 loss to the visiting Winnipeg Jets.

Toews has played an incredible amount of hockey over the past three seasons. Counting regular-season and play-off games he played 95 games in 2013/14, 104 in 2014/15 and 87 in 2015/16. At age 28 he has a lot of miles on his skates. The injury timeout could mean he is fresher in this year’s play-offs. The downside is that Chicago, being an elite team but no longer a dominant team, could see their play-off seeding drop because of his absence. That could mean a Game 7 next spring that is on the road rather than at home.

In summation

(All stats through Sunday)

• Standings: Montreal (36 points) and Chicago (35) continue to lead their conferences. The New York Rangers (35) are also leading their division. Out west San Jose and Edmonton (31) are tied for the Pacific lead — but Anaheim, LA and Calgary are all within three points. The league's worst team is now Colorado (19).

• Standouts: McDavid has pulled out front in the scoring race, his 34 points putting him five ahead of Tampa's Nikita Kucherov. Laine and Sidney Crosby are tied for most goals with 16. The Rangers' Michael Grabner retains his lead in plus-minus, at plus-19. Rask has the NHL's best goals-against average at 1.60.

• Standing tall: Arizona's Mike Smith made a franchise-record 58 saves on Saturday but it was not enough as the Coyotes fell 3-2 in overtime to Columbus. And on Sunday the Flames' Johnny Gaudreau returned early from a fractured finger — he missed three weeks rather than the expected four to six — and scored two minutes into the game as Calgary demolished Anaheim 8-3.

• Standard bearer: With 1,654 games played, Jagr stands fourth all-time after having passed Mark Recchi (1,652) on Thursday and Chris Chelios (1,651) on Tuesday. Up ahead in the hockey headlands are Gordie Howe (1,767), Mark Messier (1,756) and Ron Francis (1,731).

rmckenzie@thenational.ae

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