After Capitals fire him, coach moves on to Anaheim The image was jarring. Bruce Boudreau skated onto the ice Thursday morning wearing a black track suit with orange stripes on the shoulders and an orange-and-gray cap. Gone was the familiar red warmup outfit Boudreau wore at almost every practice for four years as coach of the Capitals, the one he had sported just five days earlier.
Fired by Washington on Monday, Boudreau officially landed a new job just two days later. But in reality, Anaheim general manager Bob Murray needed just hours to call and ask for permission to talk with Boudreau after the initial news broke that the Caps were making a change. A coach with 201 career wins in less than five full seasons wasn’t destined to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. But not even Boudreau figured it would happen that quickly.
“If I didn’t believe that this was a team that had the possibility and the makings of something special, I think I would have sat at home and waited,” Boudreau said this week. “But I don’t think opportunities like this come around every day with the talent that we have here. So I talked to my wife [Crystal] about it and said, ‘I think we should jump at this. I know it’s only been a day basically since I got let go.’ But it was something, I thought, was a chance I wouldn’t get again.”
– Brian McNally
| Timeline |
| Coach Bruce Boudreau had a wild four-year tenure with the Washington Capitals: |
| Nov. 22, 2007 » Boudreau is hired as the Capitals’ interim coach on Thanksgiving Day. Washington began 6-14-2 under Glen Hanlon. |
| Dec. 26, 2007 » The interim tag is removed from Boudreau’s title after the Caps go 7-5-3 in the weeks after his hiring. His team beats Tampa Bay that night. |
| April 5, 2008 » Boudreau leads the Caps to their first playoff appearance in five years when they beat Florida at home to cap an 11-1 stretch and clinch the Southeast Division on the final day of the season. |
| June 12, 2008 » Boudreau wins the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year. |
| April 28, 2009 » Boudreau coaches his team to its first Stanley Cup playoffs series win since 1998. The Caps beat the New York Rangers in Game 7 of a first-round series at Verizon Center. |
| April 4, 2010 » Boudreau’s team clinches the Presidents’ Trophy — awarded to the NHL team with the league’s best record. |
| April 28, 2010 » The Caps suffer a stunning Game 7 loss at home to Montreal in a Stanley Cup playoffs first-round series. |
| Dec. 12, 2010 » A 7-0 loss to the New York Rangers forces Boudreau to devise a new defensive system for his struggling team, which goes on to finish with the Eastern Conference’s best record. |
| May 4, 2011 » Boudreau’s team is swept out of the Stanley Cup playoffs by Tampa Bay. |
| Oct. 22, 2011 » Washington thumps Detroit 7-1 and improves to 7-0 early in 2011-12 season. |
| Nov. 28, 2011 » Boudreau is fired almost four years to the day after general manager George McPhee tabbed him as interim coach. His team stumbled through 5-9-1 stretch. |
| Nov. 30, 2011 » The Anaheim Ducks fire coach Randy Carlyle immediately after a win over Montreal and name Boudreau as their new coach. The Ducks are 10 points out of a playoff spot. |
Boudreau flew to California on Wednesday. Despite a Ducks win at home that night, Murray already had made his decision to shake up his struggling team, which was second-to-last in the Western Conference and already 10 points out of a Stanley Cup playoff spot even after that victory. So the old coaching staff was fired, and Boudreau immediately was named the new coach. Within a day he had brought assistant coach Bob Woods with him. Woods himself was fired by Washington after Tuesday’s loss to St. Louis.
Boudreau’s new situation was eerily similar to the one he found with the Caps after taking over as interim coach on Thanksgiving Day 2007. He got the call from general manager George McPhee around 7?a.m. and by 11 a.m. was running his first NHL practice, calculating how to convince a last-place team with no confidence to believe in itself. At that point Washington had missed the playoffs five years in a row, so there was no culture of winning.
But Anaheim is a veteran team with players still remaining from the 2007 Stanley Cup championship club. The Ducks have made the postseason five of the last six years.
That first game with the Caps came Nov. 23, 2007, against the Philadelphia Flyers. Boudreau watched his new team blow a 3-0 lead only to win it in overtime 4-3 on a Nicklas Backstrom goal.
This time? Those same Philadelphia Flyers were waiting for him at Honda Center. And true to form, Anaheim jumped out to a 3-0 lead before blowing it. Unfortunately for Boudreau, this time he was on the losing end of a 4-3 overtime loss. It wasn’t the start he wanted. But it was still a fresh start — for himself, for his new team and his old team, too.
“The issue was we weren’t playing very well,” Washington general manager George McPhee said. “And I think Bruce came in here and emptied the tank. He gave it everything he could and did a really good job, but the tank was empty. When that happens, you get a new coach where the tank is full and see if it makes a difference.”
