After Washington Capitals general manager George McPhee fired Ron Wilson after the 2001-02 season, he seemed to follow a hiring policy that did not include the following — NHL coaching experience.
Ken Hitchcock — who was sitting at home this winter with his Stanley Cup title, two final appearances and 15 years of NHL coaching experience — didn’t seem to fit the Capitals’ profile.
Too bad. Hitchcock, hired by the St. Louis Blues after they fired Davis Payne on Nov. 6, has the Blues playing some of the best hockey in the league, going 30-10-7 with a chance to be a top three seed in the Western Conference.
The Capitals, though, had a coach on Nov. 6 — Bruce Boudreau.
Three weeks later, though, Boudreau was fired. The Caps hired Dale Hunter, who played in the league for 20 years — 12 with the Capitals — but coached zero games in the NHL. He came to Washington from the team he owned, presided over and coached, the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.
Hunter, who is struggling to keep the Capitals in playoff contention, is the fourth straight coach McPhee hired without NHL head coaching experience.
Will he get a chance to hire a fifth?
McPhee’s first hire upon taking the job as the Capitals GM in 1997 was to hire Wilson, who was coming off four years of coaching the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
But after the initial success in their first season together — reaching the Stanley Cup finals — Wilson’s teams lost in the first round twice, missed the playoffs twice and he was fired in 2002.
After Wilson, McPhee stunned everyone by bringing in Bruce Cassidy, who had six years of relative minor league success and initially appeared to be a solid hire as Washington made the playoffs in his first season. However, they were eliminated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games in the first round of the playoffs.
The next season, after his team posted an 8-16-1 record in 25 games, Cassidy was fired.
He was replaced by another minor league coach, Glen Hanlon, while the team was being dismantled and rebuilt. He helped a young team take baby steps, but after they began the 2007 season with a 6-14-1 record, he was replaced by Boudreau — another minor league coach with no NHL experience.
Boudreau, as we know, enjoyed tremendous regular-season success but seemed incapable of getting his team to the next step in the playoffs — a conference final appearance at the very minimum. Sometimes that coach is the one sitting at home with a Stanley Cup on their resume — the one who may wear out his welcome everywhere he goes but can turn an underachieving unit into a champion.
And I’m not talking about a Calder Cup.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
