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Why the next coach should probably be English


johnnyhasbeen

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The problem with the 'interchangeable' tag on Therrien is that it ignores the particulars of the system he employs. Guy Boucher might be similar in overall quality to Therrien (though it's far too early to say that now), but his style is more attacking rather than grinding. Maybe this style would better complement our passing D-men and the small, skilled players we seem to have in the system.

Guy bouchers style is attacking?

What part of a 1-4 is attacking?

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Guy bouchers style is attacking?

What part of a 1-4 is attacking?

Hmm, I seem to remember them being pretty high-scoring, maybe that was personnel rather than system.

Still, to say that coaches are 'interchangeable' is simplistic. There's an argument to be made that Therrien's style doesn't mesh with the roster in front of him, and that's why players like Beaulieu and Galchenyuk have been marginalized.

What sucks is that the best hockey minds out there, the best motivators and teachers, are probably not in our hiring pool. So we're left with the same retreads and Marc Crawford is our best alternative to Therrien if we want a change of style.

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Hmm, I seem to remember them being pretty high-scoring, maybe that was personnel rather than system.

Still, to say that coaches are 'interchangeable' is simplistic. There's an argument to be made that Therrien's style doesn't mesh with the roster in front of him, and that's why players like Beaulieu and Galchenyuk have been marginalized.

What sucks is that the best hockey minds out there, the best motivators and teachers, are probably not in our hiring pool. So we're left with the same retreads and Marc Crawford is our best alternative to Therrien if we want a change of style.

As my earlier posts imply, the question is - WHO are these great 'hockey minds' that we're not hiring? Which brilliant, elite-level coach is currently not under contract and yet being irrationally ignored by the Habs?

There are very few truly elite coaches. They're locked up. So, we're left with that 'interchangeable mass' I talked about. That's not a result of the language policy, but of luck of the draw in terms of who is available when you happen to have a coaching vacancy.

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As my earlier posts imply, the question is - WHO are these great 'hockey minds' that we're not hiring? Which brilliant, elite-level coach is currently not under contract and yet being irrationally ignored by the Habs?

There are very few truly elite coaches. They're locked up. So, we're left with that 'interchangeable mass' I talked about. That's not a result of the language policy, but of luck of the draw in terms of who is available when you happen to have a coaching vacancy.

The 'interchangeable mass' isn't quite so interchangeable, as I addressed earlier. Differences in style and system make coaches with similarly middling resumes vastly different.

The great hockey minds are out there, waiting for a shot. At one point Babcock was a nobody. Same with Trotz, and Hitchcock, and whoever you want to put in the elite category. None of them would have gotten an interview with the Habs.

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The 'interchangeable mass' isn't quite so interchangeable, as I addressed earlier. Differences in style and system make coaches with similarly middling resumes vastly different.

The great hockey minds are out there, waiting for a shot. At one point Babcock was a nobody. Same with Trotz, and Hitchcock, and whoever you want to put in the elite category. None of them would have gotten an interview with the Habs.

Get a coach with a different system, he will have other issues that people on this board will become enraged about. Nearly any coach we hire will reproduce many of MT's tendencies, because, as I say in the 'Fire MT' thread, modern NHL coaching is chronically, pathologically risk-averse.

As to your second point, OK, it's theoretically possible that there is some untapped unilingually English genius out there waiting to be discovered, whom the Habs are deliberately ignoring due to the language policy. That's true. (It might also be worth pointing out that two of the league's better coaches are francophones from the Q, who were plucked from obscurity by the Habs - Claude Julien and Alain Vigneault - and might never have gotten their big break if not for the Habs' language policy).

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Get a coach with a different system, he will have other issues that people on this board will become enraged about.

As to your second point, OK, it's theoretically possible that there is some untapped genius out there waiting to be discovered, whom the Habs are deliberately ignoring due to the language policy. That's true.

Of course people will have problems with whoever we hire, but the point remains that certain coaching styles and systems work better with certain rosters. They are not 'interchangeable'.

And it's not only the 'untapped genius' lurking out there, it's the best available candidate. Marc Crawford and Guy Boucher wouldn't pop up so often if we didn't have such a limited pool. Many teams have passed over Crawford over the past few years, and he might be our best option because of language restrictions.

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Of course people will have problems with whoever we hire, but the point remains that certain coaching styles and systems work better with certain rosters. They are not 'interchangeable'.

And it's not only the 'untapped genius' lurking out there, it the best available candidate. Marc Crawford and Guy Boucher wouldn't pop up so often if we didn't have such a limited pool. Many teams have passed over Crawford over the past few years, and he might be our best option because of language restrictions.

We're arguing in circles...now you're saying that the Best Available Candidate is not eligible to coach us. But WHO is this Best Available Candidate? Again, where is the coaching mastermind we're unable to hire? Babcock, Quenneville, Sutter, these guys are not on the market. So who are we passing on, exactly? Mike Yeo?

I'm not denying that the language policy could hurt us in the specific scenario where there is a clear-cut best coach out there, and we pass on him. What I'm saying is that in the real world the situation is hardly ever that clear cut. We're talking about selecting one 'pretty good,' qualified coaching candidate rather than another, similarly qualified coaching candidate. Not worth ripping our hair out over.

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We're arguing in circles...now you're saying that the Best Available Candidate is not eligible to coach us. But WHO is this Best Available Candidate? Again, where is the coaching mastermind we're unable to hire? Babcock, Quenneville, Sutter, these guys are not on the market. So who are we passing on, exactly? Mike Yeo?

I'm not denying that the language policy could hurt us in the specific scenario where there is a clear-cut best coach out there, and we pass on him. What I'm saying is that in the real world the situation is hardly ever that clear cut. We're talking about selecting one 'pretty good,' qualified coaching candidate rather than another, similarly qualified coaching candidate. Not worth ripping our hair out over.

Are you demanding a name from me? I have no idea who the best coach out there is. Such an answer would take a front office team considerable research and interviewing.

You're essentially saying that there's NO ONE out there who isn't 'interchangeable' with Marc Crawford, who other teams have passed over for years now.

I'm saying the language policy DOES hurt us because we can only consider a very limited pool of candidates.

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Are you demanding a name from me? I have no idea who the best coach out there is. Such an answer would take a front office team considerable research and interviewing.

You're essentially saying that there's NO ONE out there who isn't 'interchangeable' with Marc Crawford, who other teams have passed over for years now.

I'm saying the language policy DOES hurt us because we can only consider a very limited pool of candidates.

I agree that it *could* hurt us, depending on the coaches available at the given moment when we are shopping for coaches.

I disagree that it necessarily hurts us. The cases of Julien and Vigneault show pretty clearly that it doesn't.

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I agree that it *could* hurt us, depending on the coaches available at the given moment when we are shopping for coaches.

I disagree that it necessarily hurts us. The cases of Julien and Vigneault show pretty clearly that it doesn't.

So the only way it doesn't hurt us is if the best available candidate happens to speak French.

Julien and Vigneault were both rookies. We were partially forced to hire them as such due to the language policy. They became experienced NHL head coaches and experienced success elsewhere. Should we get another rookie head coach? Or is Marc Crawford the best available candidate?

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The language policy hurts us EVERY TIME we're faced with a coaching hire, or a GM hire. We're the only team with such a limited pool of candidates. Luckily Timmins doesn't have to speak French.

It sucks as a fan, but it's just a fact for us. Any success we have in the modern NHL we experience despite our unique restrictions.

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The language policy hurts us EVERY TIME we're faced with a coaching hire, or a GM hire. We're the only team with such a limited pool of candidates. Luckily Timmins doesn't have to speak French.

It sucks as a fan, but it's just a fact for us. Any success we have in the modern NHL we experience despite our unique restrictions.

I just don't accept the first sentence. It all depends on the nature of the talent pool available at that specific moment. If Vigneault is available, then it doesn't hurt us at all, because he will obviously be the best coach. It's a situational thing. This seems obvious to me, so I don't understand the stridency with which you're denying it.

The Julien/Vigneault cases are interesting, because these are examples of coaches who might never have been plucked from obscurity, and revealed to be very good coaches, had it not been for the Habs' bilingualism requirement. I wouldn't want to push the case too far, but these are illustrations of the fact that the policy can actually have beneficial effects under the right circumstances. That's not my main argument, however; all I'm saying is that the policy only actively hurts us when there is a clear-cut superior unilingual coach and we pass on him.

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I'm not really getting into this one but I tend to agree that the language policy does somewhat affect us in a negative way and that it would be simple to either have a qualified English coach learn the language over time assuming they want to (big assumption) or to simply hire a translator for the media and fans.

I understand that it's the same for every team regardless of language but this "wait for the off season" statement when it comes to hiring a coach is even more applicable to Les Canadiens than other teams. It's easy to say that the best coaches aren't available but we can't go after many of them anyway when they are. Other teams can go after them all. True, we may not have a coaching vacancy at the time but all we would have to do is fire our own coach in order to have that vacancy. We rarely fire our own coach midseason Because the options are even more limited for us. Heck, the last midseason firing that comes to mind almost proves the point in that the best candidate we could come up with in that debacle, Randy Cunneyworth, was English.

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I just don't accept the first sentence. It all depends on the nature of the talent pool available at that specific moment. If Vigneault is available, then it doesn't hurt us at all, because he will obviously be the best coach. It's a situational thing. This seems obvious to me, so I don't understand the stridency with which you're denying it.

Again, it only doesn't hurt us if the clear-cut best available candidate happens to speak French. If Vigneault's available this offseason, bam we're lucky. If Vigneault and Trotz and Babcock are? It makes no difference to us who we think is the best coach among them, we only have one choice. So this is only a small fraction of the time where it doesn't hurt us.

We are the only team to have a very limited pool from which we can hire a head coach or GM. This is bad for us every time we need to do so. THIS seems obvious to me. Sure, we can say that whoever we end up with is 'interchangeable' with whoever else we might have hired, but the fact is that we never considered those other options.

The Julien/Vigneault cases are interesting, because these are examples of coaches who might never have been plucked from obscurity, and revealed to be very good coaches, had it not been for the Habs' bilingualism requirement. I wouldn't want to push the case too far, but these are illustrations of the fact that the policy can actually have beneficial effects under the right circumstances. That's not my main argument, however; all I'm saying is that the policy only actively hurts us when there is a clear-cut superior unilingual coach and we pass on him.

It's beneficial when we have a middling roster with no Cup aspirations and we're fine with getting a rookie coach. But that's not the case right now.

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Are you demanding a name from me? I have no idea who the best coach out there is. Such an answer would take a front office team considerable research and interviewing.

You're essentially saying that there's NO ONE out there who isn't 'interchangeable' with Marc Crawford, who other teams have passed over for years now.

I'm saying the language policy DOES hurt us because we can only consider a very limited pool of candidates.

You say that the coaches in the "interchangeable group" aren't interchangeable, but might actually be different cause they have different styles.

Ok, I buy that.

But if you say that, you can't also bury Marc Crawford cause other teams passed him over.

You have to admit that Crawford's style may not have been a fit for these other teams rosters, but could be a fit for ours.

If different styles are needed for different roster compositions... then the fact crawford wasn't seen as a fit by other NHL teams shouldn't be used against him.

Also just cause other teams passed him over doesn't make him a bad coach. NHL GMs are not infallible and have made mistakes.

We also have to consider the last time the Habs hired him, he was the subject of a pending lawsuit (Steve Moore)... thats all been settled now and there is no longer uncertainty and a looming media circus/trial hanging over his head. Thats something that could have caused the Habs and other teams to pass on him, but is no longer part of the equation.

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I'm not burying Crawford, he could be good for us. Still seems like a default choice if Vigneault or Julien aren't available, who themselves are default choices that we're only thinking of because of our narrow parameters.

Thinking about it, Crawford seems like the frontrunner in my head. Doesn't annoy me on HNIC, good enough for me.

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Guest Stogey24

Have you guys ever gone back out with your ex-girlfirend? In the end she usually ends up being the same B you broke up with the first go around. Therrien, Julien, Vigneault, all Hab's ex's....

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Have you guys ever gone back out with your ex-girlfirend? In the end she usually ends up being the same B you broke up with the first go around. Therrien, Julien, Vigneault, all Hab's ex's....

Oh yeah... the minute you realize you have gone back, you wanna leave again!

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Julien & especially Vigneault are good, proven coaches. Who cares if they coaches a completely different group of players in Montreal 10-15 years ago? In fact, I'll bet if you got back together with you ex 20 years after the original break-up, it'd be quite a different experience than the one you describe. (Or so I'd guess - I've never done that myself).

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