Lightning fire Barry Melrose, move Tocchet to head coach

Lightning fire Barry Melrose, move Tocchet to head coach – Puck Daddy – NHL – Yahoo! Sports:


Tampa Bay Lightning Head Coach Barry Melrose has been relieved of his duties and Associate Coach Rick Tocchet has been elevated to interim head coach, Executive Vice President & General Manager Brian Lawton announced today.

Okay, who had “before Thanksgiving” in the “how long will he last?” pool? I think I was mid-December.

Wow. A shorter shelf life than Mike Keenan. Congrats, Barry.

Okay, seriously. I have some sympathy for Melrose here; I can well understand the motivation to get back in behind the bench. But…

The game has changed just a bit since he last coached. I honestly wasn’t all that impressed with him as a coach anyway. And this just had “bad idea” written all over it. (The detroit lions tried something like this with Matt Millen; it worked out equally badly; worse, actually).

Give the Lightning credit for not being afraid to admit they screwed up; it gives them a chance to get things moving forward, and Tocchet is a great start. Even better is it now looks like with Lawton in place, Lawton (not the owners) are making the decisions, and the owners are backing him. I’ll forgive them some early mistakes from enthusiasm in trying to reshape the franchise to their vision early; after all, Dan Boyle was “not their guy” and that only benefitted the Sharks (frankly, that was even more of a “huh?” move than Melrose. Melrose could well have made this work and everyone look like a genius. Just didn’t happen. Dumping Boyle? well, let’s see…

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  • http://newfaux.blogspot.com/ fauxrumors

    1) Yes Melrose was a HUGE mistake that everyone (except the TB owners) could see coming.
    2) We disagree with Tochett being a good replacement. He has ZERO head coaching experience, and has the baggage of still being on probabtion for that little issue with state troopers and Tony Soprano
    3) Yes, cue the drums…. It was a gamble to hire Tochett! ; )