Ducks Fans Begin Calling for Heads of Key Personnel

Ducks fans are in full panic mode. After one of the ugliest losses in recent history, some fans are more than just upset…They’re raging mad.

Most of the trash talk is centered around two people: Head Coach Randy Carlyle and defenseman Ryan Whitney. We’re only 10 games into the season and these names have been brought up multiple times by fans as they want Carlyle fired or Whitney traded. So how could the Ducks have gone from Stanley Cup Champions to struggling to earn respect in a matter of 2 years?

Well, in regards to Carlyle, maybe he was never the great coach so many thought he was. I mean honestly, how hard was it for the Ducks to win the Stanley Cup in 2007? They faced little resistance, except from Detroit, through the entire season, eventually defeating the Ottawa Senators four games to one in a lopsided finals. But how much of that was coaching?

I assert that coaching was a very small part of the Ducks’ success that season. When you have Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer in the prime of their careers, J.S. Giguere and Ilya Bryzgalov playing terrific in net, a great mix of old and young scorers, the best checking line around, and a team that gained playoff experience the year before, you’re destined to win the Cup.

So am I saying the credit should be given to Brian Burke for putting the team together? Absolutely not. Burke made some very important moves and the Ducks would not have won the Cup without the players he brought in, and no one questions that. But the offensive core, the same core that the Ducks are built around today, was already put in place by Bryan Murray, now with the Ottawa Senators.

So the Ducks won based on a myriad of factors and with the help of different management teams, which is usually the case with an achievement as big as winning the Stanley Cup.

OK, but that doesn’t explain why the Ducks suck right now. Well, it sort of does, actually. Pay attention! Pronger is gone, the checking line is gone, Niedermayer is past his prime, and the goaltending hasn’t been anywhere near the level it used to be. Those alone are enough to drop a team to mediocrity.

And Carlyle’s system has been exposed. His fore-checking system, if it can be called that anymore, went down the drain when the checking line disbanded and Chris Kunitz was traded. It also became glaringly apparent that his lack of a defensive focus makes the Ducks a harmless team as there is no longer a steady and strong line of defense to make up for the suddenly painfully obvious turnovers by the forwards.

So why hasn’t he been fired yet, you ask? Well, there isn’t really a good replacement out there right now. There have been so many coaching changes over the last few years that all the good, experienced coaches are employed. Andy Murray went to St. Louis and turned the team around, Joel Quenville landed with a great Chicago team, Dave Tippett is working his magic in Phoenix, and Pat Quinn just started in Edmonton.

There’s really no one left. Unless you want Michel Therrien, that is. But it looks like Therrien had the same problem as Carlyle has right now: a great team that can carry itself pretty far, but can’t get to the top with his system. I think Carlyle is starting to realize what happens when the players stop listening to the coach, namely tremendous underachievement. Eventually the coach gets canned when that happens.

That brings us to Whitney. I’ll admit that I used to love him when he was on the Penguins. When I heard the news that he had been traded, I was quite happy. It seemed like an even trade at the time and the two players had similar salaries. Whitney had scored 59 points two seasons before and 40 in 2007-08 (he was injured most of the year he came to the Ducks) and he was signed to an affordable deal for years to come.

But little did I, and most other Ducks fans, know that he really was a soft-playing, turnover committing, overpaid defenseman. Now let me clear something up: I don’t put myself in the same category of the many fans calling for Whitney to be traded. I think Whitney is a much better option than what we have for the time being, so I’d actually like to see him continue to play for the team. I also think he can play better as we’ve only seen him for a limited number of games.

With that being said, he’s still plays much too soft of a game for his size, he turns the puck over too much in the defensive zone (and can barely hold the puck inside the offensive zone), and isn’t worth all the money he’ll be getting in the future. To be exact, he’ll make an average of $4.625 million over the next four years, with an annual cap hit of $4 million. He’s a very calm guy on and off the ice, and that may be his undoing. He rarely shows any tenacity or grit and that’s exactly what the Ducks need right now.

But unfortunately he’s half of the best defensive pairing we have at the moment. I’d rather have Whitney and James Wisniewski on the ice than any combination of the other defensemen we have. That’s a sad realization in itself considering what I just wrote about Whitney.

But the fans’ criticism doesn’t stop there. They’re angry over the soft play of Steve Eminger and Petteri Nokelainen, and even Mike Brown was called out. Erik Christensen has been berated by fans since he came to the Ducks, and by me especially, for not scoring on shots anyone else would score on.

Ducks fans are just plain angry. They should be. But after 10 games in a season and a bad loss like we suffered last night there is going to be plenty of emotion to go around, and we shouldn’t necessarily act upon it just yet. Sometimes snap decisions are bad decisions, so maybe we should wait a little longer and see what Carlyle does with this team after an embarrassing loss.

Oh wait, we already know what he did. He gave the team the day off from practice.

That’s when you know it’s time for the coach to go.