Anaheim Ducks Update: Boudreau Safe, But Warning Shots Fired

Anaheim’s head coach lives to coach another day, but make no mistake about it: he has been warned.

The Anaheim Ducks announced the other day that head coach Bruce Boudreau and the majority of his coaching staff will be on the bench next season, with the exception of Brad Lauer, who has been let go.

As I wrote yesterday, Lauer, who was in charge of the power play, was a victim of Anaheim’s regular season woes when it came to scoring with a man advantage: the Ducks had the NHL’s 22nd and 28th ranked power play in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, respectively, which is inexcusable, given the offensive firepower that the team possesses.

On the surface, then, it would appear that Ducks General Manager Bob Murray is satisfied with what he is seeing from Boudreau and the coaching staff – after all, the team did make it out of the second round of the playoffs this season, which should be seen as a sign of progress.  And you cannot really argue for Lauer keeping his job, when the Ducks appear to be getting worse on the power play under him, instead of better.

Still, I don’t entirely buy the fact that Lauer was the only coach that Murray and company was unhappy with, and neither do some folks on Twitter:

Sure, making it to the Western Conference Finals was a step in the right direction, compared to past failures.  However, there are a few items to consider that make me feel that canning Lauer was Murray’s way of firing a warning shot over the heads of Boudreau and the rest of the coaching staff.

First of all, the Anaheim Ducks have been the best regular season team in the Western Conference the past three years.  Saying the team has made progress because it finally made it past the second round is commendable for an up-and-coming team like Calgary, but slight praise for a team like Anaheim.   In all honesty, this Ducks squad should have made it to the Stanley Cup Finals at least once in the past three seasons, so one has to be careful about painting TOO rosy a picture about the progress this team has made.

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The second, and most important, reason why I feel that Murray is putting the rest of his coaching staff on notice is the nature in which the Ducks have been eliminated in each of the last three postseasons.  You all know the story by now, so I won’t unearth too much buried history here, but losing three consecutive Game 7s at home makes you wonder if the Ducks’ current coaching staff is just flat-out being out-coached when it maters most.   Good coaches make changes as a series goes on, and apparently, the opposition is making the right changes, and the Anaheim coaches are not.  One more series in which it is evident that Bruce Boudreau and company were out-coached, and there will be an awful lot of pink slips being handed out next June.

I’ve said it before – I don’t delight in talking about people losing their jobs.  I feel bad about Brad Lauer being out of a job, and the fact that his firing puts other coaches on notice that they, too, could lose their jobs if they don’t get results next year is one of the unfortunate sides of the business that is professional sports.

Winning cures a lot, so let’s just hope the Anaheim Ducks do not under-achieve, or experience yet another heart-breaking Game 7 loss next year, so we can file this post under “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Next: Is Dougie Hamilton an Option for the Anaheim Ducks?