Anaheim Ducks: Is the Answer to the Ducks Coaching Woes Available?

The Ducks are bad, they’re extremely, extremely bad, the team is not scoring enough, they’re not stopping the opponents from getting shots on goal, and goaltending has corrected itself, going from a god-tier level of play to only very good. The Ducks are 3-6-2 in their last 11 games, a good chunk of those 11 games coming against teams that are not exactly “top tier” teams.

Chants of “Fire Carlyle” have started to make their rounds at Honda Center and for the first time in over a decade, you can find fans of other teams who actually pity fans of the Ducks. It’s times like these that general managers usually make moves to try and correct deficiencies on their team. To this point Bob Murray has not done that for the Ducks, and while fans are waiting with bated breath for headlines to read “Ducks relieve Randy Carlyle of his Coaching Duties” (myself included) I find myself with each passing day, thinking it might not be as much relief as we expect. Here are my thoughts

The Candidates

When discussing potential coaching changes for the Ducks there’s 2 names that have basically topped the list (one only recently and one who’s been discussed for over a season) those being Coach Joel Quenneville recently fired from the Chicago Blackhawks, and Dallas Eakins, the current coach of the Anaheim Ducks affiliate the San Diego Gulls.

Joel Quenneville is basically a lock as a first ballot Hall of Famer once he retires. A 3 time Stanley Cup champion with the Chicago Blackhawks, he’s currently 2nd All Time in career wins for a head coach, boasting a career record of 890-532-137 (and 77 ties). Last season is the first time Quenneville’s team has missed the playoffs since taking over the coaching duties in Chicago. Quenneville is seen as a demanding coach, similar in demeanor to Randy Carlyle, but unlike Carlyle, he’s not afraid to make drastic changes in his lineup and has a knack for finding lineups that work despite having no real reason to do so. A welcome trait for a team that seems to like banging its head against the wall by forcing lines that don’t seem to make any sense on paper, and make even less sense on the ice.

Dallas Eakins is the coach of the San Diego Gulls currently, he’s a fairly accomplished AHL coach, not quite the level of success that former Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau had in the AHL but still success none-the-less. After two impressive seasons at the helm of the Toronto Marlies, the Edmonton Oilers thought they had their coach that would help them take the next step in their rebuild by hiring Eakins. He showed promise in his rookie campaign as an NHL coach although not enough to over-come the pit that was Edmonton at the time, (to put it into context in a 6 season period the Oilers went through 5 Head Coaches) Eakins is a coach similar in style to Jon Cooper, he’s blunt and to the point, but he’s not necessarily as demanding or hard-nosed as Randy Carlyle, while not being a full on motivator in the mold of a Bruce Boudreau.

There are also other names available that are not as on the radar currently, but are not out of the question, Kevin Dineen was just fired with Quenneville and has success at the NHL level, Rikard Grönborg has made it known he is looking for an opportunity in North America, Kirk Muller has been interested in being an NHL Head coach as well, Sheldon Keefe is considered a massive up-and-comer, Dan Bylsma and Alain Vigneault are also names mentioned when NHL Coaching vacancies are mentioned.

Now judging by those run downs it’s definitely not hard to make an argument that either could be a marked improvement over Randy Carlyle and his antiquated gritty, dump and chase style, and it’s also not out of the question that any of the other names mentioned would be positive additions to the team and I don’t disagree. But the true question becomes how much better do they make the Ducks? Does it behoove the Ducks to make that move now or is there any benefit to waiting?

The Hard Truth

I’m gonna focus on the two names most mentioned when it comes to the coaching vacancies, Eakins and Quenneville. Lets start with the most recently available. Joel Quenneville.

I’m not going to lie, when I got the alert that Quenneville was being fired by the Blackhawks, I immediately tweeted the Ducks better be in on him. He’s a Hall-Of-Fame quality coach, he’s going to be motivated to prove himself coming off of a contentious firing from the Blackhawks and he’s available. Why wouldn’t I be excited about the prospect of Coach Q behind the Ducks bench? But then I got to thinking, after hearing some counter-arguments from other Ducks fans on Twitter, and most importantly some insight today from Nick Kypreos from Sportsnet. So here’s my thoughts on why Quenneville is not a great fit for the Ducks.

1: Compensation- Hall of Famers don’t come cheap, Quenneville is one of the most decorated coaches in NHL history, and he’s going to want to be paid like it and he most definitely deserves it. Look at what Mike Babcock got to go coach in Toronto, While Babcock has a better winning percentage than Quenneville, Quenneville has 3x as many championships as Babcock, it is most definitely not only plausible but extremely likely that Quenneville will get just as much, if not more than Babcock got. Anaheim has never been a team who has a blank check to spend, it’s rare for them to be right up against the cap and they don’t exactly pay a huge premium for their coaches. If the Ducks fired Carlyle right now, and lets say they persuaded Quenneville to take just what Babcock is getting, that would be 6.25 million dollars on Quenneville, on top of whatever they’re paying Carlyle which is reportedly around 2 million. Would the Samueli’s be okay spending an excess of 8 million dollars on a team who has shown extremely little promise to this point, with a core that’s aging at an alarming rate? Even more importantly, lets say they do spend that much, is that something that would make them less likely to spend to the cap for their players in an effort to save money elsewhere, due to an exponential increase in money spent on coaching?

2- The Roster- In the article linked above Nick Kypreos said that Quenneville is not looking to take on a team who’s considering a rebuild or in the midst of a rebuild, as of right this minute, the Ducks are not rebuilding, but it’s honestly not that much of a stretch to say that a rebuild is possible for this team. The core of this team is aging, and while we have some impressive players like Cam Fowler, Hampus Lindholm and John Gibson who are going to be entering their prime soon, we don’t have a wealth of blue-chip prospects, we have a lot of good players, but there’s not a guy out there who I would be comfortable saying the team could be built around.

Those players are difficult to come by, and almost impossible to come by unless you’re picking in the top 5 of the draft, and while it’s not uncommon for a team without a true standout superstar to make a push and be a playoff caliber team, it is uncommon for a team to win a Stanley Cup without those superstars. As a matter of fact, in the past 11 years, only one team has won a Stanley Cup without a player who was a top 2 pick on their active roster (All 10 of the top 2 picks were originally drafted by the team who they won the cup with as well).  The lone exception to that trend? The Detroit Red Wings who had arguably the greatest goaltender of all time in Dominik Hasek, a defenseman many have on their Mt. Rushmore of defenders in Niklas Lidstrom, and 2 players who are considered 2 of the biggest steals in the history of the NHL draft in Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk.

What does this have to do with the coach? Well a couple things actually, Joel Quenneville is a great coach, he will make whichever team he coaches better, he’ll make a bottom 5 team a bottom 15 team, and make a top 10 team a top 5 team. So while that’s a great thing, unless the Ducks are willing to go All-In and be like the Blackhawks in trading picks like they’re going out of style to acquire talent to help now, the Ducks would basically be costing themselves a higher draft pick, to be in the playoffs, despite not really being a Stanley Cup caliber team. In addition to that, when you have a coach like Quenneville, and a salary as high as he will command attached to him, what you’re going to see is the team attempting to stay competitive when they really should be re-tooling, and if a team like Anaheim, who’s relatively thrifty with their money, commits to a big money coach, they’re going to have to ride that coach out as long as they can as they don’t have unlimited funds to just replace a coach on a whim like a team like Toronto or Edmonton can.

Dallas Eakins

Eakins doesn’t have as much of a risk factor to him as Joel Quenneville does admittedly, and when discussing it last week before Quenneville was fired, the point was raised of “Why do it now? Why not wait until the end of the season to clean house?” And that makes sense honestly, the season is not exactly lost yet, but it’s quickly becoming more and more likely that the Ducks are not a competitor, new coach or not, it’s not something that’s going to just be a flip of a switch to fix. But there’s one major positive point to firing Carlyle and bringing in Eakins in my opinion. You can promote him as an interim coach without committing to him long term. The Ducks get a chance to bring in Eakins to the Ducks locker room and see what he can do behind the bench and if he proves to be a positive influence on the team, Great! Lock him up in the off-season as the full-time coach, if he doesn’t cut it? You’re not on the hook for another salary long term for a coach who might not pan out.  That type of move makes sense to me, it’s quite like Murray as well to basically hedge his bets.

But while Eakins showed a lot of promise coaching the Ducks in brief stints, he’s not exactly a sure thing. Earlier I mentioned that Eakins showed promise in his rookie campaign as an NHL coach, but that doesn’t mean it translated to success on the score sheet. Edmonton saw themselves last in the West and 3rd worst in the entire league. So where was the promise exactly? Well with Eakins at the helm Taylor Hall had his best statistical season in his entire stint with the Oilers, the Oilers also got better as the season progressed, they didn’t ever look great, and didn’t have a single month during the season where they were over .500 but the last two months of the season they came close. So yes it wasn’t exactly earth-shaking progress, but he did some good things for the Oilers. The team wasn’t better after him, they weren’t worse before him, but that’s not exactly a compliment when you consider the coaches he’s in company with being Tom Renney, Ralph Krueger, and Todd Nelson.

Also while Eakins has been considered a good AHL coach, he hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire, he’s been serviceable but again, not a world changer, the Marlies didn’t get significantly worse after he left them, much like the Oilers, and that’s not mentioning his San Diego Gulls haven’t exactly been dominant in his tenure as coach. Never made it past the 2nd round and even missing the playoffs altogether last season. I certainly don’t think it’s fair to say that Eakins won’t be a good coach at the NHL level, but his history as a coach doesn’t exactly make him a must hire.

More from Pucks of a Feather

• Who could the Anaheim Ducks consider presenting offer sheets to?
• Is Pierre-Luc Dubois on the cards for the rebuilding Anaheim Ducks?
• Making the case for the Anaheim Ducks to trade with the Edmonton Oilers
• Anaheim Ducks might benefit tremendously by trading John Gibson
• How close are the Anaheim Ducks to becoming contenders again?

So should the Ducks bring him in now? I’m not so sure… As it stands now, he’s going to be coaching a roster in San Diego that’s pretty talented, and SHOULD be a force in the AHL, if he can show dominance as a coach in the AHL with that roster it’d be difficult to deny him a chance in the NHL, but if he can’t take the Gulls to new heights with guys like Isac Lundestrom, Sam Steel, Max Jones, Troy Terry, Andy Welinski, Max Comtois, Jake Dotchin and Josh Mahura, it’d be equally difficult to think he’d be a significant asset at the NHL level.

So while bringing him into the Ducks on an interim basis might be the best course of action, it’s not hard to argue that him coaching the Gulls with what could be half of a future Ducks team might be just as telling of a job interview.

I’m incredibly torn with the Anaheim Ducks, I’ve said in the past that I want nothing more for the Ducks than to see Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry get one more cup for this team and Ryan Kesler to get his first cup with the Ducks before hanging them up. But the NHL is a business, and at the end of the day, is it feasible to make square pegs fit round holes to maybe have another run when you could sand that square peg into a circle and make it fit better for the long run. I’m right there with the majority of fans who feel this team is nearly unwatchable and is getting increasingly frustrating to watch as the season progresses. But I don’t exactly see this team being a coaching change away from being contenders the more and more I think about this.

Would changing the coach make the Ducks better? More than likely, but would making that change and making the Ducks better, potentially hinder their chances to re-tool by getting a high draft pick? Possibly. One thing I can say is while Randy Carlyle’s seat is probably pretty hot currently, I wouldn’t be shocked if Bob Murray’s seat was starting to get a bit toasty as well, and a desperate man should be very certain of what moves he make, or they could be their ultimate undoing.