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Loading ...The Hurricanes will be playing the Sens tonight at ScotiaBank Place–I am betting that one team will have a losing streak snapped, and that it won’t be the Hurricanes.
Dude, is it The Season From Hell again? Did I fall into a time-dilation warp somewhere or something?
Whatever. I’ll be in my Thursday Night Living Room watching the carnage, with CSI recording on teh DVR as usual.
Anyway–the N&O this morning has an argh-ticle about the Hurricanes’ issues. One line that struck me as funny was “Help is on the way”–which had me picturing Scott “Remo Williams” Walker as Mrs. Doubtfire and led to the explosion of my mind’s eye in a thermonuclear fireball because….damn.
Moving right along. In an interview on 850 teh Buzz, JimR mentioned that everything was being looked at, including coaching, which brings me to possibly the first truly salient point I’ve made all season:
I think Lavi is being kept on the shelf past his expiry date.
There, I said it. I am eternally grateful to Lavi for 2006, I really am. I also like how he turned the team around after the 8-year trainwreck that was Chairman Mo. But I’ve finally decided to give in to the nagging voice in the back of my subconscious that keeps telling me that Peter Laviolette is one of those coaches who has a distressingly short shelf-life and say “He doesn’t suck, but he’s got a shorter lifespan than a Nexus Six.” I mean, this is the longest coaching tenure he’s had with any team.
I think that JimR should try to find a way to have Lavi exit gracefully (as gracefully as a coach can exit anyway), and get new blood behind the bench. If it takes another season, so be it, but the Hurricanes need to find a replacement and fast, and they need to go outside the organization to find that replacement (like they did when they brought Lavi in).
Do I think that the players hate him? No. I don’t get that vibe. But I do think that his message has worn thin. I do think that he has lost the players in the locker room–including (perhaps especially) the Village Elders–and I do think that it’s time for him to move on.
Idiots and know-nothings can say what they want. Pundits and crazed Magyars can bag the goalies and blast the defence (not that the defence doesn’t deserve a little blasting) and whatever, but I think that change in this case needs to be effected at the top.
So, tonight we shall see what we shall see I guess.
You’re the 1st legitimate person to call for this. I’m not so sure he’s lost the team yet, but the focus has to be turning towards him. Notice how he never puts the blame on coaching is his postgame quotes?
Well, I think part of the issue is that Lavi has one thing that he preaches, and he just doesn’t show an ability to adjust to changing situations–like, for example, the League deciding “Oops, can’t actually enforce our own rules–back to the way things were!”, which plays to teams like the Pflyers and penalizes teams like ours that lean more to small/quick rather than to big/thuggish.
When the team wins, the man is a genius. When the team loses, then the funk tends to spiral out of control.
Again, I don’t think he is a bad coach–but I do think that his system and inflexibility give him a ridiculously short half-life.