Why firing Ken Hitchcock was only decision for St. Louis Blues
Ken Hitchcock was fired on Wednesday morning by the St. Louis Blues, and it was really the only logical button to press for GM Doug Armstrong as he attempts to salvage a season that’s slipping away.
Hitchcock’s calling cards as Blues coach: The gritty defensive prowess of his teams and annual regular-season success.
The defense this season has been embarrassingly bad, leading to a 3.12 goals-against average for No. 28 in the NHL. The Blues have a minus-16 goal differential. In the first five years under Hitchcock, the team had a goals-against average of 3.12.
Much of that is insufficient goaltending – which is why goalie coach Jim Corsi was turfed as well – as the Blues team save percentage is last in the NHL at .887 even though they’re allowing the fourth-fewest shots per game (27.6). But some of it is also team defense. Something had to change.
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The regular-season success had suddenly changed as well. Their points percentage in 50 games was .530. The Blues hadn’t finished lower than a .625 (in the 48-game lockout season of 2012-13) under Hitchcock. Fear of seeing that regular-season success erode was a constant lifeline for Hitchcock, even as his talented teams floundered in the postseason. No longer.
Plus, Armstrong was in the enviable position of having the team’s next head coach – not interim, not short-term replacement, but head coach – already on the bench in Mike Yeo. He was hired as the next head coach when Hitchcock decided to return for the 2016-17 and declared (at least at the time) that it would be his last in the NHL.
“I feel really confident that the team and the franchise is going to be in great shape with Mike at the helm,” said Hitchcock at the time, also using the word “stewardship” to describe his role.
Yeo learned a lot in his stint with the Minnesota Wild (2011-16), which featured second-round playoff appearances in two of his four complete seasons (and three playoff appearances in total). And he’s no doubt learned more on the same bench with Hitchcock. Yeo led Minnesota to a 173-132-44 record.
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The Blues have lost five of their last six games and had a 5-8-0 January. They lost to the Winnipeg Jets at home, 5-3, on Tuesday night. “We made mistakes and we’re paying for them right now. We’ve got to minimize our mistakes. We’ve got to get more players playing to the same level that some of the guys played at today. There was some really good performances by some people today. We just have to get more people doing it,” said Hitchcock.
Now it’s on Yeo to figure out how.
Or, more to the point, it’s on the players.
Yeo can hold them accountable, change some systems, mix some players around. But he can’t stop the puck for Jake Allen, whose nightmarish season continues with a save percentage of .895 – only Jake Allen can. He can’t figure out what the hell happened with Jori Lehtera – only Jori Lehtera can.
It’s a month before the trade deadline. The Blues are 24-21-5 for 53 points, clinging to the last wild card after watching the Nashville Predators blow past them.
The worst-case scenario is that Armstrong sees a team that isn’t going to make the finish line, starts dealing away assets (like Kevin Shattenkirk) at the deadline and Yeo gets a nice three-month runway from which to takeoff for next season.
The best-case scenario is that Yeo tightens up the defense, which gets Allen’s confidence back, and the Blues keep their collective heads above water to grab the Central third seed or one of the wild cards. (The table is now set for Yeo against his former team in the first round, which would be fun.)
As for Hitchcock, if this is the last ride, we doff our Civil War reenactment hats (or glorious Winter Classic chapeau) to him. He’s one of the singular characters in recent hockey history, gregarious with his analysis of the game and loquacious with the stories he tells. He wasn’t always your best friend, and his skating the players under the ice in practice likely led to some of the Blues’ playoff follies, but he was a hell of a hockey coach. That he could fall one career win (781) career win short of Al Arbour for 3rd all-time is a bummer.
And if this isn’t the last ride, then we’ll see you in Vegas, Hitch …
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
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