Sporting News

With their season off the rails, Ducks hope Bruce Boudreau is the simplest—and best—solution

As the month of November came to an end, and with it the NHL’s participation in charitable mustache growing, it was time to break out a razor late Wednesday night. You just didn’t figure that it would be Occam’s Razor, rather than a literal one.

Shortly after a 4-1 home victory over the Montreal Canadiens gave the Ducks only their second win of the month, Anaheim fired head coach Randy Carlyle, replacing him with Bruce Boudreau. The fact that the move came after a victory, with a replacement immediately named, meant that the Ducks had made their decision already, and that there was nothing Carlyle could do to save his job.

Bruce Boudreau had reason to cheer on Wednesday night. Now he's charged with leading the Ducks' push out of the Pacific Divison basement. (AP Photo)

“This was an extremely difficult decision,” Ducks general manager Bob Murray said in a statement. “Randy is a terrific head coach, and did a tremendous job for us for six-plus seasons. We thank him greatly for his hard work and dedication to our franchise, not the least of which was a Stanley Cup championship. At this time, we simply felt a new voice was needed. Bruce is a proven winner with a great track record, and we are optimistic we can turn this season around under his leadership.”

The application of Occam’s Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is most often the correct one, was in Murray’s decision to make a coaching change instead of breaking up the core of a team that finished fourth in the Western Conference with 99 points last season.

“We just seem to be dead between the ears,” Carlyle had said in his press conference after a loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday.

That sentiment was echoed by Anaheim’s veteran leaders, and the logical conclusion to draw was that Carlyle’s days were numbered. After Boudreau was fired in Washington and Paul Maurice in Carolina on Monday morning, Sporting News indeed reported that Carlyle had moved “to the top of the league’s endangered coach list.” The things that made it a difficult decision for Murray were Carlyle’s recent contract extension, the inherent emotions of coming to grips with the fact that the coach who won the Stanley Cup for the team is no longer getting through to the players, and finding a replacement.

It turned out that the last hurdle was the easiest one to clear, as Boudreau barely had time to drown his sorrows in Häagen-Dazs after losing his job with the Capitals. A coach with a 201-88-40 record in the NHL was not going to stay unemployed long, but nobody expected that Boudreau would need only 65 hours to find a new place of employment. A coach who was fired because his voice—a good one—went stale replaces a coach who was fired because his voice—a good one—went stale. Occam’s Razor writ large.

The Ducks’ hope is that Boudreau will be able to replicate in Anaheim what he did upon taking over in Washington in 2007. The Capitals were 6-14-1 when they fired Glen Hanlon, then went 37-17-7 under Boudreau to storm to the Southeast Division title and earn their coach a Jack Adams Award. The degree of difficulty in Anaheim is higher because of the level of competition in the Pacific Division and the generally cannibalistic nature of the Western Conference, but the talent on hand in Anaheim makes it possible.

Boudreau does not have Alex Ovechkin at the peak of his powers this time around, but Ovechkin alone could not explain the Capitals’ surge when Boudreau took the reins four years ago. Washington went from scoring 2.24 goals per game under Hanlon to 3.20 for the rest of the season. The Ducks’ current average is 2.25 goals per game, despite the presence of reigning league MVP Corey Perry, captain and two-time All-Star Ryan Getzlaf, ageless legend Teemu Selanne and three-time 30-goal scorer Bobby Ryan.

It was Ryan who was at the center of trade rumors the past two days, but it never made sense for Anaheim to trade a 24-year-old player who is signed through 2015 at a reasonable annual rate of $5.1 million. The price to make such a change-for-change’s-sake deal worthwhile for Anaheim would have been too steep for a contending team to match. A source told Sporting News that the Ducks also had been shopping Getzlaf, who is two years older and signed through next season, but again, getting equal value in return would have been, to say the least, problematic.

The Ducks’ long-term plan is to build around the young stars in their mid-20s, and giving up on that plan after two months of disappointment would have been folly. The simplest solution is to see if a change in leadership can help a strong group perform to its capabilities, and that is just what Anaheim will do.

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