If I'm Bo Horvat

And so, while I started this blog on Sunday morning, before Bruce Boudreau was officially fired, it will be finished and published now that he is actually gone. It's interesting to see what has happened since he was officially gassed, who stepped up and what they have said. It adds to many points I already had made on paper, and re enforces the gist of what I was getting at.And still stand by.

I will summarize quickly where I am at on all of it. Bruce Boudreau is a great person who has lots of class and compassion and is a good read of people. As a hockey coach, he has been relatively successfull, and okay enough, but lacking enough that eventually, once he gets a team to a certain point, you have to, or feel you have to, replace him. That isn't the issue here. The issue is how he was relieved of his duties, the message that sends, and how it just isn't right. None of that has changed in my mind.

This just came across today, Monday. The day after he was fired. It's a good microcosm of what I thought and just wrote above today....and down below before today. https://thehockeynews.com/news/a-personal-letter-to-bruce-boudreau

From the link above.

The time has mercifully come. The long, drawn-out, unnecessary process has come to an end.....When people speak of you, they’ll mention your love for the game, your infectious positivity and your ability to connect with everyone. After the past few months, there is no doubt that everyone will remember what I knew from the moment I met you: your compassion, care and class make you one of a kind.... Bruce Boudreau's teams play entertaining, offensive hockey,...There was never a moment where I felt you didn’t have my back. In the toughest of moments, you were willing to go to bat for me, a new staff member with almost no experience. That says more about you than any forecheck or DZ coverage ever could. I took many lessons from you and the staff, but the most important one was this: No matter how tough it may be, you must stand up for what is right.

Right off the bat, I'm going to state my thoughts on Boudreau as a coach. I think the players love him and try hard for him, and in certain aspects he can get some performance from them. Offensively for sure. Which isn't a surprise. Bruce Boudreau was a scoring machine as a player in junior, in the minor leagues, and he held his own well in the times when he played in the NHL. He wasn't a great passer, shooter, tough, anything special. He was just one of those guys who knew how to help his team score goals. That is a good trait. The basis of a hockey team is who scores more goals than the other team. Helping your team score goals is a big asset.

In spite of that, even though he produced well when he was called up, he would get sent back down just about every year to the minors. Why is that? I would suspect that he didn't or couldn't play much defense, and being smaller, he wasn't tough enough to power his way into stopping a player. As a coach, I see that in his teams. I have watched the Canucks play more than a few games since Boudreau took over the team, and a few in the season just before he took over. They were a brutal defensive team then, and they are even worse now. The argument that a hot and talented goaltender like Thatcher Demko camouflaged many nights of really bad defense is very valid. New goalie Spencer Martin has done the same. If you watch any game of theirs, they are horrific defensively, and especially the actual defenseman. A big part of that is the defense core Boudreau inherited. But, he has done nothing to improve that. At the end of the day, that is the reasoning that the brass wanted him out. It was bad, and in a best case scenario, it hasn't gotten any better. In a possible scenario, it's getting much worse.The general manager and President Jim Rutherford obviously felt and feels that even though they have to vastly improve their defensemen depth and talent, they are currently much better than they are playing and performing. That is why he wanted a change.

Jim Rutherford didn't want to extend Boudreau's contract last summer. That was a clear sign he didn't want him as the coach. Rutherford has mentioned more than once this season, in public, how the team has no structure and no plan to deal with what other teams throw at them. That is what coaches do. They read situations, prepare their team, and react with a plan. Do I agree with Rutherford? Yes I do. I mentioned my reasons above.

Which is why Boudreau should have been terminated before this season started, or allowed to stay around the entire year. Rutherford knew long ago what he had in Boudreau, and he didn't want it. That was his major error, along with the way he treated him since he made the first mistake of keeping him around when he didn't want him.

The issue is not that they should have removed him. It's when they should have done it, and how they ended up doing it. As a coach, he had to go. As a human and a person, there was a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Rutherord clearly chose the wrong way.

Let me say this up front. It took me only a few seconds to remember anything even close to this ever happening before. Coaches get criticized, second guessed, fired, and maligned all the time. It sort of comes with the territory. But only once in the 50 plus years I have been following sports that I can remember has a coach being tortured, abused, and disrespected in this way. And from that person, you expected it. Even for him, it was hard to fathom, but not entirely. Otherwise, you would not expect any kind of professional sports team to act the way Harold Ballard did then, and Jim Rutherford did this year. It's just beyond comprehension.

Unless you didnt care what people thought about you. Harold Ballard didn't. Jim Rutherford should. I will delve into that at the end of the blog.

Tonight there will be a documentary on CBC, directed, narrated, produced and conceived by Jason Priestley. Yes, that Jason Priestley. 90210 Jason Priestley. I'm sure many Americans dont know this, and probably many Canadians. Jason Priestley is Canadian, and has always had interests that reflect that. As such, and his age, 54, which is very close to mine, he would have experienced the Harold Ballard era in real time and remember it well. Even today, it's just a soap opera you wouldnt believe unless you saw it for your own eyes. 

The Fifth Estate did a piece on Ballard in 1980. You can watch that if you want to see what it was really like. Keep in mind, this was before the Sittler incident I delve into below.

There were two main incidents. I will start with the second one.

The worst 4 years of my life. I wouldnt want anyone to experience that. It was a waste of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_dsYp5hBOU

Darryl Sittler didn't say that. Frank Mahovlich did. About Punch Imlach. And he did that just a couple of years ago, which was almost 60 years later. People and players dont forget treatment like Mahovlich received. Over the years, many players on many different teams eventually refused to play for Punch Imlach. Mike Walton and Jim Schoenfeld were two of the many who couldn't take Imlach's berating and bullying behavior. Eventually, Imlach, who had glory years with the Maple Leafs in the 1960s, and then a lot of success early with the expansion 1970s Buffalo Sabres, was out of work and hired again by Harold Ballard in the late 1970s. This preceded the incident I will describe below but it was after the second one I will mention first.

Darryl Sittler was the longtime star and Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The day he signed his first contract with the Leafs, in 1970, Harold Ballard was sitting at the table right next to him. Ballard was on a weekend pass from jail. He was in jail because he was a convicted fraud. You can see that clip within the Fifth Estate piece.

Fast forward about 8 years later. Sittler was pretty much money in the bank. He would score 40 or more goals a year, get 100 points or more every year, he had class, he was a team guy, and he caused no waves. He showed up and played hard, just about every night, fought when he had to, and made many of his linemates better over the years. But one thing he wasn't was a chump. He didn't accept that if you played for Harold Ballards Maple Leafs, you had to get paid less than the going market rate and that you had to take any mental punishment or disrespect that came your way. If you didn't accept that, and many before him like Frank Mahovlich, Dave Keon, Paul Henderson and other stars didn't, you were either berated, insulted, traded, or worse, not traded and put in purgatory. Sittler became Captain in 1975 after Keon left the Leafs due to a dispute over money and treatment by Ballard. Keon is still bitter to this day about that. Very bitter. He never forgot it. Many consider Keon the greatest Leaf ever, and that is saying something based on the history of the Maple Leafs.

None of that bullying worked with Sittler. When Sittler found out that others in the league of his caliber were making significantly more money than he was, he wanted a raise. Ballard was well known to not be interested in paying for what he had. Since Sittler had a no trade contract, he could not be moved out. So, Ballard did the next best thing. He hired a hard ass, over the hill, old school general manager who had thrived way back in the NHL when the teams had total control over all the players and could get away with anything. Punch Imlach was that man. As soon as he came in, Sittler was basically a dead man skating on thin ice. What they did, Ballard and Imlach, was get Sittler to the point he was mentally depressed. Very much the same situation that happened to Mahovlich 20 years earlier.

Imlach could do very little about Sittler. Directly anyway. He was the team leader and held heavy influence over the entire group of players. In addition, he had an ironclad no trade clause which Imlach could not do anything about. This was not 1967 when he could trade a Frank Mahovlich, or bench a Mike Walton, and or others.

Since Imlach could do nothing basically about Sittler, directly, in that he had to play him and he couldn't trade him, he did the next best thing. He tormented him.

First, Imlach went and traded Sittler's linemates. Lanny McDonald and then Tiger Williams. In fairness to Imlach, he actually made pretty good trades and got back very good players in both deals. But neither of those deals gets made if not for the purpose to show Sittler who is boss. Imlach traded Lanny McDonald because he was Sittler's best friend to show him who was the boss. He got good players back in those trades, but he destroyed the team the Leafs had built for years to do it. They didnt recover for decades.

Eventually, it got so bad that Sittler had to be traded. By that point, the The Leafs had backed themselves into a corner, and got basically nothing for a top shelf All Star still close to the prime of his career. Shortly before that happened, Imlach was gone, and the team was a mess for many years to come. I'm sure much of that will be shown tonight on Priestley's documentary.

The pattern of disrespect was well established by that point. And that's because of what happened just before Imlach arrived back on the scene in July of 1979. Let's be blunt and frank here. I dont know exactly how Ballard will be portrayed tonight, but I have seen clips and sound bites, and since I know a lying, con man, two bit criminal loser type when I see one, I expect that Ballard will be shown for what he was. Not that he wasn't crafty and savvy at times in business....he was.....but he had no class and no morals, and treated others as such. In today's world, the league wouldnt stand for anything like him and he would be removed or told to sell the team.

My next example/story of what he did will flesh that out very vividly. And of course, it relates to what happened this weekend/month in Vancouver. How will the league respond to what just happened in Vancouver?

The first thing you learn about Roger Nielson is that he was the direct opposite of Harold Ballard. Player after player described Nielson this way. He cared for the people around him. As such, he was a lamb to the slaughter of Ballard. I will return to that theme later with the current day situation.

Here is another thing many might not know. Roger Nielson is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, for being a coach. He also received the Order of Canada, the highest honor for lifetime achievement. Frank Mahovlich also received the Order of Canada. Nielson is said to have changed the game entirely with his use of video technology. Today we take it for granted. Back then, nobody did it and very few even knew how to use it. Certainly not a Punch Imlach or his type. Punch Imlach, although he won many Stanley Cups, never received the order of Canada. Nor would he. He was a tyrant and a bully. Here is how Nielson is described by former players and others.

I'm a firm believer that a team has to be prepared to the best of their ability in order to have a chance at winning. And Roger did that. -Darryl Sittler

He was a down to earth human being. He understood, as a player, that you are a person. Not just a hockey player, you're a person -Darryl Sittler

Nielson had been a junior hockey coach for about 10 years, with very good success, when he moved up to professional hockey as the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs after one year coaching their minor hockey league affiliate in Dallas. In 1977, despite a mediocre team, Nielson got them to the semi finals by beating the New York Islanders, who were one of the favorites that year for the Stanley Cup, and then losing to the Montreal Canadians in the next round. The Canadians were in the midst of a 4 year run as Stanley Cup champions, and are generally regarded as the greatest team ever assembled. Some could argue that, but nobody would argue that they were one of those teams on a short list of all time great teams. The Islanders went on to win 4 straight Stanley Cups right after Montreal did it and they would also be mentioned as one of the great all time teams. Nielson got them to beat one of those and compete with the other in only his first season as a head coach in the NHL. And what did he get for that achievement?

In his second, and final season coaching the Leafs, they were doing okay, but not great, and he was maligned and berated by the owner. As I said off the top, that happens in the game. What does not happen, except in this one instance, and the one that initiated this blog idea, is what happened next.

In his 2nd season coaching the Leafs, he was fired. Then within 3 days, unfired. But he wasn't just unfired. Ballard wanted Nielson to come out at game time, with a paper bag over his head, then take it off as he entered the bench. Ballard described it as a sort of marketing promotion technique. In reality, Ballard had backed himself into a corner. What he did was fire Nielson, but didn't tell him. Never to his face. Then, he told a reporter, and still didn't actually inform Nielson. Until late the next day. In the meantime, he offered the job to 3 or 4 others, all who turned him down. By then, Ballard had a game coming up on Saturday night, and that morning, had no actual coach to coach the team. Not only did he rescind the firing on Nielson, he insisted that Nielson come out and wear the paper bag. Nielson was going to do it as well, until some people warned him how foolish and demeaning that would be. Otherwise, it would have happened like that.

The Sittler incident came a year or two after that. I'm sure it was on Sittler's mind when he figured out how he was going to play his side of the equation against Ballard and Imlach. Instead of wearing a bag over his head, when Ballard hired Imlach, who then traded players off the team to spite Sittler, he responded by ripping the Captains C off his jersey.

Sittler, unfortunately for Ballard, was not Nielson. He gave better than he got. He had a no trade contract and it was guaranteed. He forced Ballard to have him traded to where he wanted to go and when he wanted to have it happen. Imlach dismantled and ruined the team, then he was fired. The Leafs then traded Sittler, and the Leafs had nothing to show for it. They also lost a coach who only two years later took the Canucks to the finals. Neilson was that coach.

Until this winter, I had not seen another situation like the one above play out in professional sport. It just simply does not happen that way. For good reason. It sends a message to the rest of the world about the way you operate your franchise. Your business.

Darryl Sittler put it best. *It was a circus. Simple as that.* That was the Maple Leafs under Harold Ballards ownership tenure.

Bruce Boudreau played on those Maple Leafs teams of the late 70s, including for Roger Nielson. He understands gaining players respect with how you prepare them and how you treat them. Luke Schenn put it best.

*Defenceman Luke Schenn said that Boudreau, in his 14 months coaching the team, would periodically put player numbers on the whiteboard — an invitation to speak to the coach in his office. It was mostly to ask them about their families and their lives, to check in on his players and make sure they were OK.“It was just real, you know what I mean?” Schenn said. Earlier, he told reporters: “I think at the end of the day coaching. . . it's not as complicated as people may think. Coaching to me is relationships and that's one thing that stood out to me is he's a people person. Being around a long time, he has a great deal of respect not only with guys in this dressing room, but guys who have played prior on teams that he's coached. Lots of lots of people reach out to guys in this dressing room from around the league and they all want to know about Bruce. And they wouldn't do that if he wasn't a good person. So I think that's the biggest takeaway for me.”*

Boudreau was never really a solid NHL player during his playing days. He was a top shelf All Star in the minors. A guy who could score lots of goals and get lots of assists, but in the NHL, he would come up, score some, but then get sent back down. This happened almost every year for many years. When he finally retired as a player, Boudreau went into coaching. If not for his coaching career, he would be long forgotten. I'm sure many fans today who arent old enough dont even remember him as a player. As a coach though, he is well known and has had a lot of success. At the very least, he deserves some respect for that.

Here are some general facts about Boudreaus coaching career. He is one of the winningest coaches percentage wise in the history of the league. He was fired several times, as most coaches are, and hired almost immediately right after by another team. In fact, when Washington fired him, he was hired 2 days later by Anaheim. That's the fastest that has ever happened. As well, Boudreau is well known for taking a team that has not been doing well, immediately improving them, and then getting them to the highest level, but never getting over the hump. At which point, they fall apart and he is terminated.

That is the situation he faced in Vancouver. He was hired after Vancouver had completely underperformed for a few years, but had a lot of young, high potential talent to work with. They had a terrible record when he took over, and then a fantastic record the rest of the season, but just fell short of making the playoffs. That was because of the start they had before Boudreau took over, which wasn't his fault. That is how he ended the first year coaching the Canucks.

Sounds familiar.

In the meantime, Vancouver's owner Frances Aqualini has been well known over the past few years as an owner who interferes with operations to the point it hurts the team and organization. Much like Ballard did. Aqualini hired Jim Rutherford after he hired Boudreau, and that was after both the coach and General manager had been fired with no plan in place to replace them. In that respect, Rutherford signed on without the knowledge that the current coach, Boudreau, also had an option for the next season. Rutherford was basically stuck with a coach he didn't want. It's what he did about that that created the situation that played out.

Rutherford knew he didn't want Boudreau as his coach. He accepted the job with the understanding he could replace him before this season. Since that wasn't the case, he should have insisted the owner pay the coach off and then Rutherford would be free to put in his own coach. That is the right way to go about it. The mature, professional, and classy way. The way you treat people and employees. That is not anything close to what has happened.

The Canucks started this season off terrible, and have never really shown much of a recovery. They needed a coaching change. Most everyone agrees on that. But there is a way to do that, and it's not the way Rutherford has done it. You could say the same about Roger Nielson back in 1979, and it wasn't the right way to do it then either. Nobody does it that way.

To me, Jim Rutherford acted as gutless and classless as Harold Ballard was then. If you want to fire the coach, bring him in, tell him the reasons, fire him, and then report it to the media in a press conference. You dont go on talk shows and downgrade the coach, twice at least, and then admit to trying to find his replacement, all but admitting he is fired but not fired yet, and let him and the team suffer for weeks in the meantime. In my view, he put the bag over Boudreau's head Saturday night, except it wasn't a comical stunt like Ballard pulled. It was much like when terrorists take hostages and send a video to the families or media with bags over the heads of the hostage just as they are about to execute them. It's a punk ass thing to do. Rutherford has been around a long time, both as a player and general manager. He knows better. Why in this case he chose to take this route just has everyone baffled, including myself.

In addition to all of that, the Canucks have a player, Bo Horvat, who is having a career year. And his contract is up at the end of this season. He is due a big raise, one that Rutherford admits is reasonable, but not one the Canucks can afford to give Horvat. Horvat is no run of the mill player. Like Sittler, he has been with the team for years, is loyal, has played very well for them, and is now reaching his prime. He is well respected and liked by the community and his teammates. And for all that, he watches as Rutherford treats the coach the way he has treated him.

If Im Bo Horvat, if I even had a thought about finding a way to make the money situation work in Vancouver, I dont even care about that anymore. I just want out. Just like Sittler did. And like that situation, if Rutherford and that ideology is still there, who is going to come in and replace Horvat? What player who has options is going to want to play in that environment? Just like the Leafs of the 1980s, the Canucks are in for a long stretch of bad teams when good players won't come or stay with them. They have set the tone. A very bad tone.

I would think it's going to have to result in a change of ownership, and removal of all levels of management, starting over like the Leafs did. And that took about 40 years to really take hold. All because of what they just did to Bruce Boudreau.

If I'm Bo Horvat, get me out of that circus atmosphere ASAP, and no amount of money they can offer matters at this point. No amount of money is worth it for that kind of treatment. And if they will treat the coach that way, they will do it to anyone.

On Sunday, when Rutherford announced Rick Tocchet as the new coach, as everyone already knew he would, he apologized for how it went down with Boudreau and the things he wished he had done differently. Good for him. Empty hollow words though. Way too late. He had weeks to right the wrong he had put in place. He didnt when it mattered. It doesnt matter now. Rutherford, and the Canucks, have shown their cards. Just like Ballard and Imlach did way back when. The only difference is.....Ballard was proud and happy to be that way, and would never apologize because he didnt care. Imlach always thought he was right, right to the end, and he would never apologize for being who he was. They can both get credit for at least being that and sticking to it.

The result in both cases is and will be the same. Years of bad teams and losing to come, and gradually, Rutherford and others who are responsible for what has been put in place will fade away, and maybe in a few years, the Canucks move forward and rebuild. But for sure, Bo Horvat wont be around, and likely, most of the players on the current team wont either. They have seen enough of the circus.