Maple Leafs GM Dave Nonis said he fired coach Randy Carlyle late Monday night, with a message to the players to return consistency to their performance.
“We expect our players understand right now what we need going forward,” Nonis told a packed media gallery at the MasterCard Centre on Tuesday after the word of Carlyle’s dismissal broke.
“It shouldn’t take anything more than what’s happened today for them to do it.”
Carlyle’s firing was a “tough decision” but necessary, Nonis said.
“One of the things you’ve all heard me talk about is consistency,” Nonis said. “We need to see some level of consistency. We all agree we had some good stretches here but I can’t stand here and tell you our group’s been consistent.”
It’s possible the Leafs will move forward with assistants Peter Horacheck and Steve Spott as interim coaches for the foreseeable future and into the end of the season.
“We’ll look at that (new coach) over the next couple of days,” Nonis said. “Today was about making a change, we have two quality coaches (Spott and Horachek) that we’re confident in to lead us onto the ice (Wednesday) night (against the Washington Capitals).”
Nonis said Carlyle is an “excellent coach,” but with the team struggling after a 10-1-1 run last month, the time was right for a change.
“Randy will be back in this game very soon,” Nonis said. “The coach is part of the responsibility, the coach is the easy one to let go. We all take some responsibility too, players included. But the next thing in the process is we think we can do good things, and this is a step in the right direction for us.
“It’s always a tough decision but we felt we had to make the decision because of the direction the team was heading in.”
As for his own job security, Nonis said he is “never worried.”
“You make decisions based on what’s good for the team,” Nonis said. “It’s what we need to do to move forward. That’s how I wake up every morning, but it’s not something I’m worried about.”
The Leafs (21-16-3) are fourth in the Atlantic Division with 45 points, one point ahead of the Boston Bruins for the second Eastern Conference wild-card berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Obviously it is not a great day whenever a coach gets fired,” Leafs sniper Phil Kessel said after practice Tuesday.
“It says the team is not going in the right direction. I don’t think it’s the coach’s fault. The players have not been playing as well as we would like.”
Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf said the players are responsible for Carlyle’s firing.
In this Nov. 18, 2014, file photo, Toronto Maple Leafs coach Randy Carlyle speaks to the media following the team’s 9-2 loss to the Nashville Predators in an NHL hockey game in Toronto. (The Canadian Press)
“For us as players, it’s not fun to have someone, your coach, lose their job,” Phaneuf said. “Ultimately it comes back to us as player and as a team not being able to play well enough and Randy has lost his job because of that. As a player, we feel very responsible for this. It’s a tough day.”
Hired by the Maple Leafs on March 2, 2012, Carlyle compiled a record of 91-78-19 record in 188 games. The 58-year-old holds a career NHL coaching record of 364-260-80 in 704 games with the Anaheim Ducks and Toronto. He won the Stanley Cup in 2007 as coach of the Ducks.
Carlyle was absent from the Leafs’ outdoor practice Monday, causing some to speculate he had been fired. However, the Leafs said Carlyle had a doctor’s appointment.
Carlyle’s future looked especially grim Saturday when Leaf president Brendan Shanahan showed up in Winnipeg and the Leafs went on to lose 5-1.
As Torstar’s Dave Feschuk reported, Carlyle make a point of levelling jabs at a couple of key parts of the operation after the loss.
“You don’t always have the luxury to say that you’d like this player or that player or this type of player. That’s not the way it works,” Carlyle said Saturday. “How it works is you have an organization that provides you with players, and our job, as we’ve said all along, is just to coach ‘em up.”
Shanahan had been pacing the corridor outside the Leafs dressing room only moments before Carlyle said those words.
Carlyle took pains to share publicly how difficult the task of coaching this group continues to prove.
“We’ve been trying and preaching and begging, coddling, kicking — doing whatever you have to do to get more people back in the puck recovery zone,” he said.
Kessel said the players didn’t see this move coming.
“I have been here a while now I have been through these ups and downs,” Kessel said. “We have not been playing well. It is not his fault. He is a great coach. He has won a Cup. And we did not get it done for him”
Peter DeBoer, fired by New Jersey last week, quickly surfaced as a leading candidate to take over the vacant Leafs coaching job.
Carlyle is the fourth coach to be fired this season, following the dismissal of DeBoer, Paul MacLean by the Ottawa Senators and Dallas Eakins by the Edmonton Oilers.
For now, though, Horachek and Spott are in charge of the Leafs.
“Our group is very comfortable with those two guys . . . Those two guys we’ve worked with since the start of the season,” said Leafs defenceman Cody Franson. “I think they will do a good job. Like I said before, it is an equal responsibility with what happened today. It is not all on Randy’s shoulders. We definitely played a big part in that. That’s a tough decision that was made. It is part of the game. But we know there’s a major accountability factor that has to come within our group.”
Toronto lost to the Jets to close out their long road trip at 2-5. Shanahan’s presence raised eyebrows around the Leafs, and it also ignited a Carlyle watch as the Leafs continued to show no signs of ending their poor play that surfaced during the last two weeks.
Carlyle’s fate is believed to have been sealed even earlier than Saturday night. Carlyle was noticeably edgy and showing signs of pressure early last week.
The coach was unusually edgy with the media when asked basic questions about injury updates. He also openly criticized some of his players, including Leo Komarov, who he said had “his worst game of the year” after being placed on the top line with Tyler Bozak and Phil Kessel.
Carlyle noted after losing in Minnesota on Friday that there was “heat” around the team, and it’s believed he meant management was taking action with the team wavering badly.
After Shanahan was hired as president in April, he evaluated the coaching staff and decided to re-sign Carlyle and fire his assistants. Carlyle got a two-year extension, but the final season of it was a team option.
Asked about Carlyle before the season, Nonis said the idea of a “short leash” is no different than it has ever been.
“How a team plays is always a reflection of your coach,” Nonis said the day training camp opened. “At some point you look at how the team plays and you say, ‘Is a coach having the impact that’s needed?’ I don’t really think that matters if a coach is on a one-year or a two-year deal if you don’t think he’s getting through.”
Blowout losses in November seemed to symbolize that, and fans threw Leafs jerseys on the Air Canada Centre ice during a few games at the beginning of the season. But the 10-1-1 run following a couple of embarrassing games got the Leafs back on track. Losing five of seven on the road trip, and repeating the same kind of mistakes that have plagued the team before, marked the end of Carlyle’s tenure.
Carlyle, a native of Sudbury, Ont., replaced Ron Wilson with 18 games left in the 2011-12 season. Wilson was fired following the infamous “18-wheeler going right off a cliff” losing streak named for then-GM Brian Burke’s quote.
Carlyle and the Leafs made the playoffs in the lockout-shortened 2013 season before falling behind three games to one in the first round against Boston. They came back to force a Game 7 and led 4-1 with 11 minutes left in the third period before losing in overtime.
In 2013-14, the Leafs were easily in a playoff spot when goaltender Jonathan Bernier suffered an injury. They lost eight in a row in regulation and dropped 12 of their final 14 games.
Carlyle’s job appeared in jeopardy then, but Shanahan decided he wanted some time to evaluate the team.
Source:: Metro News
