On Saturday night, in another loss, this time a 6-1 blowout to the offensively challenged Buffalo Sabres, Kovalchuk was a healthy scratch for what one can only assume was the first time in his highly esteemed yet otherwise uneventful career.
Now Kovalchuk doesn’t do healthy scratches, as they’re very much beneath a player of his calibre, i.e. one that makes an average salary of $6.66 million per year. That fact perhaps had at least a little something to do with rookie head coach John MacLean getting the bright idea to bench him for might very well not be the only time in his eventual 15-year stint with the Devils.
Now Kovalchuk doesn’t do healthy scratches, as they’re very much beneath a player of his calibre, i.e. one that makes an average salary of $6.66 million per year. That fact perhaps had at least a little something to do with rookie head coach John MacLean getting the bright idea to bench him for might very well not be the only time in his eventual 15-year stint with the Devils.
The exact reasons why Kovalchuk was scratched remain a mystery, but if you read between the lines and look to the patterns of selfishness strewn throughout his career you don’t need to be a Russian cosmonaut to get what the most likely one was. There has been some speculation that he missed a team meeting, but MacLean went on record as saying only that it was between him and Kovalchuk. For an alternative conspiracy theory, visit Hockeybuzz.
Whatever happened, as is always the case with any healthy scratch of a highly paid player, it was no doubt about sending a message. However, here are just a few things MacLean should have taken under consideration before he suffered from a power trip of epic proportions that clearly resulted in a concussion and several other mentally incapacitating injuries:
Whatever happened, as is always the case with any healthy scratch of a highly paid player, it was no doubt about sending a message. However, here are just a few things MacLean should have taken under consideration before he suffered from a power trip of epic proportions that clearly resulted in a concussion and several other mentally incapacitating injuries:
1) Taking your best player out of the line-up seriously hinders your chances of winning.
2) Starting your back-up goalie in Johan Hedberg halves those already slim chances.
3) When your team is in last place in the Eastern Conference, it isn’t necessarily any one player that is having that much of a negative impact on the team.
4) When your team is in last place in the Eastern Conference despite high expectations of a Stanley Cup victory, it’s most likely the coach that will get the first look as to what is going wrong.
5) Sitting your best player is one way to attract even more attention your way when it comes time for management to “shake things up”.
It’s clear that if the Kovalchuk signing doesn’t work out, management will be to blame for this whole debacle, but when the team is tied at the hip to Kovalchuk for over a decade it has the benefit of time on its side, in order to get things working just the right way. Until all other avenues are exhausted, most everyone else can be considered collateral damage waiting to happen, starting with MacLean.
If you don’t think it’s possible for a head coach to be hired and fired so quickly, look to the Ottawa Senators for irrefutable proof. For the 2007-2008 season, the Senators hired John Paddock, who lasted just the one year before it became abundantly clear that he was the problem keeping Ottawa from making it back to the Stanley Cup Final. Then general manager Bryan Murray turned to Craig Hartsburg to start the following season behind the bench, but he only lasted 48 games before Murray realized that he wasn’t a good fit either. Finally, the Sens seem to have settled on Cory Clouston, but with the Senators currently in 14th place, just ahead of the Devils, Murray might again begin to start feeling antsy, clueless to the fact that he’s been the one common factor in all three of the coaching changes. Well, that’s not true. Captain Daniel Alfredsson, fresh off his 1000th career point on Friday night, has been around as well. But no one’s calling for him to be dealt.
Now this case study illustrates three main points: that the player is hardly ever the one that gets picked out of a line-up of the most culpable parties, that Bryan Murray still has his job despite hiring two head coaches that haven’t panned out and a third that may be on his last legs, and NHL coaches have lifespans shorter than that tub of yogurt in the back of your fridge, which you tend to keep around out of laziness because it’s not hurting anyone... until of course you take a spoonful one drunken night forgetting that it’s supposed to be white and vanilla and not coffee-flavoured.
I’m not saying a high-profile player shouldn’t be disciplined if he’s not doing things right, but if a coach does make that decision he should at least give his team the best chance at not letting it backfire. If MacLean was trying to prove a point, let’s say hypothetically that Kovalchuk is not bigger than the team, he should not have handed the goaltending reins over to Hedberg, who let in four of 15 shots in the game. I mean you can play Martin Brodeur. And it wasn’t as if Hedberg had been lights out in the other game he played this year either, allowing two goals on nine shots against the Washington Capitals two weeks earlier. Bottom line, if you were trying to tell Kovalchuk that the team doesn’t need him, all he did was see the team get humiliated without him one game, get put back into the line-up the following game, and then score the team’s only goal in that loss.
It’s clear that on paper the Devils are a better team with Kovalchuk, so until the Devils get back on track, MacLean had better learn to play this right or else the Devils will be without him in no time. I do hear the Senators might be looking for a new head coach sometime soon, so all is not lost.
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