When a team is on a 10-game losing streak everyone knows that the blame is put on the head coach. Sometimes this is unjust, sometimes it’s just the caliber of the team that’s just not good enough. However this was not the case in Long Island on Monday, when the New York Islanders fired head coach Scott Gordon.
Scott Gordon has had a total of seven 5-game or more losing streaks during his 2 year and a half year term with the New York Islanders, so I can’t honestly believe anyone that tells me that this losing streak wasn’t, at least in some part, Scott Gordon’s fault. Some say that the fault should go to General Manager, Garth Snow, for not providing a good enough offense. This might be somewhat true, seeing as the #1 investment Snow made to improve the offense was signing PA Parenteau which, having seen him often during his 22-game stint with the Rangers, is in my opinion a steal seeing as he is paid $600,000, which isn’t seen often in one-way contracts to scorers like Parenteau. However the problem I see with the entire “blame Snow, not Gordon” argument is the fact that the team had no trouble in the scoring department when the season began, seeing as they averaged 3.3 goals per game before heading into the losing streak.
Snow was right when he said that “the biggest issue with our team is confidence…we’ve got to establish that swagger we had earlier in the season”. The problem with this team is exactly that, a lack of confidence. The Islanders lost that “swagger” they had at the beginning of the season when they looked like you could match them with any team and they’d have a 50-50 shot of winning the game. At some point during this losing streak the players lost faith in themselves, and when Gordon wasn’t able to bring that confidence back he started to lose the team. For Snow the decision was simple, when he saw that Gordon lost the team, it was time for him to go.
The only mistake I think that was done by the Islander organization was who they picked to replace Gordon. Jack Capuano, the head coach of the Islanders’ AHL affiliate, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, was given a promotion and was chosen as the interim head coach. As the head coach of Bridgeport, Capuano guided the Sound Tigers to on playoff appearance and two 40-win seasons in three full seasons with the team. The problem I see with this move is that, if Capuano is chosen to coach the team for the remainder of the season, the Islanders would be making the same mistake all over again. Capuano is a coach with no prior NHL experience, like Gordon was when he was hired. Capuano has had some accomplishments in the AHL, like Gordon had with the Providence Bruins before heading to New York, and Capuano also uses, except for a few changes here and there, the same style of play as Gordon.
What the Islanders need isn’t just a new head coach, the team needs a head coach who’s had at least some type of success at the NHL level before in his career. They need somebody who can show them what needs to be done to be successful in the NHL, somebody who can show them what they’ve been doing wrong, and finally take this rebuild to the next stage, the playoffs. With 65 games left in the season, the playoffs are still a possibility. The Islanders have a 4-10-3 record and 11 points, which means that if they can manage to win about 38 games, and get at least some points out of some of the games that they do lose they can still make the playoffs. The chances are slim, but it’s been done before. In 06/07 the Isles were 8-6-3 with 19 points at this point of the season, which means that there’s only an 8 point differential between the 06/07 Islanders who made the playoffs, and the 10/11 Islanders who hope to do the same. The differential isn’t that big, all the Islanders need to do is give everything they’ve got on every game and the wins will come. I mean after all isn’t that the only thing fans have been asking for from the beginning? For the players to leave their hearts on the ice after every game, and not leave them in the locker room before the games.