Two Former Canes Coaches Fired Early

Picture Source: Miami Herald

In the span of a month two fromer Hurricanes coaches have been given the pink slip and are out of a head coaching job.  Tom Rowe was fired in September as the head coach of the Kontinental Hockey League's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and Peter Laviolette was fired from his coaching job yesterday after just three games into Philadelphia's season.

In the case of Tom Rowe he helped bring back pride to the Yaroslavl area after the majority of the Lokomotiv team was killed in a plane crash back in September of 2011.  He became their head coach last season and with a brand new team he coached them to a fourth place finish in the Western Conference and a playoff berth (they lost in the first round 4 games to 2 to Severstal Cherepovets).  This season he was let go after four defeats in five games.  His dismissal that early in the KHL season is not a surprise though because the owners will do whatever it takes to have a winning team.  Last year, there was a surprise coaching dismissal when Milos Riha was fired from SKA St. Petersburg while the team was in first place and winning (the owners cited a need for a better playing atmosphere as the reason for the firing) so any dismissal in the KHL after that is never a surprise to anyone.

With Laviolette's dismissal though, that was indeed a surprise.  His tenure lasted three games into the new NHL season.  His firing was the fast firing into a season of ever in the NHL (a couple of coaches, including Denis Savard and Ivan Hlinka, have been fired after 4 games).  His record with the Flyers for the five seasons he was with them was 145-98-29 during the regular season and 23-22 for the playoffs.  You would think that a coach with that record starting off with a three game slump would still receive some faith from his general manager, but I guess that was just not the case.  Based on the posts I have seen on NHL.com and even some memes generated on NHL Memes it seems that a lot of the blame is on Paul Holmgrem, the Flyer's general manager, and not on Laviolette.

Laviolette can only do what he can with the players the GM gives him and it can be seen that the players Holmgrem has traded away have fared far better elsewhere than with the Flyers in terms of silverware and other accolades (those players still played great for the Flyers, too).  Holmgrem's player moves include sending Mike Richards to the Los Angeles, Jeff Carter and Sergei Bobrovsky to Columbus, and James van Riemsdyk to the Toronto.  Since their moves Carter has joined up with Richards in Los Angeles where they won a Stanley Cup in 2012, Bobrovsky won the Vezina Trophy last season, and JVR has become a pivotal player for the Maple Leafs.  These are players that could have kept the Flyers as perennial Stanley Cup hopefuls, but were seen as indispensable to Holmgrem (though the trades of Carter and Richards were supposedly due to some partying issues as well).  It's hard to keep a team going strong when you start to get rid of some of its important core players. 

So where will Tom Rowe and Peter Laviolette end up?  Knowing the Hurricanes, if Muller's team ends up slumping there could be a chance that Laviolette will come back to the team.  He already does have one definite coaching job in the future working with Dan Bylsma in Sochi for the US Olympic hockey team.  But, what about Tom Rowe?  For that I do not know where he will end up.  He definitely has the head coaching pedigree now for any team in the AHL and NHL level to want, but the same goes for any elite league team in Europe.  I would not be surprised if he stays in Europe to coach.  Either way, these are definitely two people that will not be going away from the coaching spotlight anytime soon.