Vancouver Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau pauses during a news conference after his final game as coach in Vancouver on Jan. 21.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
One of the default assumptions in following professional sports is that people working at the highest levels in it know what they’re doing. They may not always get it right, but they do what they do because they’re smarter than the average bear.
The hundred-year journey to fire Bruce Boudreau is here to tell you different.
After two seasons and a bit as head coach, Boudreau was clipped by the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday.
This should have been simple. The Canucks weren’t great when Boudreau inherited them, and they’ve since gotten worse. His job is to produce results. He’s failed at it. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about firing a guy in that position. It’s a two-day story. Three, max.
The small wrinkle is Boudreau’s personality. Unusually for someone who works in hockey, he has one.
It’s more than being garrulous and quippy. Everything Boudreau says and does is adorable. The guy could punch you in the face, and you’d still want to give him a squeeze.
Firing a guy like that is tricky. You don’t want people to start feeling sorry for him. You certainly should avoid making him suffer in public.
To avoid any potential for mishap, you want this dirty business handled quickly. The first anyone should hear of it is via a news release after it’s already happened. The tone should be mournful. Boudreau’s complicity ought to be secured with an exit package. Only nice things should be said by all involved.
It’s not hard. Just avoid disasters.
So the Canucks decided to turn Boudreau’s exit into the Krakatoa of human-resource management.
Boudreau was already in trouble before the season started. Everyone knew that. But no one in charge said anything. Saying something would be the worst thing for all involved.
In November, club president Jim Rutherford went on the radio to lament the team’s “structure.” He said the word so often you half-believed he’d taken up transcendental meditation.
Since structure=coach, people assumed Boudreau would be fired shortly. He wasn’t.
That assumption, abetted by a million leaks sprung in the Vancouver front office, curdled into certainty. It was just a matter of time. Then months passed.
By last week Boudreau still hadn’t been fired, but Rutherford was back at it. He did one of those news conferences people remember later as the commencement of hostilities.
Rutherford: “Bruce is a friend. I really like Bruce and he’s done good work here, but …”
There’s a few ways a person can go after saying something like that: “ … I’ve been seeing his ex-girlfriend for a while now” or “ … he should have known better than to lend me money.”
Rutherford’s choice? “ … he’s done good work here, but this is what we review all the time and try to make a decision. All I can say is Bruce is our coach right now.”
“Right now?” Seriously? That’s how you’re going to play it?
You might as well just bring guy out on the podium, kiss him on the lips and say, “I know it was you, Fredo.”
One supposes Rutherford wanted to be forthright, but if you’re going to do it that way then you have to act. Don’t bring the guy back to live in your boat house. Don’t let him go fishing with your kids. You’ve already decided to get rid of him. Just put him out of his misery.
The Canucks brought Boudreau back to the boat house. They kept letting him go fishing with the kids.
Rutherford’s ruthlessness turned the fans into insurrectionists. If he’d fired Boudreau back in November, most people would have agreed with him. But stretching it out this way turned a failed coach into the hero of the story.
One of the rules of a good sports firing is that everyone should agree in the end that the guy had to go. The less people like him, the easier that is.
The Canucks made sure everyone liked Boudreau even more. The players were out there every day telling people how great he is and how much they were going to miss him.
While the Canucks dragged things out interminably, Boudreau became funnier and more charming. His media availabilities turned into an endless wake. He was the talking corpse.
Is it inherent goodness or remarkable savvy that has determined the way Boudreau handled himself these past few days? Either way, it works. The Canucks ought to immediately rehire him as an image consultant.
By Saturday, Boudreau had fully embraced the wistfulness of his situation. That night, Jeff Marek reported on live TV that Boudreau was being replaced by Rick Tocchet. Boudreau was still coaching.
The home fans chanted his name at the end of another loss. Boudreau wept on the bench.
Afterward, he choked up again: “When you’ve been in it for almost 50 years, I mean, the majority of your life. If it’s the end, it’s … y’know …”
Making a 68-year-old hockey lifer tearfully confront his mortality in public so that you have the entire weekend to book a room for the news conference is not a crime that I know of. But maybe it should be.
The Canucks finally fired Boudreau on Sunday morning. By early afternoon, Tocchet was unveiled as the team’s new coach. Rutherford tried apologizing, saying he’d been “too honest” in interviews. Great idea. That’ll fix it.
You fire a coach to purge the organization of its bad mojo. Afterward, people should have the sense of fresh starts and new hope.
If that’s the bar, Canucks management has just undertaken the worst firing in recent sports history. The organization, top to bottom, comes out of this looking ridiculous.
In sports, you can be clueless and you can be cruel, but you can’t be both.
Through all of this, the Canucks lost sight of a fundamental truth. That the sports business isn’t about winning, it’s about creating a product that people like enough to pay for.
A month ago, the Canucks weren’t all that likeable. Then Boudreau went on his endless farewell tour. Now you’d have to say there is at least one likeable thing about the team. It’s the guy Vancouver just fired.
NEW YORK – Toronto Blue Jays reliever Chad Green and Canadian slugger Tyler O’Neill of the Boston Red Sox were named finalists for the Major League Baseball Players’ Association’s American League comeback player award on Monday.
Chicago White Sox left-hander Garrett Crochet was the other nominee.
New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. were named player of the year finalists.
The award winners, selected via player voting, will be named Saturday before Game 2 of the World Series.
Green, who missed most of the 2022 and ’23 seasons after undergoing Tommy John surgery, was a high-leverage option for the Blue Jays this past season and filled in at closer over the second half of the campaign.
The right-hander converted his first 16 save opportunities and finished the year with a 4-6 record, 17 saves and a 3.21 earned-run average over 53 appearances.
O’Neill, a native of Burnaby, B.C., also endured back-to-back injury-plagued seasons in ’22 and ’23.
After being traded to the Red Sox in the off-season, O’Neill set an MLB record by hitting a homer in his fifth straight Opening Day. He finished with 31 homers on the year and had an OPS of .847.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
NEW YORK – Florida Panthers centre Sam Reinhart was named NHL first star of the week on Monday after leading all players with nine points over four games last week.
Reinhart had four goals, five assists and a plus-seven rating to help the Stanley Cup champions post a 3-0-1 record on the week and move into first place in the Atlantic Division.
New York Rangers left-winger Artemi Panarin took the second star and Minnesota Wild goaltenderFilip Gustavsson was the third star.
Panarin had eight points (4-4) over three games.
Gustavsson became the 15th goalie in NHL history to score a goal and had a 1.00 goals-against average and .962 save percentage over a pair of victories.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Deshaun Watson won’t finish the season as Cleveland’s starting quarterback for the second straight year.
He’s injured again, and the Browns have new problems.
Watson ruptured his right Achilles tendon in the first half of Sunday’s loss to Cincinnati, collapsing as he began to run and leading some Browns fans to cheer while the divisive QB laid on the ground writhing in pain.
The team feared Watson’s year was over and tests done Monday confirmed the rupture. The Browns said Watson will have surgery and miss the rest of the season but “a full recovery is expected.”
It’s the second significant injury in two seasons for Watson, who broke the glenoid (socket) bone in his throwing shoulder last year after just six starts.
The 29-year-old went down Sunday without being touched on a draw play late in the first half. His right leg buckled and Watson crumpled to the turf. TV replays showed his calf rippling, consistent with an Achilles injury.
He immediately put his hands on his helmet, clearly aware of the severity of an injury similar to the one Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers sustained last year.
As he was being assisted by the team’s medical staff and backup Dorian Thompson-Robinson grabbed a ball to begin warming up, there was some derisive cheers and boos from the stands in Huntington Bank Field.
Cleveland fans have been split over Watson, who has been accused of being sexually inappropriate with women.
The reaction didn’t sit well with several Watson’s teammates, including star end Myles Garrett, the NFL’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year, who was appalled by the fans’ behavior.
“We should be ashamed of ourselves as Browns and as fans to boo anyone and their downfall. To be season-altering, career-altering injury,” Garrett said. “Man’s not perfect. He doesn’t need to be. None of us are expected to be perfect. Can’t judge him for what he does off the field or on the field because I can’t throw stones for my glass house.
“Ultimately everyone’s human and they’re disappointed just like we are, but we have to be better than that as people. There’s levels to this. At the end of the day, it’s just a game and you don’t boo anybody being injured and you don’t celebrate anyone’s downfall.”
Backup quarterback Jameis Winston also admonished the uncomfortable celebration.
“I am very upset with the reaction to a man that has had the world against him for the past four years, and he put his body and life on the line for this city every single day,” he said. “The way I was raised, I will never pull on a man when he’s down, but I will be the person to lift him up.
“I know you love this game. When I first got here, I knew these were some amazing fans, but Deshaun was treated badly and now he has to overcome another obstacle. So I’m going to support him, I’m going to lift him up and I’m going to be there for him.”
The injury is yet another twist in Watson’s tumultuous time with the Browns.
Cleveland traded three first-round draft picks and five overall to Houston in 2022 to get him, with owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam approving the team giving Watson a fully guaranteed, five-year $230 million contract.
With a solid roster, the Browns were desperate to find a QB who could help them compete against the top AFC teams.
The Browns had moved on from Baker Mayfield despite drafting him No. 1 overall in 2018 and making the playoffs two seasons later.
But Watson has not played up to expectations — fans have been pushing for him to be benched this season — and Cleveland’s move to get him has been labeled an abject failure with the team still on the hook to pay him $46 million in each of the next two seasons.
Watson’s arrival in Cleveland also came amid accusations by more than two dozen women of sexual assault and harassment during massage therapy sessions while he played for the Texans. Two grand juries declined to indict him and he has settled civil lawsuits in all but one of the cases.
Watson was suspended by the NFL for his first 11 games and fined $5 million for violating the league’s personal conduct policy before he took his first snap with the Browns. The long layoff — he sat out the 2021 season in a contract dispute — led to struggles once he got on the field, and Watson made just six starts last season before hurting his shoulder.
Cleveland signed veteran Joe Flacco, who went 4-1 as a starter and led the Browns to the playoffs.
Before Watson got hurt this year, he didn’t play much better. He was one of the league’s lowest-rated passers for a Cleveland team that hasn’t scored 20 points in a game and is back in search of a franchise QB.
