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Canucks firing of coach Bruce Boudreau is the Krakatoa of human-resource management

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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.

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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.

 

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Canucks place goalie Thatcher Demko on long-term injured list – CBC.ca

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The Vancouver Canucks have placed all-star goalie Thatcher Demko on the long-term injured reserve list retroactively.

“It’s just cap related,” coach Rick Tocchet said after practice Wednesday. “We get some cap relief, that’s all it is.” 

The 28-year-old netminder has been considered week to week since being sidelined with a lower-body injury midway through Vancouver’s 5-0 win over the Winnipeg Jets on March 9.

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That injury designation hasn’t changed, Tocchet said.

Demko boasts a 34-18-2 record this season, with a .917 save percentage, a 2.47 goals-against average and five shutouts.

Casey DeSmith has taken over the starting job for Vancouver, going 3-2-1 since Demko’s injury. He has a .899 save percentage on the season with a 2.73 goals-against average and one shutout. 

The earliest Demko could be back in the Canucks’ lineup is April 6 against the Kings in Los Angeles.

He’s expected to be a key piece as Vancouver (45-19-8) prepares for its first playoff appearance since the COVID-shortened 2019-20 campaign. 

Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin also announced Wednesday that the club has called up forward Arshdeep Bains from the Abbotsford Canucks of the American Hockey League. 

“I’d like to see where [Bains is] at,” Tocchet said, noting he isn’t sure whether the 23-year-old winger will slot into the lineup when the Canucks host the Dallas Stars on Thursday. 

WATCH | Bains makes NHL debut

Surrey, B.C.’s Arshdeep Bains makes Canucks debut

1 month ago

Duration 2:20

Arshdeep Bains from Surrey, B.C., has made his NHL debut with the Vancouver Canucks Tuesday night against the Colorado Avalanche. As CBC’s Joel Ballard reports, it’s been a hard-fought journey for the hometown kid to the big leagues.

Bains played five games for the NHL team in February before being sent back to Abbotsford. 

“He went down, he’s done a couple of things that we like, and he’s got some speed,” Tocchet said. 

Vancouver may get another forward back in the lineup Thursday. 

Dakota Joshua practised in a full-contact jersey on Wednesday for the first time since suffering an upper-body injury in Vancouver’s 4-2 win over the Blackhawks in Chicago on Feb. 13. 

The physical winger, who’s set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, has a career-high 26 points (13 goals, 13 assists) this season.

Sitting out injured “hasn’t been fun,” Joshua said.

“It feels like forever,” he said. “But at this point, that’s behind me and I’m moving forward.”

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Senators score 5 in 1st, cruise past Sabres – NHL.com

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“I thought that we were ready to go,” Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. “We got some pucks at the net, we got people at the net. Took advantage of our opportunities and, I think, built a nice lead. And then I thought, in the third period, we continued again. Our goaltending was good. Made some key saves. But I thought we shut them down in the third period good.”

Shane Pinto had a goal and three assists, and Brady Tkachuk, Boris Katchouk, Jakob Chychrun and Drake Batherson each had a goal and an assist for the Senators (31-36-4), who have won three in a row. Korpisalo made 34 saves.

“If you want to win, you need balance,” Pinto said. “And we had that tonight and it’s going to be big for the back-to-back tomorrow (against the Chicago Blackhawks) to have that same thing. So, going to need all the guys on board.”

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JJ Peterka and Connor Clifton scored for the Sabres (34-34-5), who have lost four of six. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen allowed four goals on nine shots before he was replaced by Devon Levi, who made 31 saves in relief.

“We wanted, I guess, to play as individuals,” Clifton said. “I’m disappointed we let ‘Upie’ down, he’s the heart and soul of this team. He’s kept us in so many games, and just to not show up and play that careless style, give them freebies all over the place. … Yeah, obviously, the first 20 really dictated the rest of the game.”

Artem Zub gave Ottawa a 1-0 lead at 2:37 of the first period. He stuffed in a loose puck on the goal line after Katchouk’s shot was redirected by Mark Kastelic between Luukkonen’s pads.

Katchouk made it 2-0 at 4:56, tipping Parker Kelly’s shot from the top of the right face-off circle past Luukkonen.

“It’s keeping the consistency with good effort, right habits,” Katchouk said. “The small things matter so much in this game. And obviously, it worked out tonight with the tip. But kudos to my linemates. ‘Kels’ and ‘Kassy,’ they worked hard to get the puck as well. Those two battle hard every night as well. We feed off each other, and it’s good to play with them.”

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Vasilevskiy stops 23 as surging Lightning beat Bruins – Sportsnet.ca

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