From FOX:
Former NHL star Theo Fleury says he was sexually abused by a junior hockey coach.
Fleury’s account is detailed in an autobiography called “Playing With Fire.” The book is to be released next week. Excerpts appeared online.
The former Calgary Flames forward accuses Graham James of abuse. James was jailed in 1997 after admitting to sexually abusing two players on his junior hockey team — one being ex-NHL player Sheldon Kennedy. James could not immediately be reached for comment.
Read more. Both Kennedy and Fleury went on to have substance abuse problems. On the ice, Kennedy’s career never took off, but Fleury went on to have a great NHL career including Stanley Cup Championships and of course, this legendary celebration that we see in highlight reels to this day:
Say what you want about Wayne Gretzky’s tenure as coach, turns out he was #1 as a coach as well, sort of:
Not bad at all. Read more.
I still don’t understand why Wayne wanted to jump headfirst into the pressure cooker that is a head coaching job in the NHL. Especially with a team as underachieving as the Coyotes? Why not take some other head office job, even starting as a GM would have been a smarter move? Anyways, it should be interesting to see where he ends up now that he’s done the Team Canada thing and done the head coaching thing. Read more on his exit below from TheSportingNews.com:
Wayne Gretzky has stepped down as head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes, he announced Thursday.
“This was a difficult decision that I’ve thought long and hard about,” Gretzky said in a statement. “We all hoped there would be a resolution earlier this month to the Coyotes ownership situation, but the decision is taking longer than expected. Since both remaining bidders have made it clear that I don’t fit into their future plans, I approached General Manger Don Maloney and suggested he begin looking for someone to replace me as coach. Don has worked hard and explored many options. I think he has made an excellent choice, and so now it’s time for me to step aside.”
The team’s ownership situation continues to be unresolved.
Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie said Wednesday that he won’t move the team to Canada this season even if he wins the U.S. Bankruptcy Court fight and is given the green light to buy the team.Balsillie’s attorneys said in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Phoenix on Wednesday that they have ditched plans to move the team to Hamilton, Ont., this season, should Judge Redfield T. Baum rule in Balsillie’s favor.
The rest of Gretzky’s statement reads:
“The Coyotes scouting staff has put together a great group of young and talented players who are going to improve tremendously over the next few years,” continued Gretzky. “I’m proud of the team we’ve assembled, the organization with which I’ve been associated and the thousands of dedicated fans who have never wavered in their support of this young team. I’m confident that the best is yet to come for hockey in Phoenix.
“I want to thank every staff member of the Phoenix Coyotes, past and present. It was a real pleasure to work with each and every one of you. I’ve always said that Phoenix is a great sports city and deserves nothing but the best. I still believe that. As a young boy, I learned to play hockey in Southern Ontario, and I know what great fans they have there. It’s my hope they too will have an NHL franchise in the not too distant future.
“I often said it was the greatest honor and privilege I could imagine to be able to play in the National Hockey League. I feel the same way about being an NHL coach. I’ve loved the four years I spent coaching the Coyotes. Not a day went by when I took it for granted, and I will miss the competition of the NHL dearly. It was an honor to hold the position, and I will always consider myself especially fortunate to have had this opportunity.”
Gretzky, who is due to make $8.5 million this season, coached the Coyotes from 555-5555, finishing with a 143-161-24 record, and the team missed the playoffs in all four seasons.
Gretzky, 48, also owns a small piece of the franchise.
The Coyotes had no immediate word on a replacement. Associate coach Ulf Samuelsson had been serving as interim head coach during the preseason, and the team this week hired former NHL head coach Dave King as an assistant.
Wow, this is unexpected… Of all the people mentioned as potential candidates for the Habs’ new coach I don’t think I heard Jacques Martin’s name once? In any case, he is an accomplished coach with actual NHL coaching experience, so its encouraging. Read more from TSN.ca:
The Montreal Canadiens will hold a news conference this afternoon at 2pm et when the club will introduce Jacques Martin as their new head coach.
Montreal will be Martin’s third NHL stop as head coach after working for the Ottawa Senators and holding the head coach and general manager positions for the Florida Panthers.
Martin won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top coach in 1998-99 after guiding the Ottawa Senators to a 44-23-15 record in the regular season. The Senators were swept in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by the Buffalo Sabres. He has a career record of 517-406-119.
The Canadiens were in the market for a new coach after the club fired Guy Carbonneau in March. General Manager Bob Gainey took over as interim head coach and guided the team to an eighth-place finish and a first-round exit at the hands of the Boston Bruins.
The 2008-09 season marked the Canadiens’ 100th anniversary and while they started well, it has to be considered a disappointment for the franchise. The team won seven of their first nine games in October. With the great beginning came talk of capturing a Stanley Cup to cap the Centennial season, but off-ice scandals, rumblings of in-fighting, goaltending issues and the coaching change all took a major toll on the team.
Montreal is facing a summer of questions, with several of the clubs bigger names - captain Saku Koivu, Alex Kovalev and Mike Komisarek - among 10 regulars heading toward unrestricted free agency on July 1.
Last week, a Russian newspaper even reported the team offered Kovalev a new deal that would include being named captain and were prepared to let Koivu walk away.
With so many players potentially moving on, the duo of Martin and Gainey will have much to do when re-working the roster before the start of the 2009-10 season.
From Bloomberg.com:
April 1 (Bloomberg) — John Calipari was hired to restore the University of Kentucky’s basketball program, agreeing on an eight-year, $31.65 million contract that makes him the sport’s highest-paid college coach in history.
Calipari, who spent the past nine seasons at the University of Memphis, was introduced as Kentucky’s 22nd head coach at a televised news conference today in Lexington.
Calipari, 50, takes over a Kentucky program that ranks first all-time with 1,988 victories and is second to UCLA with seven national championships. He replaces Billy Gillispie, who was fired March 28 after a season in which the Wildcats lost 14 games and missed the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament for the first time since 1991.
“This is a dream I had since I brought my (University of Massachusetts) team down here in 1992,” Calipari said. “I could not believe the environment. At that point I said, ‘I’d love to coach there someday.’”
Calipari leaves Memphis with four years left on a contract that was paying him $2.35 million annually. Kentucky paid Memphis $200,000 to buy out the contract.
Calipari surpasses Florida’s Billy Donovan as the nation’s top-paid college basketball coach. Donovan received a deal that’s worth about $3.5 million a year after winning back-to- back national titles in 2006-07.
Paying a Premium
“In the marketplace we operate in, to be the premium basketball program in America, you want the best coach and you must pay a premium price,” Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart said. “We don’t mind doing that because we think it’s that important. If it’s done correctly, the investment in the coach will yield results immediately.”
Barnhart announced the financial details of Calipari’s new contract and said the base salary would be $400,000 a year, with the rest of the money coming from the school’s media and television rights.
Calipari had a 252-69 record at Memphis and helped build the school into a championship contender. The Tigers won at least 30 games each of the past four years and reached the title game of the 2008 NCAA tournament, losing to Kansas in overtime.
“This decision for me was extremely hard,” Calipari said. “It wasn’t hard coming here, it was leaving Memphis and the support that my family and I received there over the years. To walk away from that was difficult, but this is heady stuff.”
While Memphis lost three starters from last year’s runner- up team, the Tigers went 33-4 this season and reached the round of 16 at the NCAA tournament. Memphis is the only school in the nation to receive a No. 1 or No. 2 tournament seed each of the last four years.
Kentucky’s Last Title
Kentucky has won two NCAA tournament games over that span and hasn’t advanced past the second round since 2005. The Wildcats won their most recent championship in 1998 under Tubby Smith, two years after winning the title with Rick Pitino as coach.
Pitino is now at the University of Louisville, about 75 miles (120.7 kilometers) from Kentucky’s campus in Lexington. Louisville this season was the top-seeded team in the NCAA tournament.
“I do not walk on water, I do not have a magic wand,” Calipari said. “I told Mitch and I told (Kentucky President Lee) Todd, ‘If you want something to happen in a year, do not hire me.’ That’s not how I do things. But when we get it right, you notice we’re No. 1 in the country, we’re No. 1 seeds and we’re playing in Final Fours.”
Calipari has a 445-140 record as a college coach, having also spent eight seasons at the University of Massachusetts from 1988 to 1996. The Minutemen reached the Final Four in his final season, though the school was stripped of the achievement after Marcus Camby admitted he violated NCAA rules by receiving gifts from a sports agent.
Calipari then left to coach in the National Basketball Association, where he had a 72-112 record with the New Jersey Nets before getting fired in 1999. He returned to the collegiate ranks with Memphis in 2000 and ended the school’s six-year NCAA tournament drought in his third season.
Some members of the French media in Montreal are losing their marbles because there is a chance that the next coach will be an Anglophone.
Since the Canadiens fired both GM Serge Savard and coach Jacques Demers, they have hired inexperienced [French] coach after inexperienced [French] coach:
- Mario Tremblay,
- Alain Vigneault,
- Michel Therrien,
- Claude Julien and most recently,
- Guy Carbonneau
Truth is, all of these men have proved to be very good coaches, with Julien of note turning the Boston Bruins around and leading them to a first place ranking in the Eastern conference. Vigneault is no slouch either; he is running the Vancouver Canucks, who remain a dark horse to hoist Stanley Cup this year. Therrien was recently fired by the Pittsburgh Penguins but here is a man who took his team to the Stanley Cup finals last year. Carbonneau will be coaching in Dallas in the next year or two. Tremblay, who left the organization in disarray and has the dubious distinction of having run Patrick Roy out of town, has gone on to serve as an assistant in Minnesota to Jacques Lemaire.
What is crazy, frankly, is that factions in the local media are actually suggesting that Mario Tremblay could make a return behind the Canadiens bench. I like to give people a second chance, but people, Mario Tremblay is welcome to the Bell Centre anytime as a member of the Minnesota Wild or another opposing team. He’s also more than welcome as a former hockey player who won 5 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens (the four-peat in the late 1970s and the one in 1985-86) but he should never be allowed to stand behind the home team’s bench.
He not only ran out Patrick Roy out of town, but he also sent Donald Brashear packing, who remains in the league, serving justice to opposing players on the ice. What has been an oft-mentioned criticism of the team? A lack of character, and toughness. It’s not like his “different philosophy” led those players to sign elsewhere; he was a disaster who literally ran players out of town, forcing an equally inexperienced GM in Rejean Houle to get little to nothing in return.
You know who I think is tough and has character? Saku Koivu. The Finnish-born player who was drafted 21st overall in 1993 by the Habs returned from cancer, numerous injuries and is now the Canadiens’ longest serving captain, surpassing the great Jean Beliveau. Koivu’s sin, frankly, is that he has never won a Stanley Cup. The French media blame Koivu for this, overlooking the fact that the Habs have been an organization in disarray, coached by largely inexperienced (at the NHL level) rookie coaches, woeful drafting and abysmal trades (Patrick Roy to Avalanche, John Leclair to Flyers, how long do you have?)
This week, when Habs GM Bob Gainey fired Guy Carbonneau, some members of the French Media were quick to point out that Carbo was the latest coach to be fired by Koivu, and that never in the league’s history has a captain gone through so many coaches.
Well, I had only two words for them?
Ray Bourque. Ray Bourque went through the following coaches in Boston from 1979-80 until 1999-2000 (he got traded to the Colorado Avalanche in that year):
Bourque was captain from:
- Wayne Cashman, 1977–83
- Terry O’Reilly, 1983–85
- Ray Bourque & Rick Middleton, 1985–88 (co-captains)
- Ray Bourque, 1988–2000
So Bourque was captain from 1985 to 2000, a whopping fifteen years, and the Bruins did not win the Cup either.
But Bourque is a francophone, and the French media won’t dare level the same accusation at him… but Koivu - whose greatest sin was not learning French - he is to blame for the revolving door of rookie and inexperienced coaches in Montreal.
What these members of the French media fail to realize, sadly, is that they are the main reason why the top French speaking players don’t come to Montreal.
- Daniel Briere was offered more money from Montreal but took less to go to Philadelphia. The media says it’s because the Flyers have a better shot of winning the Cup, I don’t buy that. The Flyers beat the Habs in the second round, but add Briere to Montreal’s side and there was a good chance that Montreal would have advanced that series.
- Vincent Lecavalier resigned with the Tampa Bay Lightning even though he was outright unhappy in Florida.
The list goes on and on. If the French media will be looking at assessing why Montreal has become an unsaviory destination for French speaking players and a graveyard for French speaking coaches, they have only themselves to blame.
Yesterday we talked a bit about the potential replacements to coach the Montreal Canadiens. We like Bob Hartley, though the more we think about it, the more we think AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs coach Don Lever might be getting a crack at it through the back door, but TheTeam990’s Tony Marinaro just threw out the following suggestions
2009-10 Coach Lineup?
Jacques Lemaire - coach
Patrick Roy - goalie coach
Larry Robinson - defensemen coach
Don Lever - forwards coach
Fantasy, I think, but still, fans can dream.
Bob Gainey’s Second Coming as Coach
Bob Gainey opens his second stint as head coach of the Montreal Canadiens after firing Guy Carbonneau, TSN points out that Carbo’s coaching record with Montreal was a combined 124-83-23. That’s not too shabby at all.
Why Guy Carbonneau Was Fired
Montreal missed the playoffs in Carbo’s first season, and last year were eliminated in five games by the Philadelphia Flyers in the second round. He becomes the seventh NHL head coach to be fired this season. Worth noting the first coach fired this year, Barry Melrose of the Tampa Bay Lightning was basically kyboshed due to being unpopular with his players (bad line juggling, not playing star players enough). The storyline in Montreal was not too different.
From HabsInsideOut:
Renaud Lavoie of RDS, who is tight with Steve Bégin, said the former Canadien told him the players had been waiting for the axe to fall on their coach.
Luc Gelinas reported – and the GM acknowledged – several players complained to Gainey about Carbonneau’s coaching methods and communications failings.
Gelinas was also told, off the record, that playing Glen Metropolit in a 5-on-3 in Atlanta left the players dumbfounded.
This wasn’t the first time Carbo’s acted a bit cluelessly with his personnel choice. He used fourth liners Greg Stewart and Tom Kostopoulous earlier in February when the Canadiens were looking to win the game late in the first game of Alex Kovalev’s two game benching.
Which takes us to L’Affaire Kovalev, which would take us into 6am tomorrow morning, but seemed to suggest something was remiss between Gainey and Carbo. After all, had the Habs won both of those games (or even one) then it could be argued that the problem was the player. For the Habs to lose both (well, lose one in OT shootout) then it indicated that the problem was perhaps the coach.
Is Bob Gainey an Untouchable?
One thing should be certain, in year five of Gainey’s reign, Big Bob should be on the hot seat: he previously took over following the dismissal of Claude Julien during the 2005-06 season. Worth noting that Julien is now in charge of the red-hot (well, not right now, but throughout the year) Boston Bruins. That year, Gainey guided the club to a 23-15-3-0 record after the team went 19-16-6-0 under Julien. The Canadiens lost in the first round of the playoffs that season against the Carolina Hurricanes after going up 2-0 in the series. Sadly for the team, captain Saku Koivu went down in an eye injury and the rest, as they say, is history.
Carbonneau originally replaced Gainey as head coach of the Canadiens on May 5, 2006. He had spent part of the season prior to that as an associate coach with the Habs, and was hired to Gainey’s staff with the intention that he would become head coach in time for the 2006-07 season. The way Carbo was introduced, as Gainey’s chosen one, was doomed to fail…
There is some precedent here:
New Jersey Devils GM Lou Lamoriello fired coach Robbie Ftorek with eight games left in the 1999-2000 regular season and the team 11 games over .500 and comfortably in a playoff spot. New coach Larry Robinson would lead the team to a Stanley Cup. Lamoriello dipped into that well again with just a week to go in the 2006-07 regular season, canning Claude Julien, who had the Devils atop the Atlantic Division with a 47-24-8 record.
In both cases, something just wasn’t quite right in Lamoriello’s mind. And no one has a better feel for his team than a GM.
But, Montreal is no New Jersey. And let’s face it, Julien is proving everyone wrong, at least now.
July 1 2009: Day of Reckoning
The bigger reason why Gainey is doing this now is that with 11 unrestricted free agents (UFAs) this summer, Gainey needs to know which ones to keep and which ones to let go. But this takes us to the bigger issue, if this summer most of those players leave and the Habs don’t get anything in return, it will prove that despite Gainey’s legendary status as a player, his stint as GM of the Habs was a bust, for we just recently lost Sheldon Souray and Mark Streit as UFAs, both key losses explaining why the Habs powerplay was powerless.
We also lost Michael Ryder, who scored 25, 30 and 30 goals in first three seasons with the Habs, but then fell out of favor with Carbo to only score 14 last year. Today he’s on pace to score 30+ with division rival Boston. Ouch. Oh, the coach coaching him now is former Habs coach Julien.
So if Gainey proves that he has yet to learn from his mistakes as GM, who’s to say that he’s not learned from his mistake of stepping behind the bench as coach, because last time he took the helm was supposed to be the last time, making room for His Chosen One, Guy Carbonneau.
Who Will Replace Guy Carbonneau?
Few expect Gainey to bring a new coach on, though Hamilton Bulldogs coach Don Lever will join the team to talk X’s and O’s. The city is buzzing with these names:
- Patrick Roy: former goalie who won 4 Stanley Cups, 2 with the Habs, but who left under dubious details. The problem is that Roy has been coaching for four years in the junior league, but the Habs need to change their recent history of hiring inexperienced (at the NHL level) coaches (Mario Tremblay, Alain Vigneault, Michel Therrien, Claude Julien and Guy Carbonneau all were rookie coaches in the NHL, but all went on to enjoy varying degrees of success elsewhere).
- Bob Hartley: won the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalance, native of Hawkesbury so he is bilingual, a requisitie to coach in Montreal. Of course, if the Habs fizzle and Gainey’s asked to leave, then let’s hope Pierre Lacroix will be given the keys (the Habs won’t fire Gainey, since he does not even report to club President Pierre Boivin - whom I interviewed here. Gainey reports directly to owner George Gillett).
- C’est tout. Expect the next coach to be one of those two guys, unless Don Lever helps lead the team to a Stanley Cup parade, at which point I’m naming my next kid Donlever Karbasfrooshan.
The Montreal Canadiens saw their 4-game winning streak snapped by a horrible 5-1 loss in Buffalo. Honestly, they played really well in the first period and [backup] goalie Carey Price was unlucky on the first couple of goals.
Anyway:
Christopher Higgins knew the Canadiens were in for a tough afternoon.
“I saw Carbo come out with no stick and no gloves, and I knew what we were going to do,” he said.
Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau had his players skate and skate, and then skate some more.
For 28 minutes, the players skated in circles and in straight lines up and down the rink in suburban Duluth.
That’s too funny. What would he have thought had he showed up with a baseball bat?
From TSN.ca:
Sources say the New York Rangers and John Tortorella have an agreement in place that would make him the next head coach of the NHL team, but that the Tampa Bay Lightning have not yet granted him permission to do so.
A current NHL on TSN analyst, Tortorella remains under contract to the Lightning for the balance of this season. In order for him to become head coach of the Rangers, he requires the blessing of the Lightning. Sources also tell TSN that the blessing has yet to be granted, however the NHL’s head office is now involved in an attempt to resolve the situation.
Tortorella led the Tampa Bay Lightning to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup title in the 2003-04 season as the Bolts defeated the Calgary Flames in seven games. His 239 career wins is second to only Peter Laviolette as the most ever by an American-born NHL coach.
The Boston-born Tortorella began his NHL coaching career as an assistant with the Buffalo Sabres in 1989. He then captured the AHL’s Calder Cup in 1996 as head coach of the Rochester Americans.
Tortorella replaced Steve Ludzik as Tampa Bay’s head coach in 2001. The Lightning reached the playoff four times on Tortorella’s watch, winning the Southeast division twice in the process.
Tortorella was fired by the Lightning after the team missed the playoffs last season. He was immediately scooped up by TSN, joining the NHL on TSN panel.
Stay tuned to TSN.ca for more details as they arrive
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