Golden Knights: Top 3 reasons Gerard Gallant firing was strange
Nothing about the Vegas Golden Knights firing Gerard Gallant made sense. However, three things in particular don’t quite add up.
In case you haven’t heard, the Vegas Golden Knights have decided to move on from head coach Gerard Gallant. Yes, the same Gerard Gallant who took over a bunch of misfits in October of 2017 and had them in the Stanley Cup Final in 2018. The same one who won the Jack Adams in 2018. The same one who helped an injury-plagued team make the playoffs last season.
To say the firing took the hockey world by surprise is an understatement. Everyone’s jaw, mine included, hit the floor when the news came out. Nobody expected the Knights to fire Gallant, especially since there were reports of the two sides discussing an extension just a few months earlier.
The life span of NHL head coaches is painfully short. How short? Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins was hired in December of 2015. I vividly remember the day the Penguins got rid of Mike Johnston and promoted Sullivan.
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Sullivan is the fifth-longest tenured coach in the NHL. John Tortorella, who was hired in October of 2015, is the fourth-longest tenured coach.
But even if you consider the woefully short leash coaches get, seeing Gallant on the open market again is odd. Seeing the man he hated so much, Peter DeBoer, replace him is even weirder.
Sure, the Golden Knights weren’t living up to expectations. But even then, they were still very close to the postseason. And it’s not like Gallant has control over the roster or injuries, both of which have cursed the Golden Knights this season. The Knights are gambling on DeBoer, who wasn’t good enough for the Sharks, one of the worst teams in the NHL.
Something didn’t quite add up about the Knights firing Gallant. Three things in particular stood out to me. I’m going to uncover those pink elephants in the room that everyone seems blissfully unaware of.
1. Why Now?
When coaches are fired, it’s all about timing. The timing of the Golden Knights firing Gallant was extremely peculiar, to say the least. Usually, when a coach is fired during the season, it’s for one of two reasons – they either messed up big time (Jim Montgomery and Bill Peters are two recent examples) or their teams were struggling massively.
Now, I don’t know everything that’s going on with the Golden Knights. But I didn’t hear anything about Gallant that would have suggested he messed up like Montgomery or Peters did. If that was the case, the Golden Knights general manager wouldn’t have gone on the record saying it was performance-based.
While the Knights were struggling, Gallant doesn’t fall into the second category either. Though they were coming off a four-game losing streak, guess what? They’ve gone through those before and Gallant didn’t get fired.
The obvious answer to the question “why now?” is the Knights liked DeBoer. However, I’ve got some more questions if that’s the case. At what point did the Knights realize they wanted DeBoer? Why did it take him over a month to get hired by Vegas if they really liked him?
Perhaps other teams were expressing interest in DeBoer. That would make sense. Does that mean the Knights didn’t really want DeBoer until they realized another team might hire him? It’s safe to say DeBoer and the Knights have a complicated history at best. How did it get to the point that the team was willing to overlook that?
This feels like something that was done as a reactionary move. Maybe that’s why the timing makes no sense.
2. The Wrong Man Got Blamed
If the Golden Knights wanted to blame someone for their shortcomings this season, they shouldn’t have been looking at Gallant. Nope, they should have looked just a tad bit higher on the totem pole. The blame should have fallen at the feet of Kelly McCrimmon and George McPhee. You know, the people who willingly chose to keep Ryan Reaves and Cody Eakin over Nikita Gusev.
For now, they avoid the blame. But you can bet their seats will be scoring hot if DeBoer isn’t the right guy for the job. General managers have a get out of jail free card. They’re the ones who have the authority to fire a coach. A coach can’t fire a GM. That might be the biggest reason Gallant is currently unemployed.
This brings up another question – is loyalty truly dead in the NHL? Gallant did incredible work with the Knights. Nobody expected them to do anything in their first year. Yet Gallant took his expansion team to the Stanley Cup Final. That hasn’t been done since the NHL had a weird conference setup that forced an expansion team to make the Stanley Cup Final.
Maybe there was a bit of a disconnect between Gallant and the front office. Actually, that would explain a lot of things. Why didn’t the acquisitions of Tomas Tatar, Vadim Shipyachov, or Gusev work out? Maybe Gallant was the reason why. But if this was the case, why did they fire him now? Why not earlier?
3. The Knights Weren’t Actually That Bad
Remember what I said earlier – there are two reasons coaches get fired during the season. They either do something incredibly stupid or their teams are bad. We already covered the first part. Gallant, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t do anything incredibly stupid. I’d be shocked if he did, as he seems like a stand-up guy who players love.
Now, let’s address the second part. First of all, the Golden Knights record isn’t that bad. When Gallant got his pink slip on Jan. 15, even though they had just lost their fourth straight game to the Sabres, they had a 24-19-6 record, good for 54 points. The same number of points as the Winnipeg Jets and Vancouver Canucks, who hold the two wild-card spots in the Western Conference.
Even if you look past their record, the Knights had outstanding underlying stats. No matter which of the major metrics you prefer, they were darn good in it. Their struggles can best be summed up by their PDO, or shooting percentage plus save percentage.
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At 5v5, the Golden Knights have the seventh-worst team shooting percentage (7.46%) and seventh-worst team save percentage (91.08%). Their PDO is 0.985, which is the fourth-lowest in the NHL. Gallant created a system that had the Knights dominating possession. It’s not his fault his players couldn’t execute. Nor is it Gallant’s fault that his goaltenders couldn’t get a save.