If you thought you’d stepped back in time when Darryl Sutter was named the head coach of the Calgary Flames this week, you likely weren’t alone. No this is not 2002 repeating itself, but rather the latest installment of head coaching musical chairs at the NHL level.
In spite of the fact that the NHL has changed dramatically over the last 10 years in terms of the on ice product, the same can’t be said for those holding the highest positions in the hockey ops world. Gone are the days of clutching and grabbing, each team having a designated enforcer (or in the Flyers case 3 or 4 in their heyday), and the need to be six feet or taller to earn a roster spot. Today’s players are faster, smaller, and if your feet are as heavy as your hands, there likely isn’t room for you on a modern NHL team.
Yet for the most part, the same coaches who have been patrolling the benches for the last 2-3 decades are still just as involved in the game today, if not more. Don’t get me wrong, Darryl Sutter is a great coach. He’s 17th all time in head coaching wins, boasts a .565 win %, and has 2 cups on his resume. But will he bring anything new to the table (especially given the fact that this is his 2nd go round as head coach of the Calgary Flames)? Hard to say.
The NHL has never had a reputation as being a “forward thinking” organization, or on the cutting edge of progress (see their stance on CTE or the debacle that was the Hockey Diversity Alliance as proof of concept). For the most part, the league seems content to take a Vegas Residency approach to personnel hirings. Replay the “greatest hits” album over and over, and don’t bother hitting the studio to try out anything new.
The issue itself starts at the top. From the owners, to the league office, and the GMs on down, you’d think you were looking at the Augusta National clubhouse circa 1950 when it comes to diversity. General Manager positions by and large have been handed out to former coaches and players (many of which have no practical experience in management at any level). They then hire former coaches and players they worked with to fill out the head coaching positions, who then round out their staff with former coaches and players they worked with as well. And the incestious cycle goes on and on…
Darryl Sutter is only the most recent example of self-perpetuation in the hiring practices of professional hockey. You don’t have to look too hard to discover that Brian Burke, Ron Hextall, Ken Hitchcock, Lindy Ruff and a slew of other execs from the 90’s have been given the keys to NHL organizations recently.
If the accepted definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” then the NHL should have been put on a psychiatric hold years ago.
In the last few years the NFL and NBA have each come under fire for their lack of diversity at the ownership and front office levels. So much so that current and former players are clamouring for the NFL to strengthen the Rooney Rule (established in 2003 to interview a “quota of ethnic minorities for head coach and senior football operations jobs”) as it’s well intentioned effects aren’t turning into tangible results.
The NHL meanwhile, has been able to skate by largely unnoticed because, as the eyeball test will show, it is a predominantly white sport, watched predominantly by white viewers. Where the NFL & NBA are dominated by Black and Latino players, the same can’t be said about hockey. But just because it’s not a headline now, doesn’t make it any less frustrating for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Women or even younger white males who have been toiling away in the minor leagues for years to see the same faces afforded their 3rd, 4th, 5th+ chance at the NHL level.
Hockey seems to act like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another. The typical coaching cycle with an organization seems to follow the pattern of:
- Hire an “old school” veteran coach to get the team on track
- The assistants (i.e. his former teammates) learn from him and assume this style is the way to get a head coaching position
- The old school coach gets fired and is replaced by one of his assistants (essentially an “old school light” version of himself)
- This coach tries some new things to establish his own identity, and when they don’t work he is subsequently fired as well
- Believing that the “new things” that the coach tried were the reasons for the team not succeeding, the organization decides to get back to its roots and hires another old school coach (usually one just fired from another team).
Wash, rinse, repeat.
This then strengthens the falsehood that there’s only one way to win in the NHL and it’s by coaching the same way. The thought of “well that’s how we’ve always done it” actually being a bad thing has yet to cross the league’s mind.
Could you imagine if the world’s leading tech companies operated in a similar manner? Picture the CEO of Netflix canning his VP of Content Acquisition and saying “we need to get back to our roots, I’m bringing in the inventor of VHS cassettes to regain that old school philosophy we’ve been missing around here”. He’d be laughed out of the room!
But that’s exactly what happens time and again every time one of 31 GM or Head Coach spots becomes available at the NHL level. This refusal to adapt with the times is mirrored in the league’’s unwillingness to incorporate analytics into their day to day operations, with several clubs forgoing any kind of full time personnel in that area all together. Personalities like Pierre McGuire and Brian Burke have even gone so far as to lead “anti analytics crusades” in the press recently.
Do they not realize that having that information should be a bare minimum at the highest level of the sport? Just because you see something on paper doesn’t mean you have to instantly incorporate it into your organizational philosophy. If you’re being told 10 things via analytics, maybe try out one or two of them and see what kind of results you get. Elite level sports is a game of inches & seconds. Yet many execs appear to be so stubborn that they believe their way of thinking is infallible and extra information can’t provide an edge in some way shape or form. As a card carrying member of the stubborn individual club, even I’m not afraid to admit that every aspect of my thinking isn’t superior to advanced mathematics 365 days a year.
Every Fortune 500 company uses data in some way shape or form. Whether it’s finding out customer habits to create targeted ads, blockchain, shipping routes or more. Analytics is an everyday thing in every type of business, except the NHL. Evidently the league took to the 2020 “bubble” too literally and believe that modern developments don’t apply to them.
So what’s to be done then? Unfortunately it’s likely going to take something as significant as a forward thinking owner who makes a bold bet on modernizing their hockey ops department winning the Stanley Cup to see any kind of shift in hockey culture. Professional sports are copycat leagues. If they see something working, you can bet it will be an arms race to try to replicate that success the next year for their own teams. Times are changing at a rapid pace, and it’s unfortunate that the NHL isn’t at least feigning an attempt to keep up with them. Then again, sticking its head in the sand and ignoring the data is the definition of “on brand” for the National Hockey League.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @dynessports