Tagged: Philadelphia Flyers
Jeremy Jacobs is an Insult to Hall of Famers
I should be excited for Teemu Selanne, the Finnish Flash. I should be excited for Dave Andreychuk, who scored 640 goals and should have gotten in years ago. I should be excited for Paul Kariya, who is the first Hall of Famer from the University of Maine. I should be excited for Mark Recchi, who won three Stanley Cups with three different teams, and who was the old man mentor on my favorite hockey team ever. I should be excited for Danielle Goyette, because I have cousins named Goyette and maybe they’re related, however distantly. Instead, I’m just annoyed that Jeremy Jacobs is going into the Hockey Hall of Fame, in the “builder” category, along with them.
Jeremy Jacobs is the worst owner of any of the Boston teams. Of the four current ownership groups in town, he is now also the only one in a Hall of Fame. Bruins hockey has always been defined by being good, by being tough, but also by not winning as much as fans want or expect. Since buying the team in 1975, Jacobs made a name for himself pinching pennies and valuing fiscal responsibility over on-ice success.
To be fair, when the NHL got a salary cap, the Bruins spent to it, rebuilt in that system, and won the Stanley Cup in 2011 and reached another Final in 2013. But also to be fair, for decades before the cap, Jacobs under-spent, took Ray Bourque and Cam Neely to salary arbitration, and was the among the driving forces in the NHL’s board of governors who locked out the players three times–even cancelling the 2004-05 season–to demand a salary cap.
The rigidity of the NHL salary cap also ended up being the Bruins’ undoing, and mismanaging it is the reason the B’s went from a President’s Trophy winning team in 2014 to out of the playoff picture the next two years. Jacobs put the well being of his fellow millionaire and billionaire owners ahead of the devoted fan base that went to his games and watched his team on TV. A seven year run after the rules changed in the favor of the owners should not undo the thirty years of frustration that led up to that era.
I was just thinking about Jacobs and the frustration he put Bruins fans through this weekend when I was working on my David Ortiz column. I thought a lot about life was like before Ortiz and Tom Brady, before winning in Boston was the norm. The lowest points came from the Celtics and Bruins, the teams with the more recent traditions of winning who had both hit low points in the mid and late 1990s. For the Celtics, Rick Pitino’s “not walking through that door” moment in 2000 was the perfect illustration of how far they had fallen. For the Bruins is was the rally in Boston in the summer of 2001 for Stanley Cup champion and fan favorite Ray Bourque… of the Colorado Avalanche. The rally was attended by thousands, paying respect for the Bruins’ former captain, but also serving as a giant middle finger to the Bruins organization by a disenfranchised region of passionate hockey fans.
In the spring of 2010, I watched the Bruins blow a 3-0 lead in a Game 7, and in doing so blew a 3-0 series lead to the Philadelphia Flyers in my friend Mark’s dorm room. For a long time, I was not convinced I would ever have a more joyful professional hockey watching experience than the night Ray Bourque raised the Cup with the Avs, and nights like that were why. The team, for all its endearing on-ice qualities, was run by a cheap old billionaire who was never going to change as long as fans kept going. There was no reason for the team to extend themselves. Hockey fans are loyal to a fault. There are few things better than watching a hockey game in the arena, and nothing better than playoff hockey anywhere. Even when things looked bleakest, Bruins fans knew deep down they could not quit forever.
Alvy Singer, Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall said “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” He attributed the quote to Groucho Marx and Sigmund Freud, but the sentiment is universal, or at the very least incredibly resonant within my own brain. If I were an NHL player, a Bruin or otherwise, after decades of lockouts and business as usual, I would never want to be in a Hall of Fame that would have someone like Jeremy Jacobs as an inductee. I know it’s hyperbolic, and the Hockey Hall of Fame is obviously a huge honor for any player, but there’s something particularly wrong about spending more time thinking about Jeremy Jacobs on the day of the Hall of Fame announcement than I have been about the great players who were also inducted today.
What’s Going on in New Jersey?
With the head scratching news that the New Jersey Devils have hired two co-head coaches, or something like that, in the form of Scott Stevens and Adam Oates, this headline is what I’ve been asking myself all day. Usually the Jets are the team in the Garden State that leaves us with more questions than answers when it comes to personnel moves (and as a Patriots fan, I am forever thankful for their ineptitude), but this time it’s the Devils, a hockey club that has won three Stanley Cups in my lifetime, second only behind the Detroit Red Wings in that duration, that has everyone confused. This could be another stroke of brilliance for longtime Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello, or it could mean the beginning of the end. Nothing lasts forever, not even Martin Brodeur’s career between the New Jersey pipes, and maybe not even the Lamoriello era in New Jersey.
Stevens and Oates are replacing Peter DeBoer, who was hired in 2011 as the successor to Jacques Lemaire, who retired after his third stint with New Jersey, but let the team to its first Stanley Cup championship in 1995. In DeBoer’s first season, he led the Devils to the Stanley Cup Finals, defeating the hated rival New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference Finals. They caught lightning in a bottle, with Martin Brodeur turning the clocks back in a goalie showdown for the ages against New York’s Henrik Lundqvist. The magic ran out in the Finals against the Los Angeles Kings, however, as young American goaltender Jonathan Quick carried the eighth best team from the West to its first ever Stanley Cup.
Devils GM and Team President Lou Lamoriello.
After that, things went south for New Jersey, losing captain Zach Parise in free agency to the Minnesota Wild in the lockout-extended 2012 offseason, losing sniper Ilya Kovalchuk (who had been under contract for the next decade) to the temptation to play professional hockey in his native Russia, and having to part ways with Brodeur, who was so synonymous with the New Jersey Devils uniform, that his jersey appears on an episode of Seinfeld from 20 years ago (Brodeur now plays for the St. Louis Blues, and this just looks weird after seeing him in red and black for so long). Sure, they signed an all time great like Jaromir Jagr, and he is still able to produce at a high level at the age of 42, but the Devils have struggled in close games, and have been dreadful in shootouts ever since losing Kovalchuk (who was in Russia’s shortened shootout rotation against T.J. Oshie and Team USA in the 2014 Olympics). Shootout losses cost New Jersey a shot at the playoffs in what was a wide-open Eastern Conference last season, and they were off to another bad start this year.
Scott Stevens and Adam Oates have both been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Stevens was the fifth overall pick, selected by the Washington Capitals, in 1982, and was the Devils’ captain for their Stanley Cup championships in 1995, 2000, and 2003, and his #4 now resides in the rafters of Prudential Center. He is one of the elite defensive defensemen in the history of the game. Oates, a center, was on the losing end of the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, and also played for the Detroit Red Wings, St. Louis Blues (where he and Stevens were teammates), Boston Bruins, Edmonton Oilers, Philadelphia Flyers, and Washington Capitals (whom he coached from 2012 to 2014). Oates went undrafted, but after a standout career at RPI, Oates would eventually become the NHL’s all time leader in points among former college hockey players. Both have impressive achievements to their names, but neither has gotten a head coaching chance where they were in a good position to succeed, and I’m not sure this is a great chance, either.
Co-head coaches Scott Stevens and Adam Oates.
Lamoriello’s idea is to have Stevens coach the defensemen and Oates coach the forwards, like defensive and offensive coordinators in football, except in hockey d-men and forwards have to be on the ice together and work as a cohesive unit. it makes sense to have offense and defense run by different coaches in football because Tom Brady and Vince Wilfork never have to be on the field at the same time, but this seems crazy. Stevens and Oates will both have the opportunity to prove themselves worthy of sole possession of head coaching responsibilities, which provides us with ample opportunity to observe potential House of Cards-esque scheming and backstabbing in this quest for power. If Adam Oates starts having weird asides with an audience that isn’t really there during press conferences (even though Oates looks more like Ray Liotta than Kevin Spacey), then fan favorite Stevens had better watch his back.
As I was writing this, another report came out that in addition to Oates and Stevens, Lamoriello will be coaching as well, creating an unprecedented head coach triumvirate. Lamoriello has gone behind the Devils bench on an interim basis before, and it could be a great way to evaluate a team that needs to make moves to rebuild and get younger (their two best players are Jaromir Jagr, 42, and Patrik Elias, 38). It also provides him with a more hands-on chance to observe Stevens and Oates’ head coaching styles. Lamoriello has been running the hockey operations for the Devils since 1987, is the longest tenured GM in the NHL, and has had great success. He has lasted ownership changes, and his success has carried over into other sports (he owns a minority stake in the New York Yankees), and his job is probably safe as long as he wants it. It’s not the conventional way of doing things, but conventional doesn’t keep things fresh when the losses pile up and a fanbase that is used to winning hockey hasn’t been getting any for the last three years. To make matters worse for New Jersey fans, the rival New York Rangers and Islanders remain competitive throughout the Devils’ struggles. They don’t have to be good this year, but drafting well and coaching well is crucial in this transition phase. This could go really well, or really poorly, but either way, Lou Lamoriello and the Devils have my attention.
