After the shocking dismissal of Gerard Gallant on Sunday night, general manager and head coach Tom Rowe ran his first practice today. The Miami Herald’s George Richards writes that the practice didn’t look too different from the ones run under Gallant. Richards also included Rowe’s comments regarding Gallant after making the move to fire him Sunday:
“Gerard Gallant, first, is a great human being, a really good guy. The other day was brutal on everyone,” Rowe said. “The players really liked him, respected him. I came in and told them we weren’t going to change a whole lot, maybe a few things.”
Richards adds that Rowe hasn’t had a lot of time to change much in a short turnaround, but that some changes included Jonathan Marchessault returning to the top line. Jussi Jokinen was shuffled to the second line while Seth Griffith, who played on Florida’s fourth line, changed to the third line.
While Richards looked at Rowe’s changes on the ice, The Sun-Sentinel’s Dave Hyde focused on the shift in thinking within the organization.
Hyde reports that it was analytics winning out in Rowe’s favor. Hyde doesn’t mince words, writing that old school mindsets have given way for the new wave of analytics and Gallant, along with President of Hockey Operations (and former general manager) Dale Tallon, were casualties of the new way of doing business. He also wonders who is “in charge” of the organization, quipping:
To announce Gallant’s firing Monday, four Panthers officials were needed on the teleconference with media. Four. One more and they’d have a starting lineup Tuesday night in Chicago for the first game of their next chapter.
Gallant thought his big presence could help and kept pushing for him to be promoted from the minors. The front office didn’t like his analytics profile. Shaw recently was traded to Anaheim in a small deal for winger Michael Sgarbossa. Maybe it’s a good trade. Again, we’ll see. But it certainly sent a message to Gallant of where he stood.
Meanwhile Pierre LeBrun feels that there was no justifiable reason to fire Gallant, writing that the dismissal generated a league-wide “shaking of the head.” Echoing Hyde, LeBrun chalks the firing up to a philosophical schism, but cautions by saying he doesn’t intend to “fan the flames of that debate.” LeBrun continues:
I think you need to keep an open mind to both analytics and how best to use that information, within the context of understanding what makes a player useful just from knowing the game. There’s room for both schools of thought in hockey, and I’m mighty tired of people trying to make you pick a side.
LeBrun wonders who will receive the credit or blame based on the Panthers’ performance. Regardless, the Panthers’ decision making seems to be a microcosm of the debate raging on in the NHL regarding “old school” thinking versus the “new school” way.
Photo Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Regardless of what your views are, you HAVE to respect the opinion of your coach on roster decisions, he is after all in the trenches with the players on a daily basis. Now you could argue that Gallant wasn’t Rowe’s coach and you’d be correct but if their views were this divided, why wasn’t something done in the off-season? The PR would have still been a nightmare but at least you could have brought in someone that shared your mindset.
I love analytics but they are not the be all, end all of things. Old school traits are still very valuable and very relevant even if you can’t quantify them as a stat.
I’m pretty big on analytics when it comes to baseball but the nature of the game of hockey is so different. It’s simpler in that a goal is a goal is a goal… but so much happens outside of directly handling and shooting the puck. You can’t put a number on having brass balls or being “that guy” on the third or fourth line that’s always in the right spot at the right time when something weird happens.
Anybody who relies solely on analytics is an idiot. Yes, they are a tool that can help evaluate teams & players. However, they don’t take into account a lot of important factors like chemistry, grit, heart, work ethic & hustle. Analytics would ignore Gregory Campbell finishing off a shift after he broke his leg in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It ignores a player hustling back to negate an icing that leads to a goal. It ignores the supremely talented player who has no work ethic and ends up being a bust. Everything needs to be taken into account when evaluating a player & a team, not just analytics
Yes, in Arizona they are doing something right by combining the analytic(Chayka) and Old-School(Tippett) minds to build a team
Seems that coaches want intangibles like size and dependability, while upper management is just using spreadsheets to try and make hockey decisions. I think Gallant is just the first of many casualties (and Roy quit for the same reason) that will result from coaches and GMs seeing the game through two different lenses now.