Lightning fire Barry Melrose

They have stupid, non-sensical firings in other sports too, ya know. Daniel Snyder, I'm looking at YOU.

 

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with your post, I guess I was just thinking how weird it is that it is popular in my city.

And no, my city isn't affluent. There is a lot of oil money, but you wouldn't know it by driving through it.

 

The NHL's often-maligned decision to put teams in places like Anaheim, Dallas, Tampa, etc., is starting to pay dividends in terms of growing the player pool for USA Hockey. Give kids a big-league team to follow and see what happens...

To Drip: Tampa's fan base is already established. The Lightning didn't need a coach with an ESPN pedigree or another gimmick. They're not the Rays, after all.

As for Melrose, the guy waited, what, 14 years to get back into coaching, and this is what he got? Oy.

 

-- The team's mistake was hiring him in the first place. There was a reason he couldn't get another job for so long after reaching the Finals.
-- Football and hockey coaches do more coaching during games than basketball coaches do in a month, and baseball and soccer coaches do in a year.

 

Bingo.

Scotty Bowman was as integral to his teams' nine Stanley Cup wins as were his players.

 

<i>Ooh, some mean person made a joke about my favorite sport. I'm going to take my juice box over to the corner and have a good cry....</i>

 

Or, someone made a pretty ignorant statement about a sport where the coach is pretty highly involved.

Not that it stops anyone around here normally.

 

Sounds like soccer -- tons of kids participate, but it doesn't translate into interest at higher levels.

Regarding Melrose, Allan Muir's take on SI.com seems pretty spot on: Melrose shouldn't have been hired in the first place, but he didn't have any players to work with and the ownership is a mess.

 

I think the smarter people recognized it was a facetious statement.

 

Sure, you remember the drastic dip in MLB popularity when the Tigers fired Phil Garner after an 0-6 start in 2002.

 

You backtrack worse than Jason Sehorn.

 

Aye ... and I've seen several of your younglings play in the WHL. In fact, the Loops GM from 98-2004/5 made it his personal mission to ensure California and Nebraska were well scouted areas.