There were 22 coaching changes between 2000-01 and 2003-04 in which the old coach had at least 20 games and the new coach had at least 20 games. The old coach put up a combined record of 141-219-52-28; the new coach a record of 160-197-54-29. If you express that on an 82 game basis, it’s 26-41-5-10 as opposed to 30-37-5-10. 75 points instead of 67.
The goal differential doesn’t support it though. The old coach saw his teams score 1057 goals and allow 1306. The new coach saw his teams score 1068 goals and allow 1250 goals. -249 versus -182. It’s probably worth mentioning that a large part of the change is attributable to the Blues switch of Mike Kitchen for Joel Quenneville - that resulted in a 30 goal swing for the Blues, leaving only 37 goal differential spread over the other 21 coaching changes.
On an 82 game basis, we’re talking about 197/243 versus 199/233. That’s more like four points in the standings - over the course of an entire season - than eight. And again, most of that seems to be tied to the Blues.
When you consider that a coach is probably more likely to get fired when things seem to be going poorly and that, in small samples, results don’t mesh up too well with performance (results swing more wildly than performance, IMO), the distinction between the results obtained by the new boss and the results obtained by the old boss probably gets even smaller. The old coaches went 62-71-28 in 1 goal games; the new went 72-57-29. Given that one goal games are largely random, you really have to ask whether there’s actually any difference in result created by the new coach, or whether there’s some truth to the old saying that you’re never as bad as you look when you’re losing or as good as you look when you’re winning.
If people want to advance the “Fire the coach” argument with respect to MacT, well, it’s a free world. I don’t, however, think that the evidence particularly supports that it would have much of an immediate impact or that it would really do much of anything. Coaching replacement level in the NHL is high and, broadly, one coach will make largely the same decisions as the next. The areas where they differ are going to be areas in which they’re fiddling around the edges. I don’t see that there’s enough there and, if I was running an NHL franchise, I’d be hesitant to eat the cost of the coach’s contract when I strongly suspected it would make little, if any, difference.
