I'll post some thoughts of my own regarding the Avs/Flames tilt later on. For now, I'd like to concentrate on the Bob Hartley firing in Atlanta.
In my opinion, the wrong guy got his walking papers today. I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to Hartley's strengths and weaknesses as a bench boss, but it's clear as the nose on Tim Hunter's face that he wasn't given the horses to succeed. It was my contention last season around the trade deadline that Don Waddell was one of the worst GM's in the league, and his performance during the off-season only served to further reinforce that option.
Waddell has made a lot of missteps along the way. Aside from the Heately/Hossa swap, his trades have been average or worse (overpayment for Tkachuk, Coburn for Zhitnik, Bourret for Dupuis, etc.).
Just take a look at the assembled roster for this season:
Kovaluchuk, Hossa, Kozlov, Todd White...and a bunch of scrubs. The defense corps. is terrible, featuring Alexei Zhitnik as the de facto #1 guy. Bobby Holik is a washed up, $4M anchor.
I don't think any coach this side of Scotty Bowman could mold that motley collection into a winning squad. Three quarters of the roster is filler. The superstars skate with 4th liners at ES. Outside the SE division, the Thrashers are cannon fodder.
This isn't to say that Hartley was getting the job done or the players hadn't tuned him out. That's all very possible. But it's tough to truly evaluate a coach's effectiveness when he's given two queens and a board full of pawns to play with.
Update - AJC columnist Jeff Shultz makes the same point, but more effectively here:
Don Waddell, the general manager who has drafted 28 defensemen but has only two to show for it on the Thrashers’ roster, stays.
Bob Hartley, who has been trying to shuffle semi-comatose bodies in hopes that defective ingredients can somehow be made into a better soup, goes.
Hartley will get another job. But how does Waddell get another chance?
The Thrashers fired the wrong guy.
