BREAKING: Tampa fires Barry Melrose

November 14, 2008   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Geez, a quarter of the way through the season and already two coaches have been fired.  I guess NHL parity = less job security for coaches, particularly the loquacious Barry Melrose, a former (and I guess now future) ESPN analyst who only got sixteen games after being out of the league over a decade.  Bizarre.

While you could say Tampa’s been a dissapointment with five wins in their first sixteen games (5-7-4) and only 34 goals from what’s supposed to be a high-flying team, anyone that isn’t looking at this team through tinted glasses could see that that team was flawed from their opening games in Europe.  Throwing away money on Ryan Malone and dumping Dan Boyle in the Matt Carle deal (and then subsequently dumping Carle barely a month into the season for Steve Eminger and Steve Downie) didn’t help a team that already finished last in 2007-08.  They were at least playing hard for Melrose, or it looked that way from a distance given all the overtime games and one-goal losses they had.

Melrose will be replaced on an interim basis by Rick Tocchet, who played 18 years in the NHL but is most recently known for an infamous gambling scandal while he was an assistant coach with Phoenix.