There are other teams in the NHL that are as soft defensively as Boston, but they still manage to win without the same firepower the Bruins have in top-10 scorers Joe Thornton and Glen Murray.

At some point the responsibility for losing cannot be delegated any further, and that is why Robbie Ftorek was fired.

The closer things got to crunchtime, the tighter Robbie seemed to get. It was as if he could get to the hump but never get over it, the same reason he was fired with eight games left in the 1999-2000 season by a Devils team that eventually won the Stanley Cup.

Intensity is a good thing as long as it is bottled and channeled properly, but if a coach is too intense behind the bench, the players tend to get rattled. That is a tough way to play. If a team can't play a relaxed, focused game, it will be hurt by that in the long run.

There are two times when a team has to look at getting rid of its coach -- when all the players love him or all the players hate him. Most coaches live somewhere in between, but the former was true in Boston. The Bruins players seemed to stand behind Ftorek, but he just didn't seem to able to push the right buttons at the right time with those players.

By replacing Ftorek himself, general manager Mike O'Connell is mimicking what Glen Sather did with the New York Rangers. O'Connell wants to see what he has on the roster, and if players don't play hard when the GM is behind the bench, they won't play hard for anybody.

But in reality there is not really anyone out there the Bruins could bring in. They don't want to change the system at this time of the year, and there aren't really any big-name coaches available, so this seems like the logical move.

The million-dollar question is who Boston will bring in after the season is over. The Bruins have shown with guys like Pat Burns, Mike Keenan and Ftorek that they gravitate toward coaches who rule with an iron fist and apply salt before sugar, but it's still anybody's guess as to who will be next.

One thing's for sure, though: The term "interim coach" was seemingly invented for Boston. Lately, no one seems able to last much more than one season there.

Bill Clement is an NHL analyst for ESPN.