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| | Thursday, December 9 | |||||
Special to ESPN.com | ||||||
| According to Pittsburgh general manager Craig Patrick, the new coach of the Penguins, Herb Brooks, was getting his car serviced at a gas station in Minnesota on Wednesday afternoon when his cell phone rang.
"I think Herb was getting the oil changed or something," said Patrick just before Thursday night's game against Washington. "I told him I was going to make a change. I asked him if he wanted the job. He asked for a little time to consider it. I said no because there were two points at stake the next night (Thursday) and I had to make a change."
Brooks, 62, and a scout for the Penguins this year, replaced 40-year-old Kevin Constantine, who had been a contender for coach of the year honors in each of the past two seasons. However, the Penguins' wobbly start this season made Patrick believe he had to make a change. "Things were not getting better," Patrick said. "I kept telling myself that things would turn around, but they didn't. Still, I would not say this was a probability until Tuesday during the day. You get to the point where you realize things are not going to change, and if that was the case we're not making the playoffs, and that is not acceptable here."Patrick made up his mind, and proceeded to do some of the preliminary work which is required when making such a move. "I called the powers that be here on Tuesday, and let them know I was a little concerned with the direction we were going," Patrick said. "And then, after watching our game on Wednesday, I just decided I had to do something."The Tuesday night game was a 2-1 loss at New Jersey. And the "powers-that-be" in this case included the Penguins new owner, Mario Lemieux. "I called Mario on Tuesday and made (him) aware of all my concerns," Patrick said. "And Mario told me to check with the financial people and that if I was going to make a change to make sure that it's acceptable to them. I called him back on Wednesday afternoon to tell him that I wanted to proceed. He told me that if I had the green light from everybody "you gotta do what you gotta do."The "financial" issue is perhaps greater in Pittsburgh than in many other professional franchises. The Penguins went through a troubled and lengthy sale to Lemieux over the summer, and the purse strings are still very worn. In the case of Constantine, the decision to fire him was certainly made easier because he was in the final year of his contract. You could make a fairly strong argument that Constantine was in trouble from the beginning of the season when he came in under new ownership without a contract extension. Constantine, who has an abrasive coaching style, had the disadvantage of coming into the year without the clout one would expect of a successful coach -- the clout of a secure contract.Could that lack of a new contract have affected the team's play? Could that lack of a contract have been at the root of reports from Pittsburgh that Constantine was heard bellowing to his players after a loss words to the effect of: "If you're trying to get me fired, you're doing a good job of it." Patrick would not venture much of an opinion as to whether or not the lack of a contract beyond this season had helped to doom Constantine. "I can't answer that," said Patrick. "I don't think it does, but other people think it does." It was certainly a big enough issue from the beginning of the season that there has been open speculation that Constantine was in trouble, a viewpoint that was always fortified by some public disputes last season between Constantine and the club's star player, and perhaps the best player in the league, Jaromir Jagr. It was evident last season that Jagr would have rather played a more wide-open style than Constantine demanded. However, the team was successful in the face of all sorts of odds, both on and off the ice. This season, there had been very little in the way of rumbling from within the Pittsburgh locker room. "This was not a personality issue," Patrick said. "It had nothing to do with Kevin (Constantine) and any player or players. This was just a case of the way the team was playing." The newest theory is that the switch to Brooks will match the team's open-ice talents with a coaching style which was well ahead of its time. Brooks was trying to install a flowing European game plan well before the NHL was packed with the European players who could make it work. We will now see if Brooks' system can work with more skilled players. In the meantime watch for Constantine's name to be brought up rather quickly to take over other NHL teams as his demanding defensive style is still a blue print for success for many teams, and a defensive road to a playoff spot. Al Morganti covers the NHL for ESPN.
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