The Unofficial Fire Ron Wilson/Ron Wilson is the Greatest Thread

[dappleganger]

Burke's take...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news;_ylt=AoBqZGkNNrN2HdhCC78kpQF7vLYF?slug=capress-hkn_leafs_wilson-16048487


"Ron Wilson is in the top 10 in every category in the history of the league in terms of coaching," Burke said

Two things: He's not top ten in Stanley Cup coaching wins and the top 10's he's part of include the negatives like most losses and most times with the 30th ranked penalty kill. 

He's an average to above average coach, nothing more.

 

[maplesyrup]

John Shannon was speculating that it could be a 1 year deal with a clause an additional year should the Leafs make the playoffs this year. Any new info to that regard?

 

[Zee]

John Shannon was speculating that it could be a 1 year deal with a clause an additional year should the Leafs make the playoffs this year. Any new info to that regard?

I can live with that if true.

 

[ZBBM]

Burke's take...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news;_ylt=AoBqZGkNNrN2HdhCC78kpQF7vLYF?slug=capress-hkn_leafs_wilson-16048487

"This coach has earned this extension," Burke said. "It's not charity, it's not a gift.

On the Leafs being sixth in the East and Wilson guiding them to a 32-22-10 record since the All-Star break...

"It's pretty impressive, it's certainly a healthy clip," Burke said.

Two last thoughts, and then I'll bow out of the conversation since everyone's heard my couple of pennies on this.

As for the first quote, methinks the GM doth protest too much.

As for the second, unlike the rest of the comments at least this one is based on some kind of a metric.  Unfortunately, the metric is meaningless because the season doesn't begin after last year's ASB and end with Xmas of this year.

Anyway, I wish Wilson all the luck in the world and hope he leads us to the playoffs, because that is the only thing that will truly put this to rest.

 

[Kin]

NBC: Brian Burke says Ron Wilson is a ?Hall of Fame coach?

Yeah, that's one of those ones where we'll have to chalk it up to Burke being pretty frequently full of garbage. I'm racking my brain to think of a single coach, in any of the major sports, who made a HOF with the kind of championship-less resume that's really just heavy on steady regular season employment and can't think of one.

And, yeah, as ZBBM says above. Qualifying it with these sort of half-way "Jack Morris had the most wins of any pitcher during the 80's" accomplishments doesn't make the decision look any better.

 

[Kin]

I never really did the whole prediction thing, but I think most people here the past few seasons didn't predict the playoffs for the Leafs, right?  Neither did the talking heads on TV?  I really don't think there are many, if any, coaches out there who would have done significantly better with the roster we have.  Good coaches can get poor results from a roster.  Most great coaches have great rosters to begin with.

Usually when people give out coach of the year awards it's rare that the guy who gets chosen is someone who guided a team universally thought to be the most talented team to a first place finish. Eric Spoelstra, Joe Girardi and the like didn't do all that well in those votes this year. Usually it's guys like Dave Tippett who get unexpectedly positive results from undertalented rosters. I think it's a fair statement to say that Wilson has coached his teams to more or less where their talent would have them finishing but I think, realistically, that marks him as doing a pretty average job.

The relevant question then becomes, as I see it, whether or not an average coach is going to be enough for this roster. I think a team can probably get by with a coach who coaches their team to a end of year record that reflects their talent level and even achieve some success there but the only way a team is going to win anything with a coach like that is if that team assembles a collection of talent that ranks up there with any in the league. That's another reason why I said this puts the weight on Burke's back. If Burke is happy enough with the kind of average job Wilson's done then to deliver a serious contender he's going to have to assemble a roster that rivals Chicago and Vancouver and Pittsburgh and so on for talent level.

Personally, I think that's going to be very hard to do with the way that Burke's going about building this team. I think for a team like the Leafs to make anything resembling noise at the end of the year they're going to have to get significantly more from the talent on the roster than you'd expect. Wilson hasn't, to my mind, shown a capability for delivering on that in a pretty fair trial run.

 

[cw]

NBC: Brian Burke says Ron Wilson is a ?Hall of Fame coach?

Yeah, that's one of those ones where we'll have to chalk it up to Burke being pretty frequently full of garbage. I'm racking my brain to think of a single coach, in any of the major sports, who made a HOF with the kind of championship-less resume that's really just heavy on steady regular season employment and can't think of one.

And, yeah, as ZBBM says above. Qualifying it with these sort of half-way "Jack Morris had the most wins of any pitcher during the 80's" accomplishments doesn't make the decision look any better.

Looking through Wilson's career as a player and a coach, the only thing he's won that I've found was the World Cup in '96. I can't equate that to a Stanley Cup.

Cup winners like Fred Shero still aren't in ...

If Pat Burns has had so much trouble getting in ...

A real overstatement by Burke in my opinion.

 

[Tigger]

I certainly buy the 'whip and chair' argument over the 'hof' pov, an overstatement for sure.

Would Pat Quinn be a hof coach? How many coaches are actually in the hof?

 

[cw]

I certainly buy the 'whip and chair' argument over the 'hof' pov, an overstatement for sure.

Would Pat Quinn be a hof coach? How many coaches are actually in the hof?

I'm not sure but when I glanced at the list, a few Cup winning coaches weren't there beyond Shero & Burns. A number of Cup winning coaches from earlier years, Terry Crisp & Jean Perron were a few that I recall.

I think Quinn has a better shot than Wilson because I think his NHL record is better than Wilson's. He was a more established NHLer than Wilson, who had his career cut short with injury. But that's not enough. If it's not the "NHL Hall of Fame" and according to the rules, it isn't, then Quinn's championships as a young player (Memorial Cup, two other minor league titles), his Olympic, U18 & U20 Golds, World Cup '04 help. I guess his Memorial Cup as an owner doesn't hurt. He's currently co-chair of the HHoF admittance committee and done hockey coaching seminars voluntarily for Hockey Canada, etc. So for his life long service to hockey with successes outside of the Stanley Cup would be the justification argument.

I don't think Ron's resume is as strong.

Whether that's enough remains to be seen.

 

[Tigger]

Yeah, Quinn seems like a better candidate though I have my doubts either gets in.

There aren't many coaches in the builder category.

Carlyle seems like a coach, given the Norris win and a coaching cup, that might get in if he can get a 'few' more wins overall under his belt or enter the 'GM' world successfully.

 

[GhostofPotvin29]

Always enjoy Friedman's 30 Thoughts, especially when there is anything Leafs related:

20. Ron Wilson gets some legit criticism: the penalty kill, for example. But when discussing his overall job performance, I remember a conversation with Gainey, who was Montreal's GM the night Wilson coached his first game with the Maple Leafs. Asked how long it would take for Toronto to rebuild, Gainey said, "Six years." We're at three-and-a-half. Honestly, the team is probably where it should be.

21. The extension is actually a bit of a mirage. It gets the media to stop asking about it, which is a smart play. But, since it's not really a long-term deal, there's nothing from stopping a wealthy franchise from eating it Cookie-Monster style.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/opinion/2011/12/would-gainey-consider-coaching-habs-30-thoughts.html

 

[Strangelove]

Mind-boggling extension, particularly when it's offered by a guy who claims to be as competitive and devoted to success as Burke does.  Very little about Ron's tenure has been satisfactory by any reasonable account, and one would think that that should have been the benchmark for granting him the new contract he very publicly desired.

 

[cw]

Other than a significant financial risk for MLSE that most teams may not have done, I've mellowed some on the extension. It's hard to tell for sure if there is real merit for Wilson to have the contract extension when dealing with the players because that's usually closed door stuff. But I do wonder that if you've got players that put much stock in whether Wilson has an extension, maybe those aren't the players you want long term.

Having said that, the signing is an admission by Burke that the players he got Wilson weren't as good as Burke thought they were when he acquired them (if you compare what he said at the time to where they finished). Rather than letting his coach exclusively taking the fall for that which many GMs in NHL history have done, Burke stepped up and took some responsibility. I have to respect Burke for that as it's a good thing for the organization - that shortcomings are dealt with pretty honestly, openly and fairly.

My feeling is that the real answer lies somewhere in between. I still feel Wilson underachieved with some of the talent on the rosters he had.

 

[Zee]

Damian Cox seems personally offended by this extension.

 

[Fanatic]

Damian Cox seems personally offended by this extension.

I count that in the plus column when looking at the Wilson situation.

 

[Optimus Reimer]

Damian Cox seems personally offended by this extension.

That's because he wanted RW to have a life time extension, not just for one year.  Again the Leafs fail to recognize excellent talent behind the bench.  After the one season is over, RW goes to another team and leads that team to the cup.

 

[ZBBM]

Cox is right, of course.

 

[Zee]

Cox is right, of course.

I agree with Cox's stance that the extension isn't deserved, but he seems personally upset about it, caling Ron a "fibber" in his blog.   

Relax Damian, it's just hockey!  It's only game, why you have to be mad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ns14hRqwY8

 

[Zee]

Well, unless my math is wrong, the Leafs record since Jan 1 last year (82 games played) is:

42-29-11 = 95 points.

 

[Optimus Reimer]

Well, unless my math is wrong, the Leafs record since Jan 1 last year (82 games played) is:

42-29-11 = 95 points.

From Jan 1 to the end of the season, it was great to see the Leafs play better, but that is history.  As good as that was, if the Leafs fail to make the playoffs this season, or at least win one round, what happened last season was for nothing.

The concern now is this season, and my concerns like everyone else's are the PK and lack of defensive toughness/coverage.  I do expect BB to make at least one trade to improve the team in those aspects.  So I am willing to wait and see how the Leafs progress from here.