According to Avs GM, Francois Giguere, the answer is Granato, who was announced yesterday as the man to replace Q on the bench and heckle refs. Admittedly, I wasn't expecting Q to get canned in the first place, but bringing back Tony is a tad bizarre and not terribly exciting. He was largely responsible for the Avs weak power play last year as an assistant and his prior head coaching playoff record (with a very stacked roster) is nothing to highlight on one's resume.
That said, Coach G(?), was pretty fiery on the bench last year, which is always good to see. Frankly, I'm still puzzled why Hartley got canned after his playoff success. At the same time, hockey is about the most difficult sport for me to see how the coaching affects the outcome, so what do I know. Line combinations and general schemes (will we still spend the majority of our time behind the goal when in the opponent's zone?) are visible, but I'm guessing a big part of whether someone is successful or not depends on how the players respond to the guy. Maybe Granato is the right guy from that perspective and has learned enough during his banishment back to assistant to now flourish as a head coach. I hope so. Sure, I (along with KTH Nation - Granato garnered 0% of the vote) was hoping for a sexier choice, but Tony is likable enough in my book. However, the real measure of whether this was a good move will be decided when the first GMC commercials air. He's got big shoes to fill in that department.
5 comments:
Tony's regular season record as head coach was very good...but he'll need to demonstrate some success in the post-season during this second stint for me to be sold on the choice.
Aw, who am I kidding...my general acceptance level is completely riding on his ability to make goofy fake-radio-call-in-show TV commercials for GMC trucks.
OK. Lets take a look at the history. We get rid of Bob "You Quit on Me" Hartley (pronounced Artley) and we get Tony "No GMC Commercial" Granato. Then we say domo arigato no more Granato and get Joel "You're on the Air. Let's go to the Phones" Quennville. Now we're going back to Granato? What was the point of bringing in Quennville then? So he could sign the three boys from Littleton in the commercial?
I'm going to go out on a limb and do some predicting. I think that the front office already knows that Sakic and Forsberg ain't coming back (that's right, retired and Sakic is going to finish his career in Canada!) and every other coaching candidate was like... no Sakic, no Forsberg... no dice. I'm even going to predict that Peter McNab refuses to do the play by play because of this.
The whole thing doesn't make sense to me. What the hell do I know? I once said that lofts in lower downtown would never sell for $100K. Boy was I slightly off.
Those 3 boys from Littleton and their mom might be shit out of luck with Q gone and G at the helm.
GMC still rocks though.
Nice name change, PF.
Hate to be a nitpicker, but I do believe it was Westminster, not Littleton.
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