Back when fans couldn't shut up about Ken Hitchcock's shelf-life, his tenures were still much longer than the majority of other coaches' were. Even his shorter tenures were exceptionally long for those franchises and the guys who came before and after him in those places. Every coach has a shelf-life, but it's just as often about the competitive abilities of the given team at a given time.
Fan perceptions are skewed in general ("streakiness" isn't a thing, for example), but how quickly things change is a big one. Tons of intense hockey fans still default to the belief that the Blues are a bruising, middle-skill team. Or they think an average of player production over the last three years is a good way to evaluate a player's current abilities (these kind souls fuel everyone else's fantasy hockey wins).
But it's admittedly more difficult to track coach movement when many teams have shuffled around the same guys for so many years. What kind of coach did they hire? Disciplinarian, a "players' coach," X's and O's? No, nothing like that, we got a bald one this time.
