Famous Coaching Meltdowns or Burnouts

[nutbar]

He coached the Devils but yes, he did threw a bench.

yep you're right

 

[Doctor Coffin]

I don't know about melt down, but I always loved Jacques Demers reactions after bad calls or games early in his career. I recall once, as he was walking off the ice, him throwing his glasses down the ice. Hilarious stuff.

I don't think we ever saw Pat Burns have a public melt down, but I wonder what was going on behind the scenes. His teams usually stopped playing for him after a couple of years. That must have taken its toll on him.

Demers and Herb Brooks had a memorable confrontation during a scrum in a Minnesota-Detroit game in the 1987-88 season, Herb was more or less laughing at him, but Jacques was being held back by one of his assistant coaches, if I remember correctly.

Didn't Burns flip out behind the bench on Barry Melrose during the 1993 playoffs, after, during a verbal exchange between the two, Melrose puffed out his cheeks, making fun of Burns' weight?

 

[Doctor Coffin]

Others can decide if this qualifies as a meltdown, but Blackhawks coach Craig Hartsburg was one exasperated man after a loss to Toronto late in the 1997-98 season:
"We're always just good enough to lose by a goal," Hartsburg said. "There's reasons when you lose that many games by a goal and it's not just because you can't score goals. There's lots of things that have to be fixed here."
"It's time for changes and it better not be one or two changes," Hartsburg said after the Hawks were eliminated from the playoff race. "If I'm a change, then so be it. This team can't go on this way. It needs a total overhaul."
Hartsburg, of course, was right in this instance. And he was fired after the season.

 

[Big Phil]

I can remember Guy Carboneau and Denis Savard lashing out at their team during a press conference. Savard shortly got fired after this but he was dead on about his team not working hard enough and saying something like: "Last time I checked they were making pretty good money doing this."

Carboneau basically said his team wasn't working hard enough. Both coaches were right, but in a modern day age when a multi millionaire player knows the coach will go before him there is less respect.

 

[Psycho Papa Joe]

Anybody remember Orval Tessier's 'Heart Transplant' comments regarding the 83 Black Hawks. They were just coming off their best season in years and during a playoff loss in the conference finals against the Oilers, Tessier said the team needed heart transplants. He completely lost the room and the Hawks were terrible the following two seasons.

 

[Hot Water Bottle]

Classic fight between Bryan Murray and Lindy Ruff.


ETA: Peter Laviolette doing the same thing:

 

[nutbar]

This was from the IHL but

 

[Doctor Coffin]

Anybody remember Orval Tessier's 'Heart Transplant' comments regarding the 83 Black Hawks. They were just coming off their best season in years and during a playoff loss in the conference finals against the Oilers, Tessier said the team needed heart transplants. He completely lost the room and the Hawks were terrible the following two seasons.

Season and a half. They finished the regular season 16-7-4 and went on to lose to Edmonton in the Conference Finals playing with 2-3 healthy regular defensemen after Bob Pulford took over behind the bench in late January 1985..

 

[tarheelhockey]

Wow, I've never heard all that about Harkness. Sounds downright ridiculous.

 

[Killion]

Wow, I've never heard all that about Harkness. Sounds downright ridiculous.

Ya all kinds of crazy stories about old Ned.... he'd been extremely successful at RPI & Cornell as both a Hockey & Lacrosse Coach starting around 1963, and had in fact recruited Ken Dryden to the latter. Post Detroit he briefly returned to College Coaching then went on to oversee & manage the facilities at Lake Placid from about 78-89 or so, obviously on-hand to witness the Miracle on Ice, Team USA then beating the Finns to win the Gold Medal.

 

[struckbyaparkedcar]

Watching and listening to John Tortorella during the 2013 playoffs brings to mind coaching meltdowns or burnouts in NHL history.

Effectively Torts admitted that he cannot coach an NHL player, Carl Hagelin, to change gears or play at a variable pace as dictated by on ice circumstances. Basic youth hockey, pre-teen coaching.

He also admitted that he cannot coach a veteran player, Brad Richards, through a transition phase from a top six to top twelve role.There is an expectation that a veteran NHL coach given an elite best on best team with top six forwards would be able to craft a top twelve group of forwards.

There have been other graphic meltdowns or burnouts. Shoenfeld/Koharski, Toe Blake/Dalton MacArthur, various coaches throwing sticks and other bench area equipment on the ice, or officiating related emoting.

But has another coach ever made such a blatant admission, twice, that he is no longer up to the task?

I think you're over-dramaticizing the impact of both of these statements. Hagelin's a second year NHLer who's best asset is his speed, he's naturally going to struggle when the game stops going north-south as much, neutralizing his biggest asset. And it's not that he can't develop Richards into a depth role, it's that Richards hasn't played well enough (in relatively sheltered minutes) to play over Boyle as the third line pivot, and he's not going to play the guy as a fourth liner in the playoffs. Had they been playing a full season and Richards kept falling off, of course they were going to make that gradual shift.

 

[InjuredChoker]

I vaguely remember hearing that Scotty Bowman challenged or berated Claude Lemieux while Claude walked past the Detroit bus to his car with his family after one of those heated Wings/Avs playoff games.

Adrian Dater mentioned this in his Avs-Wings rivalry book. Details may not be correct but the basic picture is iirc.

 

[HairyKneel]

Don Perry with the Kings...

It was Jim Playfair, not Larry who had the epic meltdown, I believe.

Bill Laforge seemed to be in way over his head, and seemed to be losing his mind more and more every day. Go team PHD!"
He had the teams best goal scorer run "the gauntlet" soon after neck surgery, which led to Darcy Rota being forced to retire. That was straight out of the Eddie Shore school of coaching.

He never coached in the NHL, but Ernie "Punch" McLean had what I would consider the greatest meltdown ever for a coach.
He had a player Jon Paul Kelly (who I believe made it to the NHL, and is best remembered for knocking a 51 yr old Gordie Howe over the boards with a body check) who had lost an eye in a hockey game not long before a brawl broke out. Kelly had just recently come back from the eye injury, when during a brawl, the opposition goalie started to mock Kelly by skating around the ice pretending to be a blind man. Punch lost his mind, hopped over the boards (all the players from both teams were already on the ice fighting) and charged at the goalie. Punch grabbed the goalie and I believe made some type of serious threat against the goalies well being of he didn't cut that stuff out.

You can watch that on YouTube...
Hockey was a very different game back then!

Not sure how I found this rabbit hole of a thread. The old NW Bruins of 1976-79 would have kicked the shit out of most NHL teams.
Barry Beck
Brad Maxwell
Boris Fistric
JP Kelly
Stan Smyl
Kevin Schamehorn
Terry Hochstetter
Larry Melnyk

Punch should have gotten the job Laforge got in Van in 84.

As an asside, remember when Pat Quinn snapped on Don the Cherry? He bit back after Cherry beaked about Pavel in 95 on CBC. He ran into the poser in a strakhouse downtown.... Joe Fortes maybe? He yanked Cherry out of his chair while Cherry soaked his pants and had him by the scruff of the neck. Should have filled the idiot in.

Would you want an enraged Pat Quinn mad at you?

 

[IComeInPeace]

Not sure how I found this rabbit hole of a thread. The old NW Bruins of 1976-79 would have kicked the shit out of most NHL teams.
Barry Beck
Brad Maxwell
Boris Fistric
JP Kelly
Stan Smyl
Kevin Schamehorn
Terry Hochstetter
Larry Melnyk

Punch should have gotten the job Laforge got in Van in 84.

As an asside, remember when Pat Quinn snapped on Don the Cherry? He bit back after Cherry beaked about Pavel in 95 on CBC. He ran into the poser in a strakhouse downtown.... Joe Fortes maybe? He yanked Cherry out of his chair while Cherry soaked his pants and had him by the scruff of the neck. Should have filled the idiot in.

Would you want an enraged Pat Quinn mad at you?

Damn I miss all of those old dudes. I’m still a fan of the game but it’s a totally different sport I’m following now.

 

[IComeInPeace]

Don Perry with the Kings...

It was Jim Playfair, not Larry who had the epic meltdown, I believe.

Bill Laforge seemed to be in way over his head, and seemed to be losing his mind more and more every day. Go team PHD!"
He had the teams best goal scorer run "the gauntlet" soon after neck surgery, which led to Darcy Rota being forced to retire. That was straight out of the Eddie Shore school of coaching.

He never coached in the NHL, but Ernie "Punch" McLean had what I would consider the greatest meltdown ever for a coach.
He had a player Jon Paul Kelly (who I believe made it to the NHL, and is best remembered for knocking a 51 yr old Gordie Howe over the boards with a body check) who had lost an eye in a hockey game not long before a brawl broke out. Kelly had just recently come back from the eye injury, when during a brawl, the opposition goalie started to mock Kelly by skating around the ice pretending to be a blind man. Punch lost his mind, hopped over the boards (all the players from both teams were already on the ice fighting) and charged at the goalie. Punch grabbed the goalie and I believe made some type of serious threat against the goalies well being of he didn't cut that stuff out.

You can watch that on YouTube...
Hockey was a very different game back then!

12 years later, I’m linking the YT video. I hope no one’s been waiting on it