We're kind of getting to MacLean territory. He was fired on December 23rd (I think? It was the morning of the last game before Christmas) and he didn't have Parise at all after Halloween, Brodeur was in and out of injury in November and December while he was here, he had really bad defensemen filling in, he had a lot of other injuries. Rolston was another guy out for a while. Volchenkov was injured in the second game of the season and unavailable for a while. I know these players weren't any good anymore, but they were supposed to be key pieces coming into that season. At least Volchenkov was. Rolston was at least expected to be a secondary guy and not waiver fodder like he wound up being right after the MacLean firing. He had to ice short handed rosters because of the cap.
I'm not saying MacLean didn't deserve it, but it's not like he didn't have all these excuses like Ruff can currently use.