I don’t think Lavi is a good coach, but I don’t think he’s anywhere near the heart of THE problem at this point. Why he loses teams is irrelevant, IMO. All coaches lose their teams. Most teams have a new coach every 3-5 years. The question isn’t why Lavi loses teams. The question is why THIS team has quit on 3 straight coaches in 5 years. I don’t care who the coach is at that point; it could be Dancing Larry and he could be drunk every game/practice and exclusively talk to the players in pig Latin and I would still be completely incapable of siding with the players on this one. They’re an entitled group of babies who quit on every coach they have.
And the thing is, WE are sitting here saying Lavi needs to go because he doesn’t change up the top PP or break up Kreider and Zib or stop giving Lindgren big minutes… well, what are the players quitting for than? He’s basically doing what THEY want him to do. We want Zib sitting a game. We want Kreider benched. We want vets losing their spots to kids on the PP. We want Lindgren on the bottom pair. If Lavi did all of those things, could you imagine the amount of tears there would be in that locker room? Mika would flood the Garden. So what are they even quitting on? They’re not even being shown tough love.
They’re quitting because they’re gutless pansies who wilt when facing adversity and have been enjoying the scent of their own flatulence for far too long while being absolutely pampered in every way by this organization, it’s media and the multiple coaches they’ve had the privilege of quitting on. I don’t care if you were Al Arbour, Stan Bowman, Joel Quennville, Spencer Carberry… it does not matter. These boys are only going to work hard for you for about 16 months and if they don’t win the Cup that year, you might as well just resign and let them move on to the next coach.
It’s time to break up the band. They haven’t released an album in years and they keep touring, playing songs that used to be hits but they have no energy anymore and the singer’s voice is shot.
