Crawford's out

Originally posted on Wednesday June 11, 2008 @ 08:06 PM EDT @http://fans.nhl.com/members/JuiceinLA/blogs/16761

Ok, so if you are a Colorado fan, please just move past this post-without reading- You don’t need the aggravation and I don’t need to be flamed as you will be so inclined after seeing that I take the requisite Red Wing fan post shots below.

What can I say – the Detroit/Avs rivalry will never die, even when your team is terrible.

Although to be totally honest I believe that Joe Sakic is one of the all time greats and Peter Forsberg is totally hot, but Claude “Le Mew” (intentional misspelling)and Patrick Roy are insufferable monsters.


So. What do we think of this Crawford business, exactly? As you can see, its hard for me to be objective because ever since his Colorado days I have despised Marc Crawford for being a hotheaded, unethical, beastly, know it all, upstart who probably doesn’t know as much as he’s credited for. To me he’s the guy who gave “Le mew” and Foote free rein to behave like a couple of the worst thugs in all of hockey ever, a coach that allowed Roy to believe his own hype, the coach who showed such a lack of character that he couldn’t even accord a true legend like Scotty Bowman the respect he deserves.

I am sorry but some things, some people transcend team rivalries.


To me, Marc Crawford is really just the guy who lucked out early in his career to get to coach an extraordinarily talented Quebec/Colorado team. A team which actually might have gone further earlier perhaps if he weren’t coaching them.


I have always wondered if his reputation, his “Jack Adams” of you will, was more a function of the talent he had been given to work, with than his skill as a coach.


There is a camp that says the Nordiques were the heir apparent to the Cup when the team was unceremoniously dumped into Colorado. (I don’t feel too bad about this move since Denver-ites immediately took to having a hockey team in the most annoying, rabid, obnoxious but extremely loyal manner.) However, once in Colorado, the team didn’t immediately live up to the prophecy.


A great coach would have found a way to keep his team and their goals on track in the middle of such adversity.


And now that he has shown that he was unable to do anything with the young Kings, it makes me think that I might have been right all along. That Quebec/Colorado’s eventual success in the 90’s was a function of the talent on that team and not really the result of the guy coaching.


Oh to be fair, the Kings management is a mess, but I saw Crawford coach a couple of times these past couple of years and he was uninspiring, and unable to make the talent he had really work for him.


It will be interesting to see where he ends up. And how he does in the future with another team.


So who do the Kings get? Big ‘ol question. What do you all think?