Colorado Avalanche: Roy Coached Better than Bednar
Whether you look at record, player performance or just plain showmanship, Patrick Roy coached better than Jared Bednar.
Colorado Avalanche Hall of Famer Patrick Roy resigned as head coach on August 11, 2016.
Many Avs fans turned on the hero because they felt Roy had left the team in a lurch. He’d resigned “right before” the season, leaving GM Joe Sakic with little leeway to find a new coach “so late” in the season. In fact, it was six weeks before training camp — Sakic took two weeks to find his prime candidate. That candidate was Jared Bednar.
Despite the supposed lateness of the resignation, Sakic had some good options for the head coaching position. He actually interviewed two candidates with NHL head coach experience and with experience as assistant coach on Stanley Cup winning teams — Davis Payne (L.A. Kings) and Kevin Dineen (Chicago Blackhawks).
The Avalanche also interviewed other likely candidates. Bob Boughner was considered a finalist — he’d had a long NHL playing career and had served as an assistant coach for both the Columbus Blue Jackets and the San Jose Sharks. (He recently got hired as the head coach of the Florida Panthers.)
Colorado interviewed Lane Lambert, who was an NHL player from 1983 to 2001 and who’s been an NHL assistant coach since 2011 (Nashville Predators, Washington Capitals). They also interviewed Scott Arniel, who was an NHL player from 1981 to 1999 and who is the assistant coach of the New York Rangers. He also coached the Columbus Blue Jackets for 1 1/2 years.
Yet the Colorado Avalanche chose Jared Bednar, who had no NHL experience whatsoever, as head coach. And the Colorado Avalanche went on to a 48-point season, the worst in team history and the worst in the salary cap era.
Patrick Roy would have done better because Patrick Roy was better as a head coach.
Argument Against Judging Jared Bednar
I already know what the counterarguments are going to be because I’ve been having this argument for almost a year now.
One, Bednar was hired late in the offseason. He didn’t have enough time to prepare for the season.
Two, Bednar was handed a bad roster, not of his making.
Three, Bednar was a rookie coach. We only have one season’s worth of a sample size.
Four, Bednar had so much success in the ECHL and AHL. We owe him a chance to make that leap into NHL success.
Did I miss anything? If so, please leave it in the comments box below. However, I’m going to address these points right away.
One, the Colorado Avalanche hired Jared Bednar four weeks before the preseason. Yes, most other coaches have the entire offseason to prepare. However, Bednar had coaching experience at the lower levels — 14 years’ worth. A good candidate for a position should be able to step into said position under any circumstances.
Was getting his first NHL head coaching gig four weeks before preseason ideal for Jared Bednar? Probably not. Did he have enough time to prepare? He should have. His entire coaching career should have been preparation for the dream gig of NHL head coach. Otherwise, why did he interview for and take the job if he didn’t feel ready to step into that role?
Two, Bednar had no hand in making his roster. Patrick Roy enjoyed unheralded power in having say in roster personnel decisions. “Unheralded” means “most other guys don’t get this.” Most NHL coaches — hell, most professional hockey coaches — get handed a roster not of their making.
Was last year’s roster bad? Well, I’m not going to say it was good. However, even in the face of the worst team in franchise history — a Quebec Nordiques team that won only 12 games — the scant few players played well. That didn’t happen last season (more on that below), and that’s at least partially because of coaching.
Three, our sample size is small. Bednar has had only one season of coaching, and under those unideal circumstances named above. I’ll go into greater detail below, but as of right now, Jared Bednar’s NHL coaching record is 22-56-4. Those are numbers. They don’t lie. That’s a 26.8% winning percentage. That’s it. It’s black and white.
Four, Bednar had such great success at lower levels we owe it to him to give him a proper chance. He got hired as an NHL head coach. He got paid as an NHL head coach. He coached. There was his chance, and at what I presume was his dream job.
AHL and ECHL success may help predict how you do in the NHL, but it’s no guarantee. The NHL game is so much faster, and you’re dealing with elite players. The stakes are also higher.
The NHL is the “big league” of hockey. It is the epitome of the sport. No one is owed even one shot at doing something in the big leagues. Certainly no one is owed a “proper” shot at the bigs.
All the success in the lower leagues means nothing to your success in the big leagues. As baseball star Josh Beckett put it, “If I don’t make it to the big leagues, nobody’s going to remember I threw a no-hitter in Double-A.”
As Eminem famously pointed out, “You got one shot, one opportunity.”
One, if that. And Jared Bednar blew his. The above counterarguments are excuses, and excuses also don’t make it in the bigs.
But this post isn’t about how Jared Bednar failed. So let’s move on to how Patrick Roy was a better coach than Bednar.
Patrick Roy’s Record
Patrick Roy’s coaching record is 130-92-24. You can say what you want about why his team went 52-22-8 that first season, or that his team went 39-39-4 his last season, but Roy coached the Colorado Avalanche to a winning record — 52% of their games.
Again, those are numbers. They don’t lie.
Now, let’s get to the objections. First, coach Roy’s Avalanche team won the Central Division with 112 points because goalie Semyon Varlamov played out of his mind, not because of anything Roy did.
Really? One of the, if not the, best goalies ever, a man who had a Hall of Fame career as a goalie, had nothing to do with his goalie’s performance? It had nothing to do with Roy bringing in his own goalie coach, Francoise Allaire?
The other reason commonly given for that stellar Why Not Us season is that the players played beyond their capabilities for the local hero coach. Again, that’s on Roy. He had a stellar playing career, including eight years here in Colorado.
Ok, let’s talk now about that 39-39-4, the 2015-16 season. Raise your hand if you wish the Colorado Avalanche had earned 82 points last year. If your hand’s not up in the air, you’re lying.
That was Patrick Roy’s worst season as a coach, and it betters Jared Bednar’s best season — 22-56-4. Roy’s worst season betters Bednar’s best season by 17 wins and 34 points.
Yes, the team was already on a downward slope under Patrick Roy, going from 112 to 90 to 82 points. If you average the two losses out, though, the team shouldn’t have expected to drop more than 15 points. A 67-point season wouldn’t have seen the Avs make the playoffs, but it would have let them hold their heads a little higher than a 48-point season.
You can point out that Jared Bendar’s sample size — one season — is smaller than Roy’s three. If I was playing hardball, I could point out that Roy’s own rookie NHL season saw the team win 63% of their games — a sight better than Bednar’s 26%. But even if I’m being nice, Roy’s worst season saw the Avs win 47% of their games — still a sight better than 26%.
Didn’t Patrick Roy win some award at the end of the 2013-14 season? Why, I do believe he did, the Jack Adams. It’s the award for coach of the year because he took the team from dead last in the Western Conference to winning the Central Division.
Patrick Roy had a better record than Jared Bednar. He won the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year because he managed his goalie and inspired his players.
More on the players.
Patrick Roy and the Players
In the next slide I’m going to talk about Patrick Roy’s style of coaching, which was as a fiery player’s coach. However, for now, I’m going to put forth something that’s as much a reality as Roy’s versus Bednar’s NHL coaching records. Indeed, the two are likely related.
Patrick Roy coached his best players to either match or exceed their best seasons. Under Jared Bednar, the majority of the core players had some of their worst seasons. And, yeah, I’m going to say it’s coaching.
For reference, Patrick Roy coached from 2013-16. Bednar coached the 2016-17 season.
Center Nathan MacKinnon won the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year during Roy’s first season of coaching with 63 points (24 goals, 39 assists) in 82 games. His second best points-per-game total came during 2015-16 when he earned 52 points (21 goals, 31 assists) in 72 games for .72 points per game. That’s his second best goal scoring year, too.
Center Matt Duchene had his best point year during 2013-14 with 70 (23 goals, 47 assists). He also scored 30 goals for the only time ever during the 2015-16 season under Roy.
Left wing Gabriel Landeskog had his best points total during the 2013-14 year at 65 (26 goals, 39 assists). His second best year was the next at 59 points (23 goals, 36 assists). His third best was the following year at 53 points (20 goals, 33 assists). All under coach Roy.
During the 2013-14 season defenseman Erik Johnson matched his best points year with 39, which was his best points year with the Colorado Avalanche. The following year marks his best goal-scoring year — 12. His third year under Roy was his second-best goal-scoring year, 11.
Most famously, goalie Semyon Varlamov excelled under coach Roy. His best season was 2013-14 when he recorded a 41-14-6 record with a .927 save percentage and 2.58 goals against average. That was good enough for him to be a Vezina Trophy finalist that year.
Nathan MacKinnon had his second-worst year under Jared Bednar. To be fair, his injury-plagued 2014-15 season was marginally worse.
Matt Duchene’s season under Bednar was second worst in his carer, surpassed only by his injury-plagued 2011-12 season.
Gabriel Landeskog had his second-worst points total and worst points-per-game season under Bednar. His worst season was his concussion year, 2012-13.
Erik Johnson had a worse year under Joe Sacco — 0 goals and 4 assists in 31 games. His 17 points in 46 games under Bednar is his second-worst season.
Semyon Varlamov had his worst win percentage (25%), goals against average (3.38) and save percentage (.898) under Bednar. Yes, he was injured. He was injured the previous season, too. His 2015-16 win percentage was 47%, goals against average 2.81, and save percentage .914. He was placed on injured reserve twice with the recurrent groin issue that season.
Even defenseman Tyson Barrie, who wasn’t exactly in the Patrick Roy mold, fared better under Roy. He recorded 53 points (5 goals, 26 assists) the 2014-15 season and 49 points (13 goals, 36 assists) the 2015-16 season. He also scored 13 goals during the 2013-14 season when he was still bouncing back and forth between the NHL and AHL.
Under Bednar, Barrie recorded his worst full season — 38 points (7 goals, 31 assists).
One or two players having a bad season under a coach, as some inevitably did under coach Roy, is normal. When your entire core under-performs in the same season, that’s coaching.
So let’s get into the coaching.
Patrick Roy, the Coach
Patrick Roy was a player’s coach. That’s not the way all former players go, but it’s the way this former goalie chose.
Now, saying he was a player’s coach didn’t mean he was going to sit around and talk about baseball or fishing, the way Nikita Zadorov says Jared Bednar does. To be honest, Roy is famous for being single-minded about hockey — if he were talking about fishing or baseball, he’d probably relate it back to hockey.
Rather, coach Roy always had his players’ backs. In fact, one of the first things Patrick Roy did was coach defenseman Erik Johnson away from the albatross that had been hanging around his neck his entire career — supposedly being a first-overall bust. According to a Denver Post article, Roy said the following:
“I had a great conversation with Erik. Honestly, I’m confident he’s going to have a really good year. The thing is, we’re going to work really hard with him to ‘don’t live in the past.’ It’s now,. Don’t worry about the ‘first overall’ thing. Don’t worry where people say ‘first overall pick’ – it’s over. We want you to be who you are. Erik needs to be Erik Johnson. Go hard, go out there and play his game and be himself. That’s what I want to see from him. We’re going to try and bring a lot of confidence to his game.”
That kind of coaching really helped Johnson come into his own as a player. He matched his best season under coach Roy and even got invited to play for the All Star team. That explains why Johnson declared that he always respected and “loved” playing for coach Roy.
Roy did something similar for Matt Duchene. Duchene started the 2015-16 season in a horrible slump. And while Roy alluded to the slump publicly, he privately took Duchene aside to coach him out of it. Duchene was grateful for the extra attention:
“[Roy] pulled me aside and we watched video; he’s very perceptive in terms of the visual sense, and he helped me return to that foundation to what makes me go and what makes me, me.”
Duchene went on to have an historic November. In 14 games Duchene scored 11 goals and earned 20 points. He was the first Avalanche player to score 11 or more goals in a calendar month since Milan Hejduk did it in February of 2003, so first in 12 years. He also broke Claude Lemieux’s record for scoring goals in November — Lemieux scored 10.
Both Johnson and Duchene attribute their success to coaching, specifically Roy’s coaching.
Patrick Roy also had a strong rapport with his captain, Gabriel Landeskog. Though he wasn’t the one who named the left wing captain, he embraced the youngster’s status. According to both the two were in constant contact about what the players needed from Roy. And Patrick was always very supportive of Landeskog’s leadership:
Related Story: Coach Roy Praises Captain Landeskog
Landeskog returned the respect. During an interview with NHL.com, the captain talked about what it meant for Roy to be a player’s coach:
“Usually players are used to coaches being a little distant and you almost have to tip-toe around them a little bit. With Patrick, it’s the other way around. He comes in and hangs out in the players’ lounge, chit-chats with us, shoots the [breeze], all that kind of stuff. “
All of that was magnified by the fact that the man “shooting the breeze” was a Hall of Famer with four Stanley Cup rings, three Conn Smythe trophies and a legendary reputation in Colorado. Landeskog remarked that players felt comfortable around coach Roy and appreciated earning his respect because of the greatness of his career. He added:
“You realize he’s a regular guy despite all the Conn Smythes and the Cup rings and all of that. A lot of guys were intimidated at first. I mean, who wouldn’t be when Patrick Roy is your coach? For him to come in and act like an equal with us, just come in and hang out with us, chit-chat with us, I think is something that has certainly brought us together as a team.”
During the interview, Landeskog also talked about Patrick Roy’s coaching style:
“I think it’s hard to pinpoint one thing, but there are a few things that he’s made so clear to all of us. He’s in this together with us. It’s a partnership. It’s not coach vs. players. We’re all in this together and he made that really clear from the beginning. I think other than that, he’s a very good teacher and knows how to get messages through to his players and knows how to interact with his players. He’s certainly earned the trust and respect that any coach needs for his players to work hard for him.”
Landeskog elaborates in the video below:
I think there can be no question that coach Roy set the bar high. He certainly expected his players to perform their best. And he held them accountable to that performance. However, he did so in the locker room — rarely in the media.
Concerning player commentary on coaches, here’s what Nikita Zadorov said about Jared Bednar (translated from Russian):
“Yes, these are two completely different people. I could not go up to Patrick, talk about some extraneous things, and in general, once again it is better not to ask him anything. There’s no such barrier with Jared. I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad, but it’s true. Our head coach loves baseball, constantly trying to bring analogies from this sport, and it’s impressive. It can be seen that people live in sports.”
That’s pretty nice. It’s also obvious he was intimidated by coach Roy, who had sent him down to the minors more than once.
Here’s what Erik Johnson had to say about Bednar’s coaching:
“If you look at the way our season’s gone, something has to change. Whether that’s players, or systems, or whatever.”
I know you all don’t consider it damning evidence. However, Johnson is ever careful about what he says — and doesn’t say. The fact that he even hints that coaching might have been a problem with Bednar really is damning.
Next, let’s look at how Patrick Roy showed that he was a player’s coach — a fiery player’s coach. Of course, we all remember how he famously showed he’d go to bat — or blows — for his players:
That certainly was a show to make the players understand he had their backs. He was on their side. However, it was also a show. Patrick Roy understood the crowds had expectations of him, too. And he always put on a show of his fire and passion for the game.
Here’s another example of Roy seeming to lose it, toward the end of his tenure as head coach of the Colorado Avalanche:
At the time, many reporters thought he’d legitimately lost his mind. However, I could see the same showmanship in that angry exchange with the officials as I saw in his pushing down the partition.
Bednar, on the other hand, is “stoic” behind the bench. I personally think he looks confused and a little worried:
But we can go with stoic.
Finally, Patrick Roy was a master at handling the media, too. Here’s an example (3:29 mark):
That was Patrick Roy standing up for one of his players against the media, in this case goalie Calvin Pickard. Watch how he forces the reporter to backpedal with a stare and a simple question, “Why?” Then he smiles and relaxes — and everyone in the room breathes a sigh of relief.
Here’s another example of how he could show charm with his steely demeanor (2:58 mark):
That was part of what made him such a great showman — the fire countered with gentility.
Conversely, this is how Jared Bednar handles his media:
First of all, props to Bednar that he wears his suit jacket while Roy strips down to his shirtsleeves. Of course, Bednar looks uncomfortable is said jacket — he fidgets and just generally looks unsure of himself. That’s a huge difference from the confident Patrick Roy, whose pressers above were also after losses.
Related Story: Alternate Patrick Roy Reality
Related Story: Final Word on Why Roy Left
Related Story: Roy Had No Beef With Duchene
I have one more post planned, but it’s of a more personal nature. Therefore, I’m going to share the dancing horses with your now:
I hope that was worth the wait.
Next: Patrick Roy was a Hockey Expert
In the end, Patrick Roy coached better than Jared Bednar. His record was better. He got more out of his players. Player testimonials are better. He was a better showman. Any counterargument is based on excuses — and there’s no room for excuses in the big time.
A final word: This is my last comparison of Patrick Roy and Jared Bednar. No future posts will be a criticism of Bednar because he isn’t coach Roy. They will be a criticism because he is coach Bednar — and I find coach Bednar seriously lacking on his own “merit.”