Colorado Avalanche Must Take a Pass on Joel Quenneville

Because the current coaching staff of the Colorado Avalanche is adequate, the team cannot profit from the coaching gems recently made available.

The Colorado Avalanche cannot hire Joel Quenneville.

The Chicago Blackhawks made the surprising announcement this morning that they had parted ways with coach Quenneville, who had previously led them to three Stanley Cup victories. The team was off to a 6-6-3 start after having missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade last year. In all, Quenneville has coached teams to 18 seasons’ worth of playoff appearances and those three Cup victories.

Quenneville also spent three seasons with the Avalanche. From 2005-08 he coached them to a 131-92-23 record, which included two playoff appearances.

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And Colorado can’t capitalize on this sudden treasure being available. The Colorado Avalanche need Joel Quenneville. We should all want coach Q in Colorado. But we can’t have him.

Because our current coach, Jared Bednar, has done a good job of staying out of the top line’s and Semyon Varlamov’s way while those four men carry the team through the rebuild.

To be clear: I think Bednar has done next to nothing to actually promote the rebuild. I think for a former ECHL and AHL coach, Bednar has a surprising lack of respect for young talent. He certainly does very little to develop it if the talent doesn’t take over on its own.

His systems are fine. Are they better than Quenneville’s, though? Obviously not, or the Avalanche wouldn’t be using Chicago as one of their models for patterning the team after.

But… Bednar hasn’t done anything worth firing over. The top line and some stellar goal tending have gotten the Colorado Avalanche off to a 7-4-3 start. And in the NHL, there’s enough talent lying around that you can cobble something together most nights to make a serviceable game.

Counter that to Quenneville. He had a couple stars of his own and a great goalie — all of whom were hogging a lot of the salary cap. Every year he, too, had to take the young talent lying around and cobble together something. He crafted the young talent into Cup-contending teams every year.

Just think what he could do with our young talent.

In addition to Joel Quenneville, the Blackhawks also released Kevin Dineen and Ulf Samuellsson. I remember the latter from my (pre-Avalanche) days as a Penguins fan. He was their Adam Foote. Boy, I’d love to have him working with our young blueliners. He’d have Ian Cole back on the second pairing where he belongs while the captain of the blueline, Erik Johnson, took back over on the top pairing. That’s what you do when you know how to evaluate talent — you put it to best use.

It’s Kevin Dineen I’m eyeballing there, though. He’s a good enough NHL coach that the Colorado Avalanche were considering him for the head coaching spot before offering it to Bednar. If he could slide in as assistant here… boy, that would be a stacked coaching staff.

Well, we already know that. No one ever claimed the Blackhawks were a badly coached team. They had some injury issues and that salary cap situation. And, as I pointed out, they were hardly off to a bad start this season.

Next. Open Letter to Bednar. dark

This is so frustrating. The Colorado Avalanche have a chance to significantly improve the team, and they can’t take it. As much as I disdain what Bednar is doing right now, he hasn’t been egregious enough in his errors to warrant firing — it would be too much of a disruption for a team that’s sailing along in the MGM line’s wake.

Time will tell, though. When players like Tyson Jost and Martin Kaut don’t pan out, some of us at least will know it could have been a different story.

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