Everybody Hates Barry

Apparently hiring Barry Melrose is just about the most egregious sin an NHL club can commit these days. I was under the impression that a guy who has excelled at every level at which he has coached would be the ideal candidate for an opening behind the bench. I was also under the impression that in this day and age, society could move past stereotypes about people who prefer their hairstyle to include equal parts business and party. Clearly my assumptions are way off base.

Barry guided his Medicine Hat Tigers to the Memorial Cup in 1988. Then, after landing himself a job in the AHL with the Adirondack Red Wings, he mentored the club to three consecutive playoff appearances, the third of which ended with a Calder Cup championship and a call from the Los Angeles Kings to take the coaching reigns.

This part of the story is what the majority of people are familiar with. The Kings, despite losing Wayne Gretzky for a substantial chunk of the year due to injury, finished a respectable 6th in the Western Conference and marched their way through the playoffs to the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals only to fall to Patrick Roy and the Bleu, Blanc et Rouge.

Two sub-par seasons later--ones riddled with shoddy goaltending and lackluster team defense--and Melrose was done with the Kings; and coaching in the NHL period. The resume, even with the somewhat gamey portion toward the end, still says qualified NHL head coach to me.

Now, with the announcement that Melrose will officially be the next coach of the Lightning, every hockey writer with access to a Macbook, a working internet connection and urbandictionary.com to find synonyms for the word "mullet" has used the opportunity to take shots at the guy.

[IMullet n. - A hairstyle in which the front is short, but the back is long, left wild and often uncut. See also: Tennessee Top Hat, Canadian Passport and the Achy-Breaky-Mistakey]

The Hockey News' Ken Campbell is one such writer lobbing volleys at the newly-hired skipper. Ken holds back no punches in his analysis of the hiring:

"Apparently new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie felt it was a good idea to replace a Stanley Cup winning coach with a guy who not only hasn't coached a game in the NHL for 13 years, but was one who had a mediocre .449 winning percentage in just three seasons of NHL experience in the first place.



"Yup, that's got success written aaaaall over it, doesn't it?



"I don't care how good a coach Melrose was when he was behind the bench for the Los Angeles Kings back when mullets were stylish. I don't care how much hockey he has watched and how closely he has been connected to the game through his job as an analyst for ESPN. The game has passed him by."

Oh, when you use extra letters in a word, that means you're being sarcastic. Let me jot that down. Ex...tra lett..ers means... sarcasm. Got it.

Okay, I'm a jackass. Maybe less of an unintelligent, immature response would be a bit more appropriate. I'll give that a shot.

How many "Old Guard" coaches have been hired by a team, done a far-shittier job than Barry did in those last few seasons in L.A., and still got another shot at leading a squad? If they get a second chance in the recycled coach carousel of the past decade plus--another topic I want to hit upon sometime soon--why shouldn't this guy get another look? Despite my asinine comments, he deserves one.

Who's to say that the game hasn't passed by Mike Keenan or the countless other names on that list of members in the Old Boy Club? He's seemingly been coaching since somewhere around the advent of the forward pass (give or a take a few years), and despite his lengthy list of achievements, the last time he had anything better than marginal success was over ten years ago. The game can still pass you by even while you're still immersed in it, yet, if he were the man up for the Tampa job, would guys like Ken Campbell be ripping the notion to shreds? Not a chance.

As far as John Tortorella not deserving the ax, when a team gets bounced from the playoffs in abrupt fashion for two straight years and then wins the distinct honor of being the absolute worst in the NHL--yes, worse than the abysmal Islanders, Thrashers and Kings despite having two of the best, er, best-paid forwards in the game on its roster for most of the year--there has to be accountability somewhere. After a while even the loudest mouth can be tuned out, but it's really much more difficult to ignore the loud mouth wearing pinstripes and sporting a mullet. It was time for a change. Good luck Barry, you've got plenty of people to prove wrong.

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