Elliotte Friedman broke the news today. The Toronto Maple Leafs have hired Manny Malhotra as their assistant coach, thereby denying ex-Caps bench boss Bruce Boudreau of getting job with his old favorite team.
Losing his chance at the Leafs job plus the Caps position going to Peter Laviolette. That’s a bummer… but also an opportunity!
The Capitals should hire Bruce Boudreau to be their new assistant coach.
Which assistant coach? Don’t know! Haven’t thought that hard about this yet! I just had the idea a minute ago and I started typing and I didn’t stop until you right before you started reading this.
Boudreau and his lovely wife Crystal recently moved back to Hershey, Pennsylvania, so he’s basically local. And we know he’s hungry for a job.
“I don’t like sitting on my ass,” Boudreau told The Athletic back in February. “I need to work.”
Quick point of order: Bruce Boudreau is one of the most successful coaches in NHL history. The chart below shows every coach from worst-ish (Adam Oates) to consensus best-ever (Scotty Bowman, so far at top-right you cannot see his name).
Boudreau is a good distance above the gray-line crowd here, meaning he’s won a lot more (567) of the games he’s coached (984). A points percentage of 64 puts him just 0.7 points behind Todd Reir– okay, never mind.
Let me start over.
I’m not even advocating for Bruce Boudreau as head coach. Job’s taken. I think he should just be an assistant. It’s a perfect match for his skill set.
Boudreau obviously excels at being a good hockey coach and being avuncular. Where he falls short is doing angry hockey yelling convincingly.
That’s fine though. The Capitals have already hired their disciplinarian in Peter Laviolette, who is so very good at hockey yelling. (Warning: Lavs does cusses here.)
That makes me want to run into a goddamn wall. The way he uses glottal compression on the F-bombs. Immaculate. Boudreau could never touch that. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need to. He just needs to be the cool uncle who sneaks an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream into Jakub’s dish because he’s been such a good nephew on this road trip.
Again: I have no idea what he’d actually do. I’m just making this up. Maybe they should keep Blaine Forsythe around to remain a fire tornado of sexual charisma behind the bench, and Bruce can take on defensive responsibilities. He actually pulled off some excellent defensive play with the Wild.
Friends: in these uncertain times, now more than ever, we all are reaching out for something familiar and comforting. Bruce Boudreau is both of those things, plus he’s good at coaching and he lives nearby and he needs a job. Bruce wins (job), the Caps win (wins), and we win (fun). This is a win-win-win. The only way this could possibly go wrong — and I’m reaching here — would be if Boudreau holds out for a head coach somewhere else to get fired.
Bruce Boudreau was informed this morning that the Leafs were going in a different direx. Former #mnwild coach talked to Sheldon Keefe twice.
Boudreau still wants to be a head coach, so if there are coaching changes next season, he’ll be hoping to go somewhere and provide a jolt https://t.co/werCgfQm9n
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) September 17, 2020
But when has that ever happened.
Please bring Uncle Bruce back to DC.
Thanks for reading. You can go now.
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