Don Waddell has already hired 2 full-time head coaches.
One of Waddell's first tasks at the helm of the Blue Jackets was firing then-head coach Pascal Vincent. Vincent took over the team after the previous summer saw them fumble their head coaching hire so badly, that they didn't even get to their first practice before firing him.
Of course, the band-aid fix that was Vincent went down in a blaze of glory. He was clearly instructed to bring the hammer, and acted as a heavy hand; ripping away any creativity from the team offensively and driving them into playing more responsible hockey.
The result? By mid-season, the team was so bad that they fired General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen, in direct part because of this whole coaching fiasco. They would go on to finish the season with the fourth-worst record in the NHL, 10 points clear of any other team in the Eastern Conference.
We should not have been surprised, then, that the organization hired a GM to come in and continue to tune this team into a low event group that plays responsible hockey. Clearly, that was the directive coming from the top of the organization down. In came Waddell.
Oddly, after meeting with the coach who was seemingly instructed to do the exact same thing he was here to do (take away the free-flowing hockey); he decided to make a change behind the bench. To replace Vincent, he hired a more player friendly coach in Dean Evason.
But, maybe strangest of all, the guy who coached this team's defense corps (Steve McCarthy) was retained. Joining them was one of the "old guard"; with Mike Haviland brought aboard to coach the team's offense.
Nothing says high octane offense like a 57 year old who hadn't coached in the NHL in 12 years, am I right?!
So, we should not have been surprised when this all went down like the Hindenburg. A spectacular flaming explosion, for clarity. After all, traditionally, Evason is known as a guy who lets his assistants do a lot of the heavy lifting from a day-to-day perspective.
The issue with Evason and his staff is that there didn't seem to be any cohesion from the beginning. They disconnected with the players, and it was all set up to fail. As the team sputtered through the first half of last season, a change was inevitable. Which leads us to Waddell's second hiring.
Has the Rick Bowness band-aid fallen off?
In January, with the team buried near the bottom of the Eastern Conference, Waddell fired Evason and McCarthy; replacing them with Rick Bowness. The team responded immediately, giving us a month of some of the best hockey in franchise history.
The Olympic break crushed that momentum, and the team petered out after peaking at second place in the Metropolitan Division. They won just two of their last 11 games, ultimately missing the playoffs yet again, and causing Bowness to go on a post-season tirade about this team's culture.
That tirade, combined with his return as head coach of this team this season, probably cost them Kirill Marchenko. It may also wind up costing them Zach Werenski, which means it's only a matter of time before some of the other talent on this roster starts looking for a fresh start.
After all, can we really blame them for not wanting to be publicly hammered by the 71-year-old head coach after every loss? Maybe worse, it's all but guaranteed that they will have another head coach next season. How many guys are signing up for that?
Consider this: Adam Fantilli has already seen four different full-time head coaches. He's 22 years old.
The general rule of thumb for NHL GMs is three head coaches. Waddell has already hired two, and it looks like this team is already in line for a third. How many more cracks at the whip does he get? We'll see. But in my opinion, the seat that should be getting warm is his own.
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