The Washington Capitals fired Head Coach Bruce Boudreau this morning, just two days after his team suffered their 7th loss in their last 10 games. After a franchise record setting 7-0-0 start to the season, the Caps finally looked like the cup contending team their fans had been hoping for, but it didn’t last long. Throughout the month of November, the Caps have won only 5 of 13 games. According to General Manager George McPhee, “The reason for the change was we weren’t winning, obviously, and this wasn’t a slump, you can ride out slumps. This was simply a case of the players were no longer responding to Bruce.”
If you watched last year’s HBO Special, Penguins/Capitals: Road to the Winter Classic, then you probably aren’t shocked by this news. After all, Boudreau had a very….let’s just call it “unique”, method of communicating. Warning: this videos contains some crude language:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXkGJtY4A4E[/youtube]
Boudreau led the Caps to four division titles, but never beyond the second round of the playoffs. He is being replaced by former Capitals’ great Dale Hunter, who unlike Boudreau, will probably give Alex Ovechkin the playing time he deserves. Hunter’s number (#32) was retired by the Capitals on March 11, 2000 after he played with the club from 1987-1999. He went on to become the co-owner and Coach of the OHL’s London Knights, where he remained for 11 seasons until he got the call on Sunday to be Washington’s new Head Coach. Hunter is the fastest coach in OHL history to record 300 and 400 career wins. The hope is that he will be able to command respect from this uber-talented team and lead them to the title that they are very capable of achieving.
Sorry Bruce, see you around…or not. Probably not.
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