Celebrated yesterday, fired today – the fate of top sports coaches

Eternal glory? puff! Sometimes when exposed to sunlight, it fades even faster than water stains. The realization is yet another reminder of the recent firings of NHL coaches.

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Jim Montgomery is no longer the head coach of the Boston Bruins. A mixed start to the season has seen four defeats in the past five games cost the 55-year-old his job.

It's also a great thing because it shows how ruthless top sport can be. In 2023, Montgomery won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's best coach. Dave Hakstall (Seattle Kraken) and Lindy Love (New Jersey Devils) were nominated alongside him, but have since lost their jobs as well. Again: Just a year and a half after the award was given, three of the best coaches in the league at the time were all fired.

Lindy Ruff coaches Nico Hischier (left) and Timo Meier in New Jersey.Image: trapezoid

In the 2022/23 season, Jim Montgomery led the Bruins to victory in the regular season; no team had ever scored more than him before. But Boston failed in the first round of the playoffs and was eliminated in the second round last season. The Bruins are high on trade volume after signing center Elias Lindholm and guard Nikita Zadorov this summer. But they didn't live up to expectations: just eight wins in 20 games was not what TD Garden expected.

Coach becomes scapegoat

First celebrated, then dismissed. Once things don't go well, all the past successes will no longer be of any use to the coach if too many failures become the final straw.

This is especially painful for those affected who are supposedly powerless to do anything. The goalie with the puck sliding between his legs? Or in another sport: a football player misses an empty goal in the 92nd minute? Do referees have tomatoes in their eyes? Everything was going to happen, but it was just stupid timing on the coach's part and he lost a game because of it.

Six months later, Marco Schällibaum's tenure at GC came to an end.Image: trapezoid

Marco Schällibauum experienced this recently. The 62-year-old is stuck in a quagmire with Grasshopper and his coaching chair is crumbling. But he might have survived if the referee and VAR hadn't invented a handball that no one saw except them. So Lucerne was awarded a penalty, making the score 2-0, GC was unable to react, and Shalibaum lost his job.

The balance between success and development

Almost without exception, people talk about the weakest link in the chain, and it's easier to change a coach than an entire squad. The coach becomes the scapegoat and, in extreme cases, must leave so that his boss can buy a few weeks off.

Things went terribly wrong when the coach's employer took up the training club business. Then he should promote inexperienced talent, but also be successful. It's a balancing act that's difficult to master. Developing players and reaping the fruits of that work years later? Or do you want to fight tooth and nail for short-term success so you can still have a job on Monday?

As more and more money is involved in elite sport, short-term results often seem more important than long-term vision. Because if you have a lot less money after downgrading, how do you implement it? When results fall short, the coach becomes a lightning rod.

Pressure from all aspects

Mid- to long-term success requires a particularly strong leadership team that can support and defend the coach even during difficult phases. Then at least the coach has one less thing to worry about because he has to constantly protect himself from all aspects and be able to communicate well. He has to explain to a lot of players why they are only substitutes. Every decision was openly judged: the team was set up poorly, positioned incorrectly, changed too late, showed too little or too much emotion on the front lines.

The bigger the club, the greater the pressure on the coach. This resulted in Ottmar Hitzfeld becoming exhausted and others complaining of their own exhaustion. Jurgen Klopp took a conscious break after calling time on his Liverpool career in the summer.

Rafe was only gone six weeks

Part of a trainer's maximum salary is compensation. But the job can't be so bad that not many trainers will turn their backs on the circus and completely reposition themselves.

Lindy Ruff won the Coach of the Year award in 2006, as did Jim Montgomery, who has now been sent to the desert in Boston in 2023. Love, 64, still enjoys the job, even though he has been the head coach in the world's best hockey league since 1997. Love took over the Buffalo Sabres' reins in just six weeks after New Jersey released him in March 2024.

Finally, the stories of Jim Montgomery, Lindy Ruff and Dave Hakstall show how quickly success can be forgotten at the top level of sport. Coaching remains one of the toughest positions in sports: It's a high-stakes game, where the next failure often has a bigger impact and rarely results in lasting recognition.