For a man so beleaguered in recent months, Toronto Maple Leafs’ Head Coach Ron Wilson had quite the spring in his step after the Leafs’ 4–2 win over the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night.
Perhaps the reason Wilson was so chipper that night was that he had just returned to a building he had coached at for many years, to beat his former team, the Sharks, for his 600th career win. In a sport like hockey, 600 wins for a coach is a true milestone, and any win — but especially a milestone one — against a former team is even sweeter.
The Leafs found themselves on a four-game winning streak, and good for five out of six games (or 10 out of 12 possible points in the standings) since the beginning of 2011. That, surely, brought some relief to Wilson, a man whose job security is openly debated several times a week.
Although in the immediate aftermath of Wilson’s 600th victory it might seem a bit silly to try to objectively review his tenure as coach, it’s hard to resist, especially given the vitriol with which Wilson has been (often unfairly) attacked.
It’s true that, on the whole, his time in Toronto has been unspectacular. It’s no overstatement to say that the vast majority of Wilson’s career wins have come elsewhere. He’s never made the playoffs — or, really, come all that close to making the playoffs in Toronto — and it doesn’t seem like that will change this year.
But folks who hammered Wilson for all of these faults forget one crucial thing: his mandate right now is to develop, not to win immediately.
The Leafs are not supposed to be a winning team (and despite the win streak to start the year, no one whose opinion mattered seriously believed otherwise), so it seems more than a little ridiculous to hold their coach up to that standard.
Coaches in professional sports are always in a difficult position. When things are going badly, you can’t fire the entire team, so the one guy who is “in charge” becomes the easiest target for criticism. But the fact is, Wilson has never made a bad turnover (at least not in a Leafs uniform), missed an open net, or let in a soft goal. Lots of players on the Leafs have done all of those things many, many times this year.
There are some amongst Wilson’s detractors who have genuine, solid hockey criticisms of specific instances where he could have done more to assert the little real influence that coaches have to better the team. Those people are amongst the minority, though. Most people who call for Wilson’s head do so out of frustration and anger, and he happens to be a convenient target.
So, the next time you call for another coach to lose their job ask yourself — what are the roots of the underlying problems, and will the next guy really do that much better?
