Same as it ever was: like so many other teams, Colorado is learning that bringing in a new coach might not be the cure-all it seems - coach Bob Hartley replaced with Tony Granato

Hockey Digest, April, 2003 by Adrian Dater

YOU'RE EXCITED TO RIP OPEN the new dieting packet when it arrives. This time, no doubt, you will lose the excess weight--all of it Two weeks into the diet, you're being asked, "What's up, skinny?" Life is good.

Two months later, your pants are tight again and there are no more skinny questions. Things are right back to the way they were.

The same kind of thing usually happens when NHL teams change coaches. Prior to the Colorado Avalanche's firing of Bob Hartley on December 18, 2002, 12 NHL coaches had been canned since the start of the 2001-02 season. And while there was usually a short-term bump in the standings under a new coach, everything eventually leveled out Through December 18, 2002, those 12 teams had won only 4396 of their games since making the coaching changes.

All Hartley did in his first four years on the job in Denver was go to the Western Conference finals four times and win a Stanley Cup. In fact, his won-lost record over his first four seasons was better than that of any other coach in NHL history.

But this season Hartley found it harder to motivate a roster full of stars, guiding Colorado to a 10-894 record entering what would be his final day of work for the Avalanche. Citing a lack of passion in the team's play, general manager Pierre Lacroix fired Hartley a week before Christmas and replaced him with assistant Tony Granato.

For the first nine games after the move, Lacroix and Granato looked like Genius I and Genius II. The team went 6-2-0-1, and puck pundits everywhere declared, "Lacroix does it again!" and "The Avs are back!" And then? A famous Talking Heads refrain sums up what happened next: Same as it ever was.

After game No. 14 of the Granato regime, a dispiriting 4-2 home loss to the hated Detroit Red Wings, Colorado's post-Hartley record was 7-6-0-1. The local pundits were practically calling for Granato's head, with one Denver columnist comparing him unfavorably to the rookie coach of the last-place Denver Nuggets. Ouch!

But such a plight comes as no surprise to anyone who monitors how NHL teams fare in the long run under new coaches. Bad habits are hard to break, as Colorado under Granato has demonstrated.

The problems for the Avalanche this season can be easily summed up: terrible penalty killing, average goaltending, and a glaring lack of finish among the forwards on the Pepsi Center ice. That, and a severe case of what Avalanche players lament as Murphy's Law. "I've never seen a case like we've had where every mistake we make is in our net," veteran defenseman Adam Foote says.

Case in point: With the score tied 2-2 in the third period of a January 16 game vs. Detroit, Joe Sakic made a pass back to Foote. Routine play, right? Not exactly. Foote was heading to the bench on a line change when the pass was made, and he knew that because teammate Greg de Vries already had jumped over the boards to replace him, if he touched the puck the Avs would have been called for a penalty for having too many men on the ice.

Detroit's Brendan Shanahan picked up the puck in Colorado's zone and beat Patrick Roy(!) with a routine-looking wrist shot from the left circle to the far post. Game over. The Avs lose their fourth in a row at home, fall to 7-94-2 at "The Can," and are still mired in fourth place in the fiefdom formerly known to them as the Northwest Division.

"Right when it happened, I said, `Here we go,'" Sakic says. "It's just been like that all year for us."

The Avalanche's motto before the season was PURSUING HISTORY, as a ninth consecutive division championship would have set an NHL record, besting Montreal's mark from 1975-82. By February, the unofficial motto had changed to PURSUING EIGHTH PLACE.

Even Lacroix, usually dismissive of any criticism of his team, sounds resigned to this being a year when championship expectations may be deflated. While the longtime GM insists this year's version of the Avalanche is "the best team we've ever had," he acknowledges it has looked a long way off from being able to win its third Stanley Cup in eight seasons.

"For these proud guys, with these guys on whom I've created all these high expectations for eight years, maybe it's draining us right now. I don't know," Lacroix told The Denver Post. "It's like any other business. It's harder to stay on top. That's no doubt. Every year it's harder and harder. When you create such high expectations, you face reality more and more every year."

At the time of Hartley's firing, Avalanche players all but admitted they had tuned out his messages, saying they had grown tired of his rigid, disciplined ways.

"Bob was an old-school coach," says Colorado veteran right wing Mike Keane, who didn't exactly see eye to eye with a previous old-schooler, Ken Hitchcock, on the Dallas Stars. "He was very demanding. It's not that Bob didn't do his job--he did. But maybe after a while, things just don't work anymore."

Enter Granato--only two years removed from a distinguished playing career--who said he would bring a loose, relaxed philosophy with him into the dressing room. Granato was known as a nice guy off the ice but a fierce (some said dirty) player on the ice. The former Wisconsin Badger wants his team to be one that works hard on the job but tries to have a little fun, too.