With Beverley as coach, the Leafs were doomed

Sporting News, The, May 6, 1996 by Larry Wigge

When Maple Leafs coach Nick Beverley guaranteed his team would win Game 5 and return to St. Louis last Saturday, he also guaranteed his team would not win the series because it was clear he had lost control of his players.

It's OK for Jimmy Johnson or Joe Namath or Mark Messier to guarantee victories because they can back up their words. But Beverley was speaking and spitting at reporters in desperation after a Game 4 loss in St. Louis.

The Maple Leafs staved off elimination with a 5-4 overtime victory over the Blues in Game 5 on veteran right wing Mike Gartner s third goal of the game. But as Beverley ranted and raved two nights earlier about the officiating and called his players "nimrods" for their lack of effort, he knew he had lost control of the team at a time when coaches earn their pay, when they can make a big, big difference.

Gartner, Doug Gilmour, Kirk Muller and Wendel Clark rolled their eyes and shook their heads when they heard Beverley's prediction. The truth is, it wasn't the Toronto players who lost the little battles in a series in which four of the six games were decided by one goal and three games went into overtime. Beverley wasn't equipped to be behind the bench trying to match wits with Blues coach Mike Keenan.

"That was the difference in the series," Maple Leafs goaltender Felix Potvin said after the final game. "Glenn Anderson ends up on the ice and scores the winning goal in overtime in Game 3, and tonight it was Stephen Leach."

That's right. Stephen Leach had replaced Geoff Courtnall on a line with Peter Zezel and Anderson. He ricocheted a shot off the skate of Toronto defenseman Dave Ellett past Potvin for the winning goal four minutes into the third period of Game 6 to clinch the series.

Premonition? No, it was a case of Keenan knowing his players and having a perfect read on the game.

"This is the time of the year when a great coach can win a lot of games for you with one little twist in the game plan," Blues captain Wayne Gretzky says. "I can't tell you how much I wanted to be out there in the third period, but Mike knew my line wasn't getting the job done and Peter Zezel's line was.

"Mike isn't the greatest at Xs and O's, but I've never seen anyone except maybe Scotty Bowman and Glen Sather any better at reading the flow of the game, matching lines and having the right guys out there in the key situations."

The fact is you can't take a guy off the street and make a coach out of him. Beverley, the team's director of player personnel, never wanted to coach after Pat Burns was fired with 21 games left. Still, he took the job and did OK down the stretch. But a guy who hadn't coached in a decade and never got higher than the American Hockey League was simply out of his league in the playoffs.

Just look around to see what is happening to teams with coaches who couldn't coach their way out of a paper bag. The Capitals' Jim Schoenfeld, the Lightning's Terry Crisp and the Flames' Pierre Page were in over their heads and resorted to pumping up their players, telling them they would win if they worked harder and played tougher. Wrong! This isn't the Christians vs. the lions, although it seemed that way if you watched the mugging by the Capitals, Lightning and Flames.

Every team works hard in the playoffs. The teams that win have a man behind the bench who can create a good technical game plan, then be flexible enough to adjust to whatever the other team throws at him. Ranting and raving and making a spectacle of oneself, as Schoenfeld did at the end of Game 5 when he was escorted off the ice against the Penguins, is a sign of desperation. That's not a part of the curriculum in Coaching 101.

Trouble Bru-in

First-year coach Steve Kasper is toast, if the comments of Bruins general manager Harry Sinden after Boston was eliminated by the Panthers in five games can be taken seriously.

"We were wrong on our analysis of Al Iafrate," Sinden says. "We were wrong in what we thought about Cam Neely, Kevin Stevens and the coach. You can't make that many mistakes and hope to be successful."

Iafrate missed the season with a knee injury he aggravated in training camp. Neely returned on a one-way contract with injury problems a part of his past, and he missed the stretch run with a hip injury that could end his career. Stevens was obtained in an offseason trade from the Penguins, but the hope he could revive his career at home in Boston never materialized and he eventually was traded to Los Angeles.

That Sinden cannot do much about those problems is moot. But he can do something about Kasper. Don't be surprised to see assistant general manager Mike O'Connell behind the bench next season.

O Canada

First it was Calgary; then Toronto and Vancouver were ousted from the playoffs. Then, Winnipeg and Montreal were eliminated. Thus, the second round of the playoffs has no Canadian teams for the first time in 21 years.

"We're definitely at a disadvantage in signing players--our own and free agents from other teams--because of the 35 to 40 percent difference between the U.S. and Canadian dollar," Flames coach Pierre Page says. "A couple of years ago, we lost Al MacInnis because of dollars, and this year it was Phil Housley and Joe Nieuwendyk. That hurts."