Could There Be A Lot of GM and Coaching Changes This Season?
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Steve Kouleas and Martin Biron and was asked about other potential management and coaching changes around the NHL. Pagnotta does not believe we will see that unless things really fall off for some teams.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
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Martin Biron: “Let me ask you this. It’s not just only for the Buffalo Sabers, but other teams that are going to look and say, You know what, we may have to make a change at GM, and that usually is not as talked about as much as coaching changes. But who’s out there that is saying, I want to be a GM. I was a GM. I wanted to come back. Who are some of the candidates for other teams as well in the NHL, to say if we were to make a GM change, these name games would be available?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Well, Marty, I mean, that’s a great question. And I think there are a lot of up-and-coming managerial figures that are starting to gain a little bit of, or at least more attention at those ranks. And when you’re looking at the different potential, you’re looking at guys that they’ve either been in an AGM role for a while or there’s someone who is starting to make those next steps.
Scott Melanby, for example, was up there for some time still as part of consideration for any GM vacancy that were out there; he’d certainly still be kind of part of that mix for those moving forward. You have others who are kind of in that boat and have had experience before, like Jason Botterill, for example.
So I don’t, I don’t necessarily get the sense that we’re going to see any significant change. I mean, Buffalo really has been the only one that I had heard of since going back to the offseason. And even from a coaching perspective, guys I know every year, we always talk about coaches and teams get off to shaky starts, and that’s where we got to throw the hammer to.
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We had so many coaching changes last season. I don’t know how much we’re going to really see this year, unless maybe everything just totally falls out of the bottom of the Pittsburgh Penguins and they’re left with nothing else.
Maybe it’s a guy like Mike Sullivan who gets scooped up somewhere else relatively quickly. But I don’t really get that sense on either side either on the bench or up top in the boardroom, that were inching towards that outside of what I heard out of Buffalo.”
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