They Don't Know Jack (Adams)

There was a curious line this morning in Jack Todd's celebration of Montreal's regular season conference championship: "Claude Julien has every reason to coach for revenge, and he should give Guy Carbonneau a battle for the Jack Adams Trophy." The curiosity doesn't come from Julien's name being associated with coach of the year honors, as he willed an injury-plagued and offensively challenged Bruins team to the postseason. Rather, it comes from the notion that Carbonneau is the prohibitive favorite for the Jack Adams.

Like many others, I was completely wrong on Carbo's abilities as a head coach prior to this season. His system matched the personnel to perfection in Montreal, and his decisions regarding that personnel were uniformly correct. Winning the East when The Hockey News has your team 13th in the conference before the season is no small feat. Carbonneau's peers have acknowledged this: TSN polled 27 of 30 NHL coaches, and 11 of them cast their lots for the Habs bench boss:

Guy Carbonneau, Mon 11
Mike Babcock, Det 7
Bruce Boudreau, Was 2
Claude Julien, Bos 2
Barry Trotz, Nas 2

According to the coaches, the Jack Adams Award appears to be as much a non-competitive slam dunk as we assume the Hart Trophy will be now that Ovechkin's in the postseason. But other cases can be made in this race; and all due respect to Carbonneau, they're pretty damn compelling.

Looking at the Canadiens' roster, if nothing else Montreal is a talent-laden team that's ahead of schedule, with nine players born after 1984 contributing to the effort. That's not to diminish Carbo's performance in creating the most balanced and effective team in the conference; it's more like sitting down at a casino table with a fresh deck and drawing Blackjack on the second hand.

I thought about the "stacked deck" theory when I saw only two of 27 coaches felt Bruce Boudreau merited the Jack Adams for leading the Capitals from lottery fodder to the Southeast Division title. It's rather easy for those that aren't watching the games or tracking box scores to assume that Ovechkin put the team on his back and carried it to the postseason. The reality is that Boudreau's 37-17-7 record has more to do with his ability to remedy to team's two greatest dysfunctions -- special teams play and team defense in front of the goaltender -- than its does with Ovechkin's heroics. He could have scored 80 goals; if Boudreau doesn't figure out a way to activate the grunts that Glen Hanlon failed to motivate, the Capitals are on the outside looking in. There's no way he's not a top candidate for the award.

Barry Trotz is, in many ways, Boudreau West (or Bruce is Trotz East, based on seniority), and not simply based on their history in the Washington Capitals' minor league system or their resemblance to the Mr. Potato Head: Bench Boss Edition. Trotz's personality and philosophy permeates through every level of the team, and presents a public face that deflects or diffuses adversity. Putting aside the ownership debacle, Trotz has led Nashville to the postseason having weathered the following losses: Kimmo Timonen, Scott Hartnell, Scottie Upshall, Paul Kariya, Peter Forsberg, Stevie Sullivan and Tomas Vokoun. This Trotz quote from the National Post says it all:

"We're kind of a hockey version of Major League, the old baseball movie with all the misfits and cast-offs. We sat down in December, when we were almost last, and just decided to play as hard as we could and try to fight back into the playoff race."

It's hard to argue with Guy Carbonneau as the coach of the year -- although Babcock can be easily dismissed from the running with that blessing of riches. Perhaps the coaching jobs of Julien or Boudreau or Trotz are more easily quantifiable based on the cards they've been dealt; but does Carbo have this thing wrapped up to the point where the sum total of those three coaches' votes in the TSN poll amount to just over half the support Carbonneau's garnered? I don't believe so.