Ron Wilson May Need Some Lessons on Motivation in the Workplace

The San Jose Sharks got knocked out the Western Conference Semifinals after a four-overtime affair with the Dallas Stars on Sunday night ... Or Monday morning depending on where you reside. The game was epic, there's no doubt about that and I don't think I need to remind you of what happened on the ice. What is interesting though is what happened off of it.

Sharks coach Ron Wilson has failed to get over the hump with the team during his tenure. This season marked the fourth in a row that he had taken the team to the playoffs, with the only missed postseason of his time in San Jose coming during his first season there, 2002-03. His biggest fault has been the inability to make a deep playoff run. Now, there's an awful lot of speculation that this loss, the third straight second round exit for the team, will stand to be Wilson's last behind the bench. The team has been inconsistent with spurts that give us the impression they're headed for the promised land, only to fall flat on their faces. Many times in sports, the players can be at fault. They usually don't take the fall because that comes with the coaches' contract. Sometimes it's the other way around. This might be one of those cases. I'm no expert on the Sharks, but from everything I hear out of San Jose, this kind of behavior from Wilson is said to be the norm as opposed to the exception.

From Al Strachan at Fox Sports:

But then came the playoffs and with them, some of the usual postseason difficulties. Once again, Wilson reverted to the abusive tactics that he had been told by management to forsake.

Between periods in one game, he wrote the names of Matt Carle, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Milan Michalek on the board in the dressing room.

Jabbing at the board for emphasis, he said, "These are the guys that are letting us down."

Yup. Somehow I don't think I needed to take all those Management classes in college to learn that probably would not go over well. It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. That likely never came as the Sharks fought tooth and nail to win the series, coming back from a 3-0 deficit to make it 3-2 before losing Game Six in the aforementioned four overtimes. There wasn't a breaking point in all of this, just a roller coaster ride. At this point, Wilson may be back but the effectiveness of his methods must surely be questioned. And if you've got doubts like those about a coach, it's probably already too late.