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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > April > 16
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Waddell loses games, not GM job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Don Waddell is about to lose his job, but not the job many among us expected him to lose. He’s out as Thrashers coach because the general manager is actively seeking a replacement. The GM, surprisingly enough, remains Don Waddell.
In place since 1998, Waddell is proceeding as if he’ll be running the Thrashers in 2009 and beyond. “I’m going to continue as GM,” he said Wednesday, 11 days after the Thrashers ended their dud of a season. And then: “I’ve got full authority right now. I could hire a coach tomorrow.”
A bit of unsightly context: Waddell presides over a team that made the playoffs last year but finished 28th in the 30-team NHL this time; that fired coach Bob Hartley six games into its season; that traded its second-best player (Marian Hossa) in February because he wouldn’t re-up with a franchise he believed was going nowhere. None of this would seem an endorsement of the longtime GM, but the men who constitute Atlanta Spirit don’t always think the way you’d figure they’d think.
Bruce Levenson, considered the hockey guy among the many partners, issued a spirited defense of Waddell last month, and that apparently was the one Vote Of Confidence that actually is a Vote Of Confidence. Bucking the odds, Waddell is still in place. How’d that happen?
Waddell: “The owners have been very supportive. They’ve evaluated many different aspects. Obviously wins and losses are one, and they’re what the public tends to evaluate. But there are other issues. Bruce and [co-owner] Michael Gearon Jr. sat with me in many intense meetings — about firing Bob, on trading Hossa — and a lot more went into those than we want to share with the public.”
Given that running a professional sports team is the ultimate bottom-line business — either you win or you lose — what considerations might override wins and losses? Money, for one. The Thrashers operated nearly $10 million under the NHL salary cap this season, and we must note that the Spirit-owned Hawks just took on Mike Bibby and his $14 million contract. Said Waddell: “There are financial responsibilities, and I’ve always been able to meet them.”
Anything else? “I think we run a good program,” he said. “We’ve never had a problem with drugs or alcohol — obviously we had the one player [Dan Snyder] getting killed [in a car wrecked by teammate Dany Heatley, since traded]. I think you try to run a good program and surround yourself with good people and try to do a good job. When my head hits the pillow, I sleep very well.”
More than a few Thrashers fans might snooze less soundly knowing Waddell is still the GM, but he expresses hope that the league’s 28th-best team can be part of the 2009 postseason. “We’re a couple of players away,” he said, and when a team yields the most goals among NHL teams there’s no secret where the gaps are.
“We haven’t had a problem the last few years scoring goals, but we need to retool our defense. We’ve got two good players in [Toby] Enstrom and [Niclas] Havelid, but we need to shore up those third and fourth spots. … It’s a pretty critical summer. We need to add some good young players through free agency or the draft [the Thrashers own two first-round choices, including the No. 3 pick overall].”
There’s also the matter of filling one of his jobs. Hiring a coach, Waddell said, “is Priority No. 1,” but that doesn’t mean it will happen anytime soon. “A lot of the people we’d be interested in are involved in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be fair for me to interview somebody and say, ‘OK, now you’ve got to wait a month.’ It’s more important for me to get my ducks in line and then, when it’s time, to get something done in a week or 10 days.”
Can a team jump from 28th overall to the playoffs in one bound? Waddell points to Philadelphia, which was dead last a year ago but leads higher-seeded Washington in Round 1. The Flyers managed 56 points in 2006-2007; the Thrashers just finished with 76. “So we’re 20 points ahead of them,” he said, and a comment like that is why it’s impossible to dislike Don Waddell.
He’s relentlessly upbeat, and he has given much to a job that hasn’t been the easiest. (Re-introducing hockey to a jaded and transient Southern town: Good luck with that.) But, as he reaffirmed Wednesday: “I love this city and I love this team. Obviously I don’t own this team, but I want to stay here as long as they’ll let me.”
Apparently he gets to stay. There have been bigger hockey upsets — Montreal over Boston in 1971, the U.S. over the Soviets in 1980 — but not many.
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