Avalanche tab Sacco as next fall guy
The axe fell, and Tony Granato’s head rolled. Now Joe Sacco will become the third coach in as many seasons for the Colorado Avalanche. Sacco was most recently the head coach of Colorado’s American Hockey League affiliate team, the Lake Erie Monsters.
The Avalanche fired Head Coach Tony Granato last week in an entirely unsurprising move, additionally offing much of his assistant staff. After spending a month courting Avs legend Patrick Roy (first quietly and then publicly) to take the soon-to-be open coaching position, the Avalanche finally pulled the trigger on Granato’s firing after receiving Roy’s final answer; a resounding “No thanks.”
And who could blame Patty for turning down an organization in shambles? Roy runs the Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. He enjoys total control as General Manager, Head Coach & Part Owner. His team plays its home games at the historic Colisée Pepsi. (The name is not historical, but the coliseum is.) And although Patrick may not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox, he is certainly smart enough to see that the Avalanche gig was a career-ending trap in waiting.
You see, the Avalanche did not decline overnight. Even as they bested the Minnesota Wild in last year’s playoffs, it became increasingly apparent that these Avs were paper-thin. Against a stout defense, the team became two lines deep offensively. Their lack of chemistry on defense forced the team to run a defensive alignment that begged to be overrun by the first high-powered puck-possession team that came along. (The Red Wings were more than happy to oblige.) The Colorado Avalanche, for all the excitement engendered by the haphazard return of Adam Foote and Peter Forsberg last season, were a disaster waiting to happen. But where did this freefall begin?
Certainly not with coach Joel Quenneville, whose coaching regiment was the glue that held the Avs’ façade firmly in place. Joel would take the fall after an ugly sweep at the hands of the eventual Cup Champion Red Wings, but he would quickly became the Blackhawks’ coach the following offseason. In Chicago, Quenneville took a pile of rookies and an ancient goaltender all the way to the Western Conference Finals (eventually losing in five games to those same Wings.) The Avalanche continued an overdue decline without him. And for what it’s worth, Tony Granato is no Joel Quenneville; he just couldn’t hold it all together.
So if not Quenneville (and clearly not the hapless Granato), then who is responsible for the Lanche’s precipitous decline from the upper echelon of the NHL?
For the answer to that question, we turn the clocks back to 2002 when Avalanche General Manager Pierre Lacroix traded dynamic centers Chris Drury and Stephane Yelle to the Calgary Flames for Derek Morris, Jeff Shantz & Dean McAmmond. Morris produced one solid season and was traded the next year, albeit for the 2nd round draft pick that yielded Paul Stastny. McAmmond was re-traded to Calgary before ever suiting up for the Avalanche. Shantz was out of the NHL by the end of 2003.
So began two annually failing initiatives on the part of the Colorado front office; replace the missing offensive core behind Joe Sakic, and plug-in pricey defensemen via trade and the open market to amend the mistakes of the year before.
This cycle of pain brought Bates Battaglia from the Hurricanes in exchange for talented young winger (and Avalanche draftee) Radim Vrbata. Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne were both picked up via free agency before the 2003 season, and were expected to form the same dangerous 1-2 punch with the Avalanche that they did in years past with Anaheim. Neither played well enough independently or as linemates to warrant re-signing, and both were gone after one season. Alex Tanguay, in circumstances eerily similar to the Drury trade , was also traded to Calgary for a defenseman. This time Colorado got Jordan Leopold, who spent the next two seasons predominantly off-ice with a series of injuries, only to be traded back to Calgary once he was healthy (at the trade deadline during the ’08-’09 season.)
There is a long list of other dubious moves made by Lacroix, but Pierre was clever enough to saddle former General Manager François Giguère with the blame for this comedy of errors. Lacroix stepped back from his official GM position to become President of Hockey Operations on May 24, 2006. His hand-picked successor Giguère was technically responsible for the Tanguay trade, as he held the title of General Manager on June 24, 2006 during the NHL Entry Draft when Alex was traded for Leopold and two draft picks. However, the trade is regarded to have been a foregone conclusion arranged by Lacroix. The subsequent busts (Codey Burki & Trevor Cann) drafted using Calgary’s picks are the only mistakes for which François is directly responsible.
Then again, Pierre Lacroix defined his oversight of the Avalanche by his ability to turn blockbuster trades into productive draft picks, which could in turn be traded for big-name players and more draft picks. This formula was the hallmark of Pierre’s career as General Manager, and The Lacroix System was absolutely responsible for Colorado’s two Stanley Cup Championships in ’96 & ’01. Unfortunately for the Avalanche, the first crop of draft picks to go bust meant an end to that cycle. Without the glut of offensive dynamos to use as trade bait, Giguère was unable to continue his boss’ managerial scheme. He was fired in April of this year by Lacroix and replaced with Greg Sherman.
In recent years, the Avalanche have been forced to purchased their big-name fillers (Ryan Smyth, Scott Hannan, & the second coming of Forseberg) using overpriced multi-year contracts. Even José Théodore, traded from the Montreal Canadiens for David Aebischer, came with such an exorbitant salary that he may as well fall into this category. That trade, by the way, was the last trade officially conducted by Lacroix as General Manager on March 3rd, 2006.
And so Pierre Lacroix’s history of top-down team building continues to plague the Avalanche organization. Nothing short of a complete rebuild (particularly on defense) will bring this team out from beneath the rubble that was The System. Pardon me for saying that the inexperienced Sherman and Sacco look less like the saviors of a broken organization, and more like fall guys selected by Lacroix to protect his increasingly distant legacy.
