Are You Kidding Me? Seriously? This is for real?
Garth Snow?! Garth Snow? Garth Snow! The "perennial backup" (quoted from an away message) is now the general manager of the New York Islanders. Former New York Rangers GM Neil Smith hadn’t even been on the job for six weeks when, suddenly, surprise, here’s Garth Snow. Garth Snow! Garth Snow? Garth Snow?!
Reviewing Snow’s qualifications to be the general manager of a NHL team, let’s see. Snow’s a veteran of many NHL seasons and played just last season, so he should be familiar with current standards of play. He should know what chemistry to look for in a goaltending tandem. Apparently Snow also has a business degree, so I’m sure that business degree will help to negotiate all the particulars and minutia of the new CBA and help him with the business of contract negotiations, etc.
Now let’s review my qualifications to be the general manager of a NHL team. I’ve never dressed for a NHL game, but I’ve watched the game for the past twenty years (yes, I’m twenty-four now, so you figure it out). I never had the skating skill or hand-eye coordination to play the game at an organized or elite level, but ask me about a 1-4 delay or penalty kill formations and I’m hardly lost. I’ve watch games and pinpointed which line combinations weren’t working and thought of suggestions that when the coach (without listening to my input, of course) actually implemented, presto. Likewise, I’ve usually been able to recognize talent. As I’ve stated on this blog before, I remember sitting in eighth or ninth grade (thirteen or fourteen, a kid) and firmly believing the Naslund trade would turn out bad for my team (which it inevitably did). I saw a few local kids play when they were about eight and noticed one had special talent—talent enough, ten years later, to become a NHL draft pick. All right, so I can analyze the game and tell you what teams need (and why I wasn’t surprised last year’s Penguins team turned out so bad) and which players have the potential to excel. And while I don’t have a business degree, surely I can apply that honors degree from a top 25 university to negotiate the new CBA, right?
Obviously, despite my lengthy list of attributes, Garth Snow is far more qualified to be a general manager of a NHL franchise than I am. Garth Snow has years of playing experience, and at least he’s previously been through the whole contract negotiation process. Garth Snow knows the culture of the NHL, and he knows the game. I have no idea what his skills in contract negotiation, recognizing talent, and composing an actual team are like, and neither does anyone else. So while it’s not quite so bad as the away message I quickly composed when the "Garth Snow?!" news first came across the news wire that said " I called the Naslund trade right, when will a NHL team pony up a few hundred grand and name me a GM?" implied, something just feels off and not right.
Garth Snow as a general manager is an unknown quantity. Snow has not made trades before, he has not negotiated contracts, and while I’m sure he’s learned the tendencies of his opponents over the years, Snow hasn’t overseen a scouting staff or had to build an entire team. In the "new NHL" that I so enjoyed watching during the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring, handing a job to an inexperienced former player just seems like a reversion to the old method of doing things. We’re going back to the "good ‘ol boys network," the network that says if you’re an ex NHL player, since you already know the hockey side of the game so well, of course you’ll be able to figure out the other aspects of what has now become the hockey business as well. I’ve never been impressed with the old boys network and often dismissed it as a bunch of crap. Of course former NHL players know the game, but that doesn’t mean any former NHL player is automatically going to know how to scout, how to coach, and in particular, how to general manage, as soon as they hang up their skates. Just like young players often have to learn (even the best youngsters still learn, as Jaromir Jagr did, how not to waste time beating the same player three times), so too do former players have to learn the skills of their new trade. Playing skill doesn’t automatically equal transference of skill to scouting or teaching and coaching. Particularly of keen interest in the Snow matter, playing skill is not going to equal skill in all of a general manager’s many duties. Those duties take time to learn, and even for the best ex-players, a period of apprenticeship to begin to master the minutia of everything they must contend with is what fans and ownership who yearn for championship teams should want.
Yet Charles Wang, the Islanders owner, thinks he’s found the answer in Garth Snow, an experienced goaltender, for sure, but a rookie general manager who’s going to have to master a whole lot on the job. While Mr. Wang apparently sees no need for scouts, there’s something every scout knows and evaluates, and it’s called "readine ss level." Is that 18-year-old hotshot defenseman ready for the NHL, or does he need another year of junior to add some more strength? Is that winger’s half-season AHL seasoning enough to make him ready to play in the show, or would it help him to take his team on an AHL playoff run? Scouts and coaches are constantly evaluating what their players are ready for and what those players can handle—is that 22-year-old defenseman ready for thirty minutes a night yet, or do you need to keep him at twenty minutes a night so he’ll still be sharp come the start of the playoffs? Yet in handing the general manager’s duties over to a rookie GM, Charles Wang showed clearly that he doesn’t understand the concept of readiness level in more ways than merely refusing to hire more scouts.
The Oilers this spring are a clear way one can measure the readiness level necessary for ex-players to become successful coaches and general managers. Kevin Lowe learned lessons in the pre-new CBA years, and he applied his knowledge of what a good team needs when he acquired players like Pronger and Roloson via trades. Lowe also had enough homegrown (drafted and developed by the Oilers) to help him to compose a team. Anyone who watched the Oilers in the playoffs would agree that signing Michael Peca helped Edmonton come springtime. Lowe used free agency, trades, and drafting and development to compose a team that he gave over to Coach Craig MacTavish. Granted, it helped MacTavish to have a defenseman he could play for half th e game and who’d make every defenseman he played with a lot better. Yet MacTavish still had to get his players to play as a team and work to each player’s individual strengths within a team game. GM Kevin Lowe built a good team, and MacTavish coached a good team to play as a good team should.
This spring the Oilers fell just short of winning the Stanley Cup, but it is important to note how long Lowe has been in his job as general manager how long MacTavish has been coaching. Blame it on the old CBA or old economics all you want, the fact is that MacTavish and Lowe had to get experience and practice building and coaching a team. Lowe learned lessons about what worked and what didn’t work and applied them to crafting the Edmonton Oilers’ team that came so close to wining the Cup. MacTavish surely applied lessons of his playing days while coaching, yet he also had to learn how to coach. And by the time MacTavish had learned how to coach and Lowe had become known as a general manager who could compose a contender, guess what? The general manager and coach had enough experience to know what it took to get a team to the brink of winning the Cup.
Contrast the season MacTavish and Lowe had in Edmonton with Wayne Gretzky’s season as head coa ch of the Phoenix Coyotes. I’m still stubborn enough to view Bobby Orr (who changed the game) and Mario Lemieux (hometown bias) as more talented than Gretzky, but Gretzky’s the one whose name is in the NHL record book all those times. Sure, blame the missing pieces of Phoenix’s roster all you want (it takes a general manager to build the right team and a coach who can coach that team), but Gretzky’s first year as a coach revealed that there are still things about coaching a team he’s going to have to learn through experience and practice. Gretzky is widely hailed as the best player in the NHL history by many, yet he’s still learning about coaching as he experiences coaching. Likewise, MacTavish and Lowe were widely regarded as legitimate, competent, very good NHL players in their heyday, and yet they still had to learn lessons about their new jobs through experience. Gretzky, MacTavish, and Lowe all won Cups in their careers, and all know what it takes to win the Cup, and yet all are still learning exactly what it will take to win the Cup in their new roles.
Back to the Islanders and Garth Snow. Snow had a successful and lengthy NHL career as mostly a #2 netminder, but his playing career was not nearly so successful as those of Gretzky, Mac Tavish, and Lowe. Does the seeming mediocrity of his playing career prevent him from reaching great heights as a general manager? Of course not (see examples of those coaches and general managers whose playing days have long since been super seded by their off-ice hockey triumphs). Yet if Charles Wang is looking for his Islanders to right their ship immediately, well, to echo what several others have already said, he should have looked further than Garth Snow.
Snow could surprise and astound everyone. Maybe he’ll help build the Islanders up. Maybe he’ll be able to persuade Wang that a team that wants to contend for the Cup needs to have a scouting and minor league system that continually evaluates and drafts and develops players who will help build a team comprised of all the pieces a contender must have. Maybe his knowledge of current NHL players and familiarity with the culture of the league will help in his new role. Maybe. I’m writing it here, so you know I think it could possibly happen—someday.
The "someday" is the important part. Whether Snow succeeds or fails in his stint as GM, whether the Islanders actually stay in the playoff race for a full season or not, one fact remains. Garth Snow will be learning on the job, and that’s what prompted me to write those cynical, biting away messages, and that’s what prompted hockey journalists to roll their eyes when told that Wang had replaced Neil Smith with Garth Snow.
Because if you hand me or a hockey journalist a GM job, we’d know what we were supposed to do, but we’d be learning how to do our new job on the job. We don’t have Snow’s years of playing experience, but whether Wang would have handed a journalist, me, or Snow the job—every one of us would be learning how to do the job on the job.
Could it be worthwhile to learn the job on the job? Sometimes that’s the way it has to be done. The defenseman doesn’t learn how to play thirty minutes a night until he starts doing it. The coach doesn’t learn how to create li nes until he starts creating lines in practice and switching lines up in games. The general manager doesn’t realize the mistake he can’t make again with contract negotiations until recognizes the first negotiating mistake he made.
But for an owner who says he wants to contend and that he wants to win? You’re better off hiring those people who’ve already been through the trial-and-error and know how to do the job if you want to win now.
But as a Penguins who still remembers with bitterness the David Volek shot in the spring of 1993 (I was ten), I’m certainly not going to shed tears if the Islanders organization isn’t concerned with doing whatever it takes to create a winning franchise again. I feel bad for fans who will end up yearning for Mi ke Milbury’s tirad es (as an aside, I always kind of had a "thing" for watching Milbury go out of his his mind and enjoyed the entertainment Milbury provided). I’ll feel bad, too, when watching players who could be pieces of contending teams yet never ha ve the chance to co ntend for real—that will suck.
So for the sake of Isles’ fans (and I can never be one), here’s hoping Garth Snow can learn on the job. Yet Isles’ fans (and fans of my current hometown team) know the truth from years of watching youngsters play—learning on the job often means you lose more than you win, at least for this season...
Sunday, July 23, 2006
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