Admirals' Cooper eager for spot on NHL coach hot seat

Maybe you've not noticed, but the canning of NHL coaches has become an entrenched inevitability in pro sports like tattoos, entourages and $9 ballpark beers.

They change coaches in big-league hockey like Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch gulps Skittles during games - often and by the handful.

It's true. The Los Angeles Kings just fired their coach, whoever he is. Was. That makes L.A. the fifth itchy-fingered franchise to dump its leader in a season barely one-third complete.

And it increases a count that's up to 11 firings - among 30 teams - since last June. That's 37-percent turnover in seven months. And it gets more ridiculous.

A seniority list at NHL.com shows five coaches held their current jobs as far back as the dark ages of 2007. Somehow, two small-market coaches - Lindy Ruff in Buffalo and Barry Trotz in Nashville - have survived for 14 years, a veritable Paleolithic tenure in the NHL.

Let's just say the residential rental agent is a hockey coach's best friend.

And yet Jon Cooper, who coaches the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League, admits he's jockeying for position in that line that leads straight off a cliff.

"It's the old saying, 'Well, that'll never happen to me. I'm the one that's going to buck the trend,' " Cooper, 44, said recently at Scope after an Admirals game-day shoot-around. Then he laughed at his obvious naiveté.

"There's no question, as they say, that the day you're hired is the next-closest day to when you get fired."

The crown rests uneasily in all sports. But what is it about hockey's major stage that gives coaches the shelf life of a roast turkey? This season is like any other, in that Davis Payne bit it in St. Louis after 13 games. Paul Maurice got 25 games before he took it in the neck in Carolina, for the second time.

The same day Maurice was whacked, the Washington Capitals fired Bruce Boudreau days after he'd become the fastest modern-day coach to 200 victories.

He was dismissed on a Monday. By Thursday, Boudreau, whose four straight playoff flameouts hurt him, was coaching in Anaheim. To make room, the Ducks bounced Randy Carlyle, who in his seventh season had long ago gone on borrowed time.

Cooper said parity within the NHL applies unyielding pressure for an immediate and steady flow of victories, a state under which inconsistency isn't tolerated.

"I think if you're up and down, that could spell disaster for you," Cooper said. "Look at Boudreau. They started the season 7-0 (before a 5-9-1 skid) and by Thanksgiving he's fired. It's the roller coaster. If he started 7-3 and was 5-5 after that, maybe he still has his job."

For his own higher ambitions, Cooper said he's in the right place because NHL teams increasingly look to the American Hockey League for their next seat-warmer.

He's not hurried, though. With any job, Cooper vows to accept only the right fit with ownership and management. "If I was a head coach in the American League for five years, would I be upset? Not a chance," he said. "That means that organization thinks I'm doing a great job developing their players. I'd be happy with that."

But if and when his turn comes, Cooper, a former lawyer, understands the fickle business within the business he loves.

"I can sit there at home and think I'll never be that (fired) guy," Cooper said, "but eventually it's bound to happen. When you have 23 guys in the locker room, it's pretty hard to get rid of the 23. But it's easy to get rid of the one."

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com

hamptonroads.com/robinson

Twitter @RobinsonVP