Ducks General Manager Pat Verbeek this afternoon discussed the decision to not retain Head Coach Greg Cronin, along with some additional topics regarding the team going into the offseason:
First off, I’d like to thank Greg Cronin personally for his tireless work and dedication to our organization. Today was a very tough day for this to happen, and I think Greg was responsible in many ways for the improvement of this team. When we look at accountability, you look at relevance that he brought this organization back to laying a solid foundation for all our young players and even our veterans, and that has been very important. And so as I went through this process, as I always do, I start to look at things. When we probably went out of the playoff picture, I started to really start to look at things closer, and obviously there were some concerns. And then as I got closer to the end of the season, all the assessments, is kind of when I really decided to make the change and decided that it was the right time to take this team in a different direction and with a different voice.
On what he didn’t see with this team
I would say in the end, it really wasn’t about wins and losses. I think that when I talked about the concerns, some of those were things that in my opinion, could not be overcome with the other measuring stick you wanted to apply to it. So with that and my experience as a player and being a manager, I thought at this time it was the right time to make the change and for our team to move forward.
On if there were concerns with the culture Cronin created off the ice
No, no. I think the culture that was built here is accountability. A constant work ethic was brought here, so no, there wasn’t any concerns in that area.
On what the team lacked under Cronin
I wouldn’t say there’s things that we can easily point to. You could probably look at the power play, you can look at the penalty killing, but I didn’t look at that. There was other reasons, and basically I shared those reasons with Greg and they were private conversations, and I really want them to remain private as to why.
On the possibility of other candidates influencing his decision
No, I wouldn’t say that. No, not at all. Obviously now we’re in a different scenario to where now it’s much like the way I took the approach last time, and the net’s going to be cast wide. I’m not going to really eliminate any options as far as my approach to the next coach.
On discussing the decision with players and ownership
I mean you go through all of those things, but I wouldn’t say necessarily any of those things influenced me. I have an open dialogue with our ownership all the time, so these things get discussed in certain circumstances. I speak with Henry and Susan on a regular basis, so that gets talked about. This is always the usual stuff at the end of the season. What transpires, and this was no different, it was no different scenario or situation.
On his approach to free agency this summer
I expect this to be very active and aggressive. I think I see this team at a point to where my expectation of this team is to make the playoffs next season. I expect our group to take a step and so I’m going to be active and aggressive in making our team better.
I’ll be meeting with my group soon and we’re going to go through all the different scenarios, and obviously we’re going to have a bunch of different strategies going into that. There’ll be a bunch of different plans. I’m going to be aggressive like I was last summer, but there’ll be different plans put in place based on what happens on the different scenarios. So there’ll be a lot of things getting looked at and there could be a lot of different variables that come along and hopefully we’ll have the answers to get it done.
On when he made the decision
I always talk to the players at the end. I mean there’s always discussions. As I’ve gone through the assessment, you start looking at things on a monthly basis. There’s certain things that crop up maybe two months into the season and then when you start to go through this process, you just start adding things up. And when I started adding things up, I came to the decision that this was the right thing to do at this time. And so when I came to that conclusion we came to today, and that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
On what he is looking for in a new coach and the timeline
Am I looking for some sort of specific coach? No, I think that I’m going to go through the interview process and I will probe and poke and ask questions to where certain things that I think our group needs and see how it all shakes down. I’m open to any type of coach at this point and not shutting down anything. Now timeline, we’re going to start the search or start to make a list immediately. I really don’t have a timeline on it. I’m going to look to hire the best candidate for this team and what it needs moving forward.
I think that from my perspective the team’s right on course and we’re improving and sometimes you have to look at scenarios to where a voice is needed to push this group to another level. And obviously I think that you look at the teams that are in the playoffs, we need 10 more wins and that’s what we need to figure out to get done for next season. So I’m going to look for those answers with the new coach.
On whether Cronin was surprised by the decision
I would say he was completely shocked, which is probably normal from his perspective, and that’s why this was very difficult and probably didn’t make a lot of sense to him. Maybe at some point I’ll be able to kind of dive in with him deeper then what I was able to in some of the conversations that we had today.
On his goals for the team
Last year when we talked at this particular time, maybe a little sooner, it was our goal or my goal for this team to be in the mix for playoff spot, playing meaningful games in March, and we actually went beyond that. So from that aspect, I think we attained what we had looked to attain.
On getting Mason McTavish and Lukas Dostal signed
They’re very important players to our organization, and the hardest thing is going to be to figure out what the contracts look like. So we’re going to go through our due diligence. Obviously we’ve got lots of time to work through this and the offseason’s just starting, and I’ve actually had conversations with both agents before the season had ended, so we’re just going to kind of pick up kind of where we had left off before. I spoke to two young players as well and they’re excited. They’re excited to get going and so hopefully we can work through this expeditiously.
On whether he would hire another rookie head coach
Yeah, I’m not eliminating any options really. You can look at rookie coaches that come in and do a bang up job, so I’m not eliminating any options off the table. So it will be important to some of the questions I’m going to ask to see what their thoughts are, what their methods are going to be, their strategies, all of that sort of thing that the process of interviewing a coach
On the status of the rest of the coaching staff
Well, there’s a lot of different scenarios that could happen, but right now they’re here for today until we can really get a handle of where this search is going and the types of things that shake out after you hire a new coach.
On what needs to be added to the roster
Well, I think when you look at the roster on a whole, we need to score more goals. Ultimately we didn’t score enough goals and certainly that became a contributing factor. Like what was interesting, when we scored three or more goals, we virtually won all the games. We were almost undefeated with scoring three or more goals. So that is going to be a goal that we’re looking to hit by being more offensive.
Certainly we have a diverse roster in the sense we’ve got some good older players and we’ve got some really good younger players. Melding them in them being in different stages of their careers is obviously difficult in the sense that older players need less, younger players need more. Can they find the guy that can meld that development and that diverse roster into a cohesive unit to where the young kids are impactful and even the veterans are impactful? So that’s kind of in a sense that what I’m looking to do.
