Mark McCutcheon

[billhoward]

[Q]ninian '72 Wrote:

 [Q2]
Absolutely on target.  Harkness's over-the-top bench presence didn't work at all with the Wings.  Word was that his team rules, such as forbidding smoking, were poorly received as well.  He was not popular with fans in Detroit, who thought he was clueless.  

By sheer coincidence, I was seated in the same row with Harkness on a flight from Boston to Detroit in June of 74, and he took a long, wistful look out the window when the captain announced we were passing over the Finger Lakes.  What a moment!  I wonder whether he wasn't thinking the same thing Bill is suggesting.  However,  Harkness probably would have recruited a different set of players, Mike might have played elsewhere, and be coaching another team now.   I like the way things turned out.

 [/Q]
When you go from college to the pros, there are financial and, ah, personal growth opportunities. You make more money and most people think it's a greater challenge to win the Stanley Cup than the NCAAs. Coaching a pro team and winning a Stanley Cup carries more recognition (your ego gets stroked more). But there must be some threshhold economic level that would keep a wavering coach in college. Who knows what the coach makes now, but let's say it's $75K. If it was $150K, that's enough to live on nicely and send your kids to a good college (I think the tuition swap deals for faculty are declining). Then the offer of a pro coaching job at $300K isn't such a big thing because the government's taking most of it back anyway. I just hope the endowed coaching chairs here in the key sports (hockey, lacrosse, football I believe have them) have enough salary headroom to keep the good guys in Ithaca.

(I think that [usually] decent people like judges and police/military officers make the same decision all the time: Do I live on a $100K or $150K or $195K (Supreme Court) salary and contribute to society, or do I go back to private practice and increase my income by an order of magnitude? I always thought it's silly that a ranking police officer can double or quadruple his salary overseeing security at GE's headquarters building than keeping the city of Boston safe, but that's life.)

Did I recall reading that Harkness never made more than $7500 a year coaching at RPI? And I believe I recall reading a recent SI profile of John Wooden saying the man never made for than $30K coaching UCLA. That's about $110,000 in today's dollars, but still. Today, the coach's shoe deal is worth more. And I don't think coach Wooden would like comfortable pacing the sidelines in Armani.

[Al DeFlorio]

Seems to me I just read an article on the men's Final Four basketball coaches, and all are making in the neighborhood of a cool million--considering salaries, bonuses for achieving each round within the NCAAs, and local media deals.  That doesn't include shoe contracts and the like.

[jkahn]

In Ned's defense, he took over a very aging team in Detroit, led by a top line featuring 42 year old Gordie Howe and 39 year old Alex Delvecchio.  They had been swept in four games in the first round of the playoffs the year before.  Had he had a group of youngsters, or been given more time, I believe he would have done well.  However, after half a season, and problems in the locker room where, at least from press reports, Delvecchio refused to stop smoking cigars, Bruce Norris, the Wings owner, decided to make some changes.  Surprising many, he dumped the Wings GM Sid Abel and kicked Ned upstairs to the GM job.
Ned made some good moves early.  I was living in Montreal that year, but was in Ithaca when Ned became GM.  The Habs were struggling at the time and the Wings needed younger guys who could skate.  I actually speculated to friends on the day Ned became GM, that he would trade Frank Mahavolich to the Habs for Mickey Redmond.  He managed to get two other players thrown in also, Guy Charron and Billy Collins.  While Montreal won 2 Cups with Mahovolich, Redmond went on to have a couple of 50 goal scoring seasons for the Wings before a bad back prematurely ended his career.  Ned's first draft choice as GM was Marcel Dionne, and at the time he got widely criticized in the local press for not taking Gene Carr.  After Ned was let go as GM of the Wings, Delvecchio became coach and then Dionne was virtually given away to the Kings.

[billhoward]

I don't begrudge good coaches a million dollars a year anymore than I begrudge Bill Gates his money. They earned it and for the most part legitimately. I mean, Windows is a rock-solid piece of code that has merely bubbled to the top among the dozens of operating systems that all have a chance to compete in the open marketplace of commerce.

Duffy Daughtery of Michigan State had a great quote (not as famous as his "Not only is he ambidextrous, but he can throw with either hand.") about the job (and I suppose about being worth the money). Paraphrasing here:

>>> Any fool can tell me on Monday morning what play we should have run. Try doing it Saturday afternoon in 25 seconds.

[Josh '99]

Carr:  215 points in 10 NHL seasons
Dionne:  1771 points in 19 NHL seasons

Seems like Ned had some idea what he was doing.  :-)

[RedAR]

[Q]I mean, Windows is a rock-solid piece of code that has merely bubbled to the top among the dozens of operating systems that all have a chance to compete in the open marketplace of commerce. [/Q]

Now that's funny.

[ninian '72]

[Q]jkahn Wrote:

 In Ned's defense, he took over a very aging team in Detroit, led by a top line featuring 42 year old Gordie Howe and 39 year old Alex Delvecchio.  They had been swept in four games in the first round of the playoffs the year before.  Had he had a group of youngsters, or been given more time, I believe he would have done well.  However, after half a season, and problems in the locker room where, at least from press reports, Delvecchio refused to stop smoking cigars, Bruce Norris, the Wings owner, decided to make some changes.  Surprising many, he dumped the Wings GM Sid Abel and kicked Ned upstairs to the GM job.
Ned made some good moves early.  I was living in Montreal that year, but was in Ithaca when Ned became GM.  The Habs were struggling at the time and the Wings needed younger guys who could skate.  I actually speculated to friends on the day Ned became GM, that he would trade Frank Mahavolich to the Habs for Mickey Redmond.  He managed to get two other players thrown in also, Guy Charron and Billy Collins.  While Montreal won 2 Cups with Mahovolich, Redmond went on to have a couple of 50 goal scoring seasons for the Wings before a bad back prematurely ended his career.  Ned's first draft choice as GM was Marcel Dionne, and at the time he got widely criticized in the local press for not taking Gene Carr.  After Ned was let go as GM of the Wings, Delvecchio became coach and then Dionne was virtually given away to the Kings.[/Q]


All good points.  Check the following link to a 2003 Detroit News piece on the "Barren Years" of the Wings of which Ned became - mostly unfairly - a symbol:

http://www.detnews.com/2003/wings/0309/16/d02-272766.htm

Even if he had worked better with the older players, it's doubtful anyone could have succeeded with the Detroit ownership situation at the time.