Fronts: Paging Dr. Cox; time to talk some sense into the newbie

Only in Leafland can a coach's celebrity count for more than whether the celebrity can coach.

The OHL needs to pass a new rule: Teams can't honour a visiting coach who's been behind the bench for fewer games than the Ottawa 67's Brian Kilrea has seasons. It's on another level of fail when said coach works for Doug Springer. (Irony: Kilrea's last visit to Kingston is on Wednesday.)

Perhaps Barrie Colts owner Howie Campbell, given that half the teams in the OHL are down at the gate this season, can be excused for honouring Kingston Frontenacs coach Doug Gilmour Saturday before his Colts pinned another loss on the league's donkey team. Anything to sell tickets, right? He shouldn't be, though.

Speaking as a Frontenacs and Leafs follower, Gilmour has to be looked at as a newbie coach in in the OHL's worst organization. That is what he is today. The Fronts have four wins in the past two months, even though they are an improved team. People have to stop looking at what Gilmour did for Toronto back in 1993 and '94. It's like The Sopranos: It's over.

It was a rookie mistake for Gilmour to take part in something that has almost nothing to do with his current role in hockey.

So what if "the Colts organization wanted to do something special for Gilmour, to quote the Barrie Examiner? You could read into that that the Colts highers-up are such big Leafs fans that they thought gosh darn golly gee what the heck, let's honour Number Ninety-Three, Dougie Gilmour so we can say Barrie did it before our big-city cousins in Toronto do it Jan. 31. (About that: Gilmour says he bought the Kingston players' tickets for that game; one report suggests otherwise.)

Kilrea, who is in his final season, deserves every tribute he gets for what he's done in the OHL for more than 30 seasons. It cheapens what's being done for him and long-time assistant coach Bert O'Brien around the league when OHL teams get carried away with honouring ex-players on the flimsiest pretense.

The Mississauga St. Michael's Majors held a sweater retirement several weeks ago for Hall of Famer Dave Keon, on the premise that he played for the original Majors decades ago when they were based in downtown Toronto. The Colts were even more out of line — the team didn't even exist when Gilmour played in the OHL.

Granted, the Colts might have something akin to executive privilege. They have the right since they have won as many OHL championships as the Frontenacs have playoff series in the past 13 seasons — once! Also please keep in mind, Barrie started as an expansion team in 1995, while the Frontenacs, under their oblivious owner, Springer, and GM-for-life Larry Mavety on, have merely been reduced to an expansion outfit.

Not knowing much about Howie Campbell, it's presumable he, like anyone with a measure of sanity, would plan major changes if his team was dead last in the 60-team Canadian Hockey League. Springer won't even comtemplate that, which has given rise to a persistent rumour he's sabotaging the Frontenacs so that the city-owned K-Rock Centre's revenues will fall so low that the city council will put up it up for sale, where he'll swoop in like Rogers did with the Skydome.

Well, what other explanation is there for why the owner of a 9-31-8 team with the worst goals-for and goals-against totals in OHL carries on like the only change fans deserve is from the arena's vending machines? Paraphrasing someting Dr. Cox (the character on Scrubs, not his Toronto Star namesake) once said, the only way Springer could be more useless right now is if he actually were the wall of the K-Rock Centre.

Springer is on record as saying Mavety is an "astute hockey man," which has become an Internet meme among Frontenacs fans. In light of the fact Gilmour let it drop late last week that he would be "consulting with Mav," about how to improve the team, Springer seems dead set against making any changes. To once again quote Sacred Heart's prickly Perry, that makes him worse than useless.

(Scrubs references, Sagert? Someone is single and works odd hours.)

Last summer, when everyone and her/his dog knew that The Royal Mavesty was returning as the permanent interim coach, but Springer held off on any announcement until the deadline passed for season-ticket holders to renew their seats. That might not happen again. A humble suggestion might be that season-ticket holders should start letting the team know how they feel about renewing..

(Typical of the no-account Kingston front office, the only e-mail listed on the website is that of Jeff Stilwell, the P.R. man. In other words, the P.R. guy is more accountable than the general manager and owner-president-governor who signs his paycheques.)

In other words, in light of all that, it's impossible to sit idly by and watch the Colts contribute to the charade that having Gilmour behind the bench is making any big difference in Kingston. As a sidebar to this, it's kind of funny that Gilmour told the Toronto Star that he got the Frontenacs players "all tickets up in the nosebleeds," for his tribute night. He might have been joking, or maybe this is just gossip dignified in print:

"When Doug Gilmour's jersey is honoured at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night, his Kingston Frontenacs players will be in attendance. But he had nothing to do with getting them tickets. Turns out, Mike Zigomanis of the Penguins, as a goodwill gesture to his former junior team and knowing nothing of the Gilmour ceremony, bought 34 tickets for the Fronts players to watch the Pens play."
— Steve Simmons, Toronto Sun

Who knows and who cares bought the tickets for the players.

It might have been a joke that has backfired on Gilmour's part. Well, nine wins in 48 games is a joke, but one cannot say the Gilmour experiment has backfired.

It's worked perfectly. The big reason Springer and Mavety hired Gilmour, in the absence of being able to get quality applicants because the word is out on those two, was to trade off his celebrity and deflect attention from the ramshackle organization. Shame on the Barrie Colts for helping the sham seem legit.

(Simmons link via Torontosportsmedia's Weblog)

Fronts: Gilmour to coach; that oughta hold the little SOBs

The fact Doug Gilmour is coaching the Kingston Frontenacs with the same rotten regime in place is enough reason to question his judgment.

No doubt Fronts owner Doug Springer and GM-for-life Larry Mavety have made the same promises to Gilmour, or as he shall henceforth be known as, Dougie!, that they made to Bruce Cassidy, Jim Hulton -- how's the weather down there in Florida, Jimmy? -- and Greg Bignell. For the uninitiated, those are the last three coaches that Mavety and Springer undermined.

There is no way to call this to a hockey move. The only way to feel good about it is if Gilmour is trying out the coaching side before he buys the team lock, stock and barrel. Otherwise, this is intended to keep the diehards from organizing a Bring Your Own Pitchfork night at the K-Rock Centre. The Frontenacs announced this on a Monday, with a home game coming up against Belleville on Friday -- plenty of time to sell tickets. That is the closest Kingston comes to having any long-term vision -- a home game four days away.

Gilmour, God love 'em, if I could still squeeze into my old No. 93 sweater that I wore faithfully across the mid-'90s, I would -- has six months' coaching experience as an assistant coach with the AHL's Toronto Marlies, the Leafs' farm team. That's all, aside from the bit of dubious team imitating dubious art that Andrew pointed out over Sporting Madness:

More revealing, though, is Gilmour's recent cameo [Miss 604] in the soon-to-be-released Slap Shot 3: The Junior League, a straight-to-DVD movie. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing a gong show of a junior franchise on film and decided he'd go for the full experience? If so, he's certainly come to the right town: the Frontenacs are currently a bigger joke than anything in the movie will likely be.

Doug Springer, by dint of his actions, must believe the Kingston faithful are so stupid that they will turn out en masse to watch the same struggling team, just because it's Dougie! behind the bench instead of His Royal Mavesty. Kingston fans are not stupid. That is there is a sea of empty seats at the K-Rock Pot.

Gilmour, having worked for the Leafs, at least has some experience working with a dysfunctional outfit. He is an icon in his hometown and across Ontario, but this move is small-town cheap. It is straight out of the Bush-Cheney school of management -- put a newbie in charge of something, so he will be easier to control, and then tell him, "Dougie, you're doin' a heck of a job."

The only improvement one can foresee is that maybe Dougie!, having done the dance in Canada's media capital, Toronto, will actually go on the post-game show after embarrassing losses. Springer, Mavety and assistant coaches Tony Cimellaro and Darren Keily apparently don't feel is part of their job descriptions, even though taxpayers built a $43-million arena for their team.

The reality of this is that the Springer Frontenacs are putting a celebrity ex-player behind the bench. Did Gilmour take this after getting turned down by The Surreal Life? Loose Pucks has noted that His Royal Mavesty "will resume his duties as being strictly the General Manager of the Frontenacs," which should send a chill down any thinking person's spine.

For god's sake, Mavety the great GM can barely be bothered to scout a player before he trades for him -- he just makes moves based on the assurances the team he's trading with and what he half-remembers the player doing against Kingston. Anyone in Kingston who is not suckling at the Springer teat will tell you as much.

One wishes Dougie! all the best, but honestly, if he's going to grow into becoming a good coach, it will not come in Kingston. This is small-town cheap. Springer played the experience card in August when he 'fessed up that he was keeping Mavety on as coach, some two months after it was first reported on the king of Kings' Offsides. Here's Springer, turning around and hiring someone with no experience.

The reality is that the house has slid off its foundation, so they decided to have it painted. Mavety's extensive coaching resume, as it's called in every Frontenacs press release, includes a 680-726-106 record. With the the Ottawa 67's Brian Kilrea in his final season, Mavety was perilously close to having people mention that he was in line to become the losingest coach in the history of the Ontario Hockey League. Kilrea has 34 more losses, but get this, he has almost 500 more wins (485, to be exact).

The Springer Frontenacs end up hiring another guy nicknamed Killer to avoid that embarrassment. A friend suggested this is analogous to hiring Gary Carter to manage the Blue Jays. It is the equivalent of hiring Joe Carter to manage the Blue Jays.

The Springer Frontenacs, of course, can burn through goodwill in no time flat. The positive feelings generated by the move to the new arena lasted about two weeks. Unless this is a first step to an ownership change, the only thing to say is shame on Doug Springer, shame on Larry Mavety, shame on anyone who peddles their party line and pretty please, pray for Doug Gilmour.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca..

Update: The Toronto Sun's Mike Zeisberger's report notes, "Before accepting the job, Gilmour made it clear that he needed to return to Toronto at least one or two days a week in order to spend time with his sons Jake, 12, and Tyson, 10. Gilmour said the team was quite willing to accommodate his request."

Family has to come first, but who is going to run practices on those 1-2 days a week when Gilmour looking after his boys? The same guys who are doing such a great job with a team that has the worst power play in all of major junior hockey!

Thank you to all the sites who have linked here! Also, catch the Offsides broadcast from last Friday.