Bruce Boudreau was driving to Kettler Capitals Iceplex shortly after 6 a.m. on Monday when his cellphone beeped. Washington Capitals General Manager George McPhee had sent him a text message.
“He said, ‘Call me when you wake up,’ ” Boudreau said. “I said, ‘Uh oh, that’s not good.’ ”
McPhee fired Boudreau, the Capitals’ coach the previous four seasons, in a meeting at McPhee’s house and replaced him with former Capitals captain Dale Hunter in an effort to jumpstart his slumping star-laden team.
Boudreau declined most interview requests on Monday and Tuesday because the former coach didn’t want his comments to overshadow Hunter’s debut against St. Louis. On Wednesday morning, though, sitting in the living room of his Potomac home, he opened up about the most difficult day of his professional career and the events that led up to it.
“I told George this on Monday: I tried every trick that I knew in 18 years and nothing was working,” he said. “I told him, ‘You’re doing what you have to do.’ I’m sure it was tough for George and [owner] Ted [Leonsis] and [team President Dick Patrick] and the whole organization because we had done something for four years that was really special.
“I thought I was going to be here forever, but this was something I thought that had to be done.”
Boudreau captured the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year in 2008, directed the Capitals to a pair of regular season Eastern Conference titles, reached 200 victories faster than any coach in league history and, in the process, turned the Capitals into one of the hottest brands in professional sports.
But it all began to unravel the past month, oddly enough after a franchise-best 7-0 start. The losses to Winnipeg, the New York Rangers and Buffalo worried him most, he said.
“There was the game in Winnipeg,” he said, shaking his head. “With this team, I always would say something profound in between periods. We may not win, but we would give it the old college try. But we had five shots on net in the third period and we were down 4-1.
“In the Rangers game, we were really good in the first period. But in the second period, when we got down, it seemed like we didn’t have any fight left. . . . In the Buffalo game, we didn’t have a scoring chance in the third period.
“We were losing by these scores I was so unaccustomed to,” he continued. “We were getting 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 scored on us. I knew something had to be done. I just didn’t know what. I thought George did what he had to do.”
Asked if he felt a sense of relief after meeting with McPhee, Boudreau paused for a moment to consider the question.
“I wouldn’t say relief, because I always feel like I could fix it,” he said. “But at the time, Saturday night, I didn’t have a pulse on what I could do to fix it.”
The end of Boudreau’s four-year tenure arrived with the Capitals mired in a 3-7-1 slump and star winger Alex Ovechkin struggling to rediscover his game after producing a career-low 32 goals in 2010-11.
“He called me [Monday] and I didn’t feel like talking,” Boudreau said. “I answered the phone [Tuesday] and he said he really enjoyed working with me. I said, ‘You, Alex, I loved every minute of it.’ ”
The Post Most: SportsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments