Is the leash for NHL head coaches getting shorter?

Clearly, the “Year of the Coaching Change” is alive and well in the NHL.

The most recent change, however, might be the most intriguing of them all. And it raises many questions in the process.

The Vegas Golden Knights’ dismissal of Gerard Gallant was quite different from the other firings that have taken place just a little over halfway through the 2019-20 season. While Vegas is in the midst of a four-game losing skid, their overall record isn’t as abysmal as the Maple Leafs’ record was when Toronto fired Mike Babcock — or as bad as the Sharks’ record was when San Jose fired Peter DeBoer.

Gallant isn’t, as far as anyone knows, marred in a scandal like Bill Peters was when he was fired by the Calgary Flames. Gallant also isn’t, as far as we know, battling with any personal demons as was the case with Jim Montgomery and the Dallas Stars.

The Knights, simply put, have been a middle-of-the-pack team in its current campaign. They have struggled with inconsistency and, as management put it, became in need of a different voice in their dressing room.

Is that really all it takes for a coach to get the boot these days?

It’s fair to wonder: Is the leash for a head coach’s employment in the National Hockey League getting shorter?

As Jesse Granger of The Athletic reported on Wednesday morning, Gallant’s exit comes as a shock to many. Despite having a disproportionate season thus far, the Knights are still in the mix and still within reach of a playoff spot. From an outside point of view, one would think that Gallant — who took the inaugural Knights to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018 and won himself a Jack Adams Award for it — would have some wiggle room with 33 games left on the schedule and a Wild Card spot well within striking distance.

Heck, Gallant was supposed to coach the Pacific Division team at this year’s NHL All-Star Game. You wouldn’t think that type of honor would be rewarded to a bench boss whose message was lost in the dressing room.

This turn of events could, in a way, say something about high expectations some clubs have when a season starts. Gallant’s dismissal in Vegas is similar to that of Peter Laviolette’s exit in Nashville earlier this month. Both the Knights and the Predators exited the playoffs early last year and didn’t rebound at the start to the new season as either organization had hoped. So, on the one hand, it makes sense that a business that is pushed along by the hopes of winning a championship will try to shake things up mid-season to meet those expectations.

Then again, things were looking pretty bad for Jon Cooper in Tampa Bay before the Bolts went on that ten-game winning streak, and he still has a job even though the Lightning didn’t instantly avenge being swept in the first round of the 2019 playoffs.

But while some of these coaching changes appear essential to individual clubs, they could be a signal that the league as a whole is changing and that a bench boss’s tenure comes with higher stakes.

It isn’t entirely clear if that kind of change is for the better, and since the same handful of coaches have been rotating from team to team for several years now, it’s fair to wonder if giving a coach the boot too soon is a bad trend for the sport.

Whether this is a trend that sticks or not, one thing is for certain: Gallant’s exit from the Golden Knights will likely have other coaches on high alert.

After this unexpected firing, who knows what could happen next.

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