So do the Leafs have the right guy behind the bench? Cliff Fletcher seems to thinks so. Ron Wilson told the Fan's Howard Berger:
"Cliff convinced me that I was the guy for the job. ... I was just glad I was going to be given this opportunity before anyone else and for me it was just a no-brainer."What I'm not sure about is what direction will the Leafs be going next season. Wilson has a reputation for rebuilding young struggling teams. He did it in Anaheim, Washington and San Jose. Except at the moment the Leafs are a veteran struggling team.
The local media seems to almost be poo pooing the signing although Wilson is one of the best coaches in the NHL. Let's face it Punch Imlach is dead and he wasn't so good his second time around. The media can't really be critical of his record so they claim he won't be able to handle the media. The local media just loves to give Leaf coaches a hard time. Damien Cox, a notorious Leaf hater much like Coach Bruce (at least Bruce admits it), has this to say about Wilson.
Wilson's NHL resumé does not include, however, being employed in an over-zealous hockey market like Toronto, which has a weird and wonderful and wacky dynamic shared in intensity by only a half-dozen other cities on the circuit.It's one thing to coach in Orange County, or the District of Columbia, or deep in the Silicon Valley, and quite another to dip one's toe into the piranha-infested waters of places like Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Philadelphia and, of course, Toronto.
Cox said the same thing about Paul Maurice 2 years ago and he did just fine with the media. Let's face it the only hockey market that eats up coaches besides Toronto is Montreal. You need to a bigger pool of coaches to choose from besides ex-Leaf and Hab coaches.
