The First To Be Hired And Fired

It's a pretty well-known fact that former hockey players often become head coaches at various levels of hockey. In most cases, these players start out at lower levels below the NHL to hone their coaching skills because, like any job, it's a new set of skills and knowledge that one has to learn and apply. Great players may not be great coaches, and fourth-line grinders could turn out to be brilliant coaches. It's all up to the individual when it comes to how successful one will be in any job in any industry, but learning and applying that knowledge is the common theme across all industries. This is why it's always a good idea for NHL teams to avoid hiring coaches that have zero coaching experience after retiring from the game regardless of how successful those playing careers were. Case in point? The New York Islanders.

The man pictured about is four-time Stanley Cup winner Phil Goyette. Phil grew up in Lachine, Quebec and became property of the Montreal Canadiens, eventually ascending to the NHL club in 1956 where he played 14 games at the end of the season and ten more in the playoffs en route to a Stanley Cup championship. Three more seasons with the Canadiens that followed brought three more Stanley Cups as Goyette played alongside the likes of Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard, Maurice Richard, and Bernie Geoffrion where he was a solid performer every year.

Goyette would remain a Canadiens forward for three more seasons until he was traded to the New York Rangers on June 4, 1963 in a blockbuster deal that saw Goyette, Don Marshall, and goaltender Jacques Plante head to Broadway in exchange for Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, Len Ronson, and Lorne "Gump" Worsley. Goyette would be one of the Rangers' top scorers for the next six seasons including twice where he led the team in scoring. The Rangers, unfortunately, couldn't find postseason success, and he was traded to St. Louis on June 10, 1969 for their first-round pick who was Andre Dupont.

Goyette's tenure as a Blues player lasted all of 364 days as St. Louis left him unprotected in the expansion draft following a 29-goal, 78-point season where he led the team in scoring. With Buffalo and Vancouver needing immediate scoring, Goyette was the 13th player selected in the expansion draft on June 9, 1970 as the Buffalo Sabres added him to their list of players which included Tom Webster, Don Marshall, and Francois Lacombe.

Goyette finished the 1970-71 season as the second-leading scorer on the Sabres behind some kid named Gilbert Perreault, but injuries limited his 1971-72 season to just 37 games. In March 1972, he was traded back to the New York Rangers for an undisclosed amount of cash for the final eight games of the season, and he'd close out his career by retiring after 14 playoff games with the Rangers. He would end his career 674 points in 941 NHL games that saw him win four Stanley Cups and the 1970 Lady Byng Trophy.

Remember how I started this article? Well, it seems the desire to compete was still in Phil Goyette's body because the New York Islanders hired 38‐year‐old Goyette on this day in 1972 to be their first head coach in franchise history just six weeks before training camp started. I mentioned how NHL teams probably should avoid hiring rookie coaches, right? Expansion teams might just up the urgency to find an experienced coach by one-thousand percent, yet the Islanders decided to go with "a soft‐spoken, chain‐smoking center who has coached just one big‐league game" as their head coach according to Gerald Eskenazi of The New York Times.

Islanders GM Bill Torrey apparently wanted a different kind of coach as the Islanders began to write their history. He told Eskenazi, "There are so many more teams around now. Today, you must force the opposition into your style. You must break down their style," which is a strange thing to say after hiring a guy who had a grand total of one game of experience behind a bench. Nevertheless, Goyette was Torrey's man as training camp approached.

Goyette's comments in that article about how he would run training camp might have been a harbinger for the Islanders that season. Goyette said, "Camp isn't a place where you prepare to run the mile. I'll make the players work, but there'll also be relaxation periods."

Well, there seemed to be a very extended relaxation period as Phil Goyette's Islanders skated to a 6-40-4 record before Bill Torrey had seen enough and fired Goyette after fifty games, replacing him with Earl Ingarfield Sr. who fared virtually no better. Ingarfield actually finished the season with a 6-20-2 record - his .250 winning percentage only slightly better than Goyette's .160 - floundering to an overall 12-60-6 record, worst in the NHL and 18 points back of second-to-last California in 1971-72.

According to a 2013 article in the Observer-Dispatch, Goyette said about his dismissal, "The team wanted me to stay with them in a different capacity. I went home to Quebec. They made a change, I imagine to keep the fans from leaving. I don't hold any grudges with the organization."

He added, "I took the opportunity offered but I should have never done it. I was just out of the NHL as a player."

Of course, after that forgettable first season, Al Arbour took over the head coaching duties in 1973 as he and Torrey began putting the pieces of the Islanders' dynasty together. For most fans, Arbour was always seen as the first head coach of the team thanks to the success they had, but history shows there were two guys that came before him that helped get the franchise off the ground.

Of course, neither of them lasted a season, but Phil Goyette will always be the first coach in New York Islanders history that was hired and fired. The footnote in the history books will unfortunately show that both those events happened in the same 1972-73 season.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!