Class, dismissed

I was there the day Bruce Boudreau was fired.

Oh, not yesterday, mind you. Twenty-eight years ago.

It was December of 1994 and I was sitting with my back against the wall outside the Fort Wayne Komets locker room, waiting to talk to a couple players. Across the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum concourse, I saw Boudreau enter his office. Komets GM David Franke and team president Michael Franke followed him. 

A few minutes later, the door popped open and Boudreau, clearly agitated, scurried toward the building's exit. He was out the door and gone in an eyeblink.

Even a clueless dork like me could decipher what I was seeing: Boudreau had just been canned as the Komets coach.

At least they had the good sense to do it the way it should be done -- like pulling a tooth, and without torturing the man for weeks on end.

That's what the lame-ass Vancouver Canucks did to Boudreau this time, and I'm sorry if that sounds less than professional. But what the lame-ass Canucks did to Gabby is unacceptable. It would be unacceptable even if he weren't one of the best people in professional hockey, which he is and has been since the days when I covered him as a player and coach with the Komets.

Gabby was just getting started then, and I'm happy to say he emerged whole from the sting of losing the Komets gig. He went on to the NHL, where he won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year with the Washington Capitals in 2008. In 16 seasons behind the bench in Washington, Anaheim, Minnesota and Vancouver, he's compiled the second-highest winning percentage in NHL history for someone who's coached at least 900 games.

But he could do nothing with the lame-ass Canucks, one of the NHL's most enduring clown shows. And so the Canucks fired him -- but not before humiliating him by publicly announcing they were shopping for his replacement before they'd even fired him.

This led, over the weekend, to the fans in Vancouver loudly serenading him with "Bruce! There it is!" during his last couple of home games. Visibly moved, Gabby tapped his heart in response.

So at least he goes out beloved and respected by everyone who matters -- the fans and his players, both current and former. No one else's opinion really matters in these deals.

Especially the lame-ass Canucks -- who, when presented with the opportunity to at least show some class in releasing Gabby, instead decided to go in a different direction, as management is fond of saying in these situations.

Class?

Nah. More like class, dismissed.