5 NHL teams who’ll be next to fire their head coach
1. Montreal Canadiens
Expectations are always high in Montreal, despite the Canadiens not winning a Stanley Cup or even reaching a Stanley Cup Final since 1993. They are currently nine points back of the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, with a 2-7-1 mark over their last 10 games entering Thursday and nine losses in their last 11 games as the aforementioned lowly Ottawa Senators now only trail them by seven points in the conference standings.
A third straight season out of the playoffs will surely lead to Claude Julien’s dismissal, if he makes it that long. His second stint as Canadiens coach started with a 16-7-1 run to end the 2016-17 season, but since then the teams is 93-91-28 over the last two-plus seasons. As it were, that playoff appearance in 2017 is the only for Montreal in the last four full seasons.
There’s a solid chance Julien is the next coach fired in the NHL, due to the Canadiens’ especially bad run of late and those lingering and long-running expectations for the franchise. No matter what though, barring a serious turnaround and a playoff berth, he won’t last much past the final horn of the final regular season game in April.
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