Ken Hitchcock's NHL head coaching history isn't exactly littered with adoring former assistants and starry-eyed ex-players. In fact, despite the success Hitch has found in the NHL - and yes, he's found plenty - his coaching stints prior to landing with the St. Louis Blues have all been tied together by one over-arching theme: his players eventually developing a severe distaste for him and his coaching methods.
Since we're not in the room with Hitchcock and his players, it's hard to know just what goes down, just what caused his stops in Dallas, Philadelphia and Columbus to fall apart at the seams as players grew frustrated and eventually distrustful of Hitchcock.
But we do know that it may well be happening again in St. Louis.
That odd exchange, captured Saturday as the Blues failed to close out their first round series against the defending Stanley Cup-champion Chicago Blackhawks, between All-World St. Louis forward Vladimir Tarasenko and Hitchcock seemed to perfectly encapsulate how players always seem to end up feeling about the gruff bench boss; Tarasenko has found incredible success under Hitchcock, and yet the relationship seems more agitating, almost to the point of being adversarial, than you'd expect between a coach and his star player.
Hitch, for his part, did his best to shrug off the exchange.
"That's what happens when you've got a guy like that, that wants to make a difference," Hitchcock said. "I love it, I love it in him."
But with the Blues and their fans facing the possibility of yet another year of strong regular season play followed by a quick postseason exit, there's no longer any wiggle room left for Hitchcock. And the question becomes, do Tarasenko and the Blues even want to ensure that their head coach sticks around?
Alienating Tarasenko would be a potentially fatal blow for Hitchcock, even beyond the Blues' possible outing from the NHL playoffs on Monday night, which would mark the fourth time in Hitch's St. Louis tenure that the team has finished first or second in the Central division and failed to win a playoff series. Other than 2011-12, the Blues have not emerged from the first round of the playoffs under Hitchcock. A loss to Chicago on Monday would make it four straight years of postseason frustration for St. Louis.
And Tarasenko, despite leading the Blues-Blackhawks series with four goals in six games, has averaged just 15:29 of even-strength ice time per game. The big scorer doesn't play on the penalty kill, so that's obviously going to limit his ice time, and he does play a physical brand of hockey, but limiting him in order to preserve him, as Hitchcock indicated was his aim, only holds so much water.
Really, it's hard to tell just what's wrong with the Blues that they can't seem to keep their high level of playing going into the playoffs. They tried shifting their forward corps this offseason, jettisoning T.J. Oshie, but even that hasn't helped - yet.
A win Monday would go a long way toward curing whatever ails the Blues. A loss, though, likely spells the end for Hitchcock in St. Louis.
The question is: If that's the case, who will mourn him?
