The Panthers rang in the New Year with some off-ice cheer.
As I’m sure you have heard by now, Dale Tallon, Gerard Gallant, and Tom Rowe all received a contract extensions through 2019 from the Panthers over New Year’s. Rowe also received a promotion to Assistant GM. This move comes on the heels of the best month in franchise history.
It has been quite the turnaround in opinion over that month. Back in November, there was a lot of hand wringing back about the job Tallon had done. 8-9-4 at Thanksgiving and out of the playoffs, things did not seem too rosy. You can hardly blame people for being unhappy at the time. This was a team that was supposed to be going placed, and much is made about being out of a playoff spot at Thanksgiving. Now, after a 22 point month, the Panthers finished the calendar year 2015 atop the Atlantic Division.
Now, I do not think that the run was the sole impetus of the extension. You can not make huge decisions like this based on one, single run. It may have helped grease the skids, but there is more at play here. Regardless of the team’s performance earlier this season, the composition of the roster was never entirely bad. There’s a good collection of talent on the roster, between Aleksander Barkov up front and Aaron Ekblad on the blueline for starters. There are some legitimate questions about the team’s depth, but ultimately there should be a enough talent on this team to make some noise. This is especially true given that the Atlantic Division is filled with other, equally flawed teams.
So with that said, I am happy that Dale Tallon will be staying on board. I am a big fan of his work dating back to Chicago and I am satisfied with the roster he has assembled thus far. There is a lot of young talent both already on the roster and set to come up through the system in the near future. If he can find a way to plug the roster holes without sacrificing current talent (very doable, in my opinion), the Panthers will be a frightening team.
We around this site have been critical of Gallant, especially earlier in the season. It seemed as though the same lineup was going out night after night, with few adjustments. However, since Thanksgiving, he has made more changes, the best players on the team are getting more time, and the team has obviously taken an uptick. There are still some gripes, particularly about power play usage, but I am satisfied with more of the details over the last month. Just how sustainable the Panthers play will be going forward is up for debate at this time.
However, I do not see much harm in doing this extension. Things can always change if matters go south, given the volitale reality of coaching in the NHL. However, if things go well, Gallant will have the opportunity to become the Panthers longest tenured coach by the end of his term. No Panthers coach has lasted longer than three seasons.
Then we have Tom Rowe, who was not only extended, but promoted from head coach of the AHL’s Portland Pirates to the Panthers Assistant GM.
Rowe had been the head coach of the Panthers AHL affiliate since 2013-14, when the San Antonio Rampage was the affiliate. He stepped in to replace Peter Horacheck, who had been promoted to Panthers head coach. Rowe has largely served in a coach capacity for most of the last ten years. He has been a head coach with Lowell and Albany of the AHL prior to his time in the Panthers organization. He served as an assistant coach with the Carolina Hurricanes from 2008 to 2011. He also spent a season coaching Yaroslavl Lokomotiv in the KHL for the 2012-13 season. Current Panthers defenseman Dmitry Kulikov played for Rowe on that team. This marks a return to the front office life for Rowe, who held a number of front office positions with various teams for the first 14 seasons of his staff career. This, in particular, is his second stint as an assistant GM in the NHL, having previously served with the Hartford Whalers in that capacity from 1991 to 1993.
He will be replaced at Portland by Scott Allen, a long time coach at the minor league level. He spent six seasons with the ECHL’s Johnstown Chiefs from 1996 to 2002, serving as head coach for four and a half of those seasons. He was previously an assistant with the Panthers AHL affiliate in San Antonio from 2002 to 2004, during which he had two short stints as head coach. Since then and until now, Allen has been strictly an assistant coach, serving with five other AHL team’s before coming back to the Panthers system at San Antonio in 2014-15. He also served a three season stint as an assistant under Scott Gordon and Jack Capuano with the New York Islanders from 2009 to 2012.
I do not claim to know much about the style these gentlemen bring, so I will not attempt to tell you what kind of impact they will have on the team. I will say I find it interesting that Rowe is getting back into the team executive life after a decade off. I wonder if this is not a homecoming for him, given he started out as an executive. I wonder the same about Scott Allen. That head coaching gig in Johnstown 14 years ago was his last proper, full-time head coaching position at the pro ranks. This is also the third time he will take over a Panthers AHL affiliate mid-season. At the end of the day though, they have both been around the pro ranks for a long time, and its always nice to see folks get opportunities after paying their dues.
The most important part of these moves though, in my mind, are that they represent stability. The Panthers have changed GMs and coaches so often in the past that its mind numbing. Its hard to become a solid, well-run organization if there is constant turnover at the top. The guys running the show need to be allowed to do just that, run the show.
May these moves help the Panthers make 2016 a good one.
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