A Coach I Didn't Hate

Maybe he can regrow the 'stache now that he doesn't have to be all coachy and shit.

You may have noted that I sometimes tend to be a little hard on the coaches of my favored teams. I have herein thrashed, at various times, two DCU coaches, a Caps coach, every Redskins coach ever, a Maryland football coach, and a US Mens National Soccer Team coach. I hate the present Maryland football coach so much I won't even acknowledge that Maryland has a football program, and I'm not much more kind about the incumbent mens' basketball coach, either. There are, in fact, on all my teams and sports about which I can be said to care, precisely three coaches who don't piss me off by simply existing, or at least there were, until about 11:45 AM today. The two that remain are Brenda Frese of the Maryland womens' basketball team, because she's five feet four inches of awesome and snarl and kicking your motherfucking non-Terp ass, and Saint Benny of Olsen, for reasons obvious to anyone who knows dick about me.

Which leads us to 11:45 AM today. I rejoiced the day Dale Hunter was appointed coach of the Washington Capitals, and I have rejoiced even more every single day since about April 2. Dale Hunter, a Caps hero whose number sits in the fucking rafters for reasons best evidenced by the videos accompanying the linked post, turned around a team that hated itself (and with good reason). Dale Hunter took a team that would've never made the playoffs with the fat man at the helm, and made it earn the seventh seed in the playoffs. Dale Hunter was at the helm, in fact, for all of the things I cited here yesterday.

Today was breakdown day for the 2011-2012 Caps, and Dale Hunter chose to go home to his family and his other business interests. There are people who fault him. They're dicks. There are people who fault George McPhee (a consummate hockey management guy), the general manager who hired him knowing that it might be temporary. They're dicks. There are still people who are whinging about their ungrateful point of view that the season was somehow a failure. They're ignorant fucking dicks who should go pay attention to something else.

Dale Hunter salvaged something for the Caps' season; of course, it was the players who salvaged the season, but Hunter's system, Hunter's passion, Hunter's drive, Hunter's will pushed them into salvaging what smelled like an actual failure. It's like I said yesterday; if, by now, nearly 48 hours after game 7, you feel anything other than gratitude toward anyone on the Capitals, you're a fucking piece of shit and you should, seriously, shut the fucking fuck up and go be a fan of something or someone else.

It's breakdown day. There are Capitals I want gone. Dale Hunter was not among them, but like any sane person, I respect his choice and remain grateful that he did us the favor of six months of coaching. Thanks, Dale.