There is still plenty of talk around town about Hurricanes owner, Peter Karmanos' visit to Raleigh yesterday. Many fans will be happy when he returns to Detroit.
While the candid CEO certainly has the right to his opinions, one has to wonder what purpose his controversial statements served on Thursday. Just how clever is it to publicly crucify your ex-coach, who is still under contract for two more years? Wouldn't it have made better financial sense to at least wait until he had acquired another job before attempting to ruin his reputation?
If Mr. Karmanos is still considering taking over the marketing of the team, perhaps he should reconsider his position. His brief public appearance yesterday did much more to harm future marketing efforts than he could have imagined.
A couple of the statements made yesterday were a bit inconsistent and should have been met with some followup questions.
- If the Hurricanes only managed to win in 2006 because they "caught lightning in a bottle" and Martin Gerber stood on his head all year, then how did they win in the playoffs when Gerber was "ill"?
- If Martin Gerber was truly the key to winning the Cup, then why did they let him walk to Ottawa after the Cup win? Shouldn't they have made re-signing him a priority?
- Karmanos said that there were "several" players like Eric Belanger whom the ex-coach failed to evaluate properly, yet he didn't mention who they were. Who are the other players? Trevor Letowski? Jeff Hamilton? Please name some names of the other superstars who were improperly evaluated.
There seems to be little doubt that Karmanos and Laviolette did not see eye to eye on things, but the whole public airing of this is mind-boggling as well as unprofessional. Yet even afterwards, Karmanos claims that he likes the ex-coach, as a person. Which leads to one more question.
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Luke DeCock has a nice column today regarding the owner's statements. As usual, the writer makes some valid points.