“The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.” Carl Jung

As long as you’re willing to re-locate frequently the job of NHL head coach has a fair degree of job security. Even when you get fired it seems there’s a ready appetite in some other town for a skill set you have just failed at.

Latest evidence that failure has an I and U in it: Having canned Sheldon Keefe after a lengthy (note: sarcasm) five years at the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs, club management scoured the bushes to find former player Craig “Chief” Berube, who has previously hung his coaching shingle in Philadelphia and St. Louis, where he won a Stanley Cup as an interim coach.

Chief wasn’t the glamour name (we were praying for Bruce Boudreau.). If the idea is how do the Leafs motivate their four mega-millionaires, he’s more like Mike Babcock than Sheldon Keefe. He won’t look at players’ cell phones, but he will give them that old-time religion. Knowing Chief from his Calgary days we’d say he can probably take the Toronto fishbowl.

(For those with long Leafs’ memories Berube was part of a famous trade in 1992 to which we devote an entire chapter in our new book Deal With It. He went west to Calgary while Doug Gilmour headed east to Toronto in the massive 10-man trade. While the Leafs “won” the trade, only the maligned Gary Leeman and journeyman Jamie Macoun won Cups– for teams other than Calgary and Toronto.)

But we digress. Sometimes it seems that NHL teams would rather lose with a known commodity than win with someone bold and unconventional behind the bench. While almost 30 percent of NHL players are European there have only been two European heads coaches, none in the past 20 years. Why? NHL owners are risk averse. And the league is a fraternity of forgiveness for guys you played junior with.

A brief ramble through the 2023-24 coaching roster shows several peripatetic bench bosses, led by the inimitable John Tortarella, who wore out his welcome in Vancouver, Tampa Bay, NY Rangers and Columbus before Philly curiously decided he had something left to offer. Let’s also not forget Lindy Ruff, who was pink slipped in Buffalo, Dallas, New Jersey and the NY Rangers— and now has been resurrected in Buffalo as a “fresh voice”.

Some retreads are getting results. Peter Laviolette has the Rangers into the third-round of the 2024 postseason, after gigs in Carolina, Philadelphia, Nashville, Washington (pause for breath) and the NY Islanders. Paul Maurice, currently guiding Florida in the playoffs, has had two stints with Carolina, plus Toronto and Winnipeg. Peter DeBoer, whose Dallas Stars are odd-on faves to with the 2024 Cup, has also coached Florida, San Jose, New Jersey and Vegas.

You want more? Rick Tocchet was head coach in Arizona and Tampa Bay before getting the perch in Vancouver. Travis Green, newly hired in Ottawa, has previously been found wanting in Vancouver and New Jersey. We could go on.

The king of the coach-for-life carousel is the just-retired Rick Bowness who finally called it a day in Winnipeg after the Jets were eliminated this spring. How long has Bones been knocking around? He was the coach of the expansion Ottawa Senators in 1992, one the worst five teams ever by NHL standards. Wonderful man who also spent stints as an assistant in cities in 30-plus years around the continent.

There are more. Sitting in the green room, polishing their pregame speeches are the well- travelled Boudreau, Dallas Eakins, Gerard Gallant, Todd McLellan, Claude Julien and Mike Yeo. Heaven forbid someone might still ask one of the Sutters to saddle up again. Brian (St. Louis, Chicago, Boston, Calgary), Darryl (Calgary, L.A., Anaheim, San Jose and Calgary again) and Brent (Calgary, New Jersey) have been perennial NHL coaching prospects for decades.

So take, heart, Sheldon Keefe. Joining Keefe in looking for a rebound job are Scott Arniel, Jeff Blashill, Jeremy Colliton, Kevin Dineen, Phil Housley, Kirk Muller, Davis Payne, Todd Reirden, Joe Sacco, Brad Shaw, Geoff Ward and Trent Yawney. Good company.

Don’t cry too hard for these coaching candidates. Unless they have years left on contract (Keefe has two) most wait out the time between head-coaching stints by accepting assistant-coach positions. The ranks of assistants contain a second tier of talent, also ready to go at a moment’s notice.

There are a scant few who’ve hung on in one town. Jon Cooper has been in Tampa since 2013, a Methuselah stint in today’s terms. Rod Brind’Amour has managed to avoid the chop in Carolina since 2018. But the reality is that, since the start off the 2023-24 season alone, there have been 13 head-coaching changes in the NHL. Go back to January of 2023, and 19 of the league’s 32 teams have changed coaches.

Which brings us back to the original idea: “Is there no one in international hockey who knows anything?” We won’t profess to be coaching talent scouts, but the idea that no one working outside North America can meet the job description better than some— if not most—of the coaches mentioned above beggars the imagination.

One final note: If you’re looking for an explanation of the coaching carousel and its recent frequency, look no further than Gary Bettman and his salary cap obsession. By forcing a hard cap on teams he’s concentrated the money— and the power— on a few players per team. When a coach is pitted against his stars it’s a no-win proposition.

The Leafs stars used their power to get Babcock fired. And it’s been repeated on other teams. While Keefe didn’t lose his Core Four he also couldn’t get them to win in the postseason. For that he got the chop— and a premium place in the next coaching carousel.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin— Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/

From Heartland Daily News

By Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D.  

The Biden administration signaled its support for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new pandemic treaty expected to be finalized at its World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, the final week of May.

Pamela Hamamoto, the State Department official representing the United States at the meeting, stated that “America is committed to signing the treaty that will ‘build a stronger global health structure,’” wrote John Tierney, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor, in the City Journal.

Adoption of a legally binding pact governing how countries around the world are to respond to future outbreaks like the recent COVID-19 pandemic has been the goal of WHO-directed negotiations since 2021. The WHO, a United Nations-sponsored organization, came under sharp criticism for its handling of the coronavirus.

Missteps on COVID-19

In a post on Twitter (now X) on January 14, 2020, the WHO stated: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

Two weeks later, on January 30, 2020, WHO’s Emergency Committee issued a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), stating, “The Committee emphasized that the declaration of a PHEIC should be seen in the spirit of support and appreciation of China, its people, and the actions China has taken on the front lines of this outbreak, with transparency and, it is to be hoped, success.”

The WHO’s initial investigation into the origins of COVID-19 concluded it was improbable that the virus resulted from experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, though it later acknowledged that it could have come from a lab leak at Wuhan. The WHO’s investigation, which was thwarted by Chinese officials, ultimately reached no conclusion. President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO, a decision reversed by President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.

More Smoke and Mirrors

Further undermining the WHO’s credibility in setting policies on managing a future pandemic, the group decided to include Peter Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, in its initial investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance prominently featured in an investigation by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic into the government’s funding and lack of oversight of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, for which EcoHealth received grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health.

In an interim report released on May 1, 2024, the subcommittee said there is “significant evidence that Daszak violated the terms of the NIH grant awarded to EcoHealth. Given Dr. Daszak’s apparent contempt for the American people and disregard for legal reporting requirements, the Select Subcommittee recommends the formal debarment of and a criminal investigation into EcoHealth and its President.”

After the release of the report, U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told the Washington Examiner, “The World Health Organization covered up the Chinese Communist Party’s role in developing and spreading COVID-19 and has since failed to hold them accountable for the global pandemic that killed millions, upended our daily lives, and destroyed thousands of small businesses.”

Public Fed Up

The WHO’s shaky record on COVID, including its close ties to China and Peter Daszak, have taken a toll on the public’s willingness to accept its leadership in any future pandemics.

A poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for the Center for Security Policy, released on April 17, found that 54.6 percent of likely voters oppose tying the United States to a WHO pandemic treaty, and just 29.0 percent favor such a move.

Agreements Bypass Congress

While providing few details, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January, WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus said, “The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges we have faced and all the solutions into one. That agreement could help us prepare for the future in a better way.”

The “treaty” the Biden administration is eager to sign will likely be an executive agreement, like the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which was not presented to the U.S. Senate for ratification but contained “commitments” President Barack Obama pledged to honor.

Also in the works in Geneva are amendments to International Health Regulations, which Congress would not approve or disapprove.COVID

WHO’s Power Grab

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WS), sent a letter to President Biden signed by all 49 Republican senators, expressing their concern about the powers that could be handed to WHO, on May 2.

“Some of the over 300 proposals for amendments made by member states would substantially increase the WHO’s emergency powers and constitute intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty,” the letter states.

Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), who has attended UN-sponsored conferences around the world for over 30 years, says the WHO is a destructive force.

“WHO’s performance during COVID-19 was a lethal combination of incompetence and dishonesty,” said Rucker. “The organization failed to protect public health and went to extraordinary lengths to cover up China’s role in fostering gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Ratification of any WHO pandemic treaty would be nothing short of a travesty.”

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.