As Florida Panthers move on from GM Dale Tallon, here’s who could be next in Miami to go | Opinion
When you don’t know what else to do, you fire somebody.
When you’re out of answers and excuses, fire somebody.
This is the way it works in big-time sports. Coaches and team executives are not often let go based on incompetence, but rather because the team owner ran out of patience, felt pressure and needed a fall guy. Needed a bold stroke to convey action, perhaps to divert attention from his own inability to find a winning combination.
Change merely for the sake of change is sometimes enough, and it erased Dale Tallon from the South Florida sports landscape on Monday.
The Florida Panthers’ longtime general manager — 10 years is a lifetime in sports — leaves the hockey club in what is being called a “mutual agreement,” because a respected 69-year-old NHL lifer deserves that, at least. Plainly, his contract expired when this season did and would not be renewed.
It is understandable, this move. I am sorry to see it, and to say, but it is justifiable.
“Dale raised the team’s profile, attracted key players and brought character and class to our franchise,” began owner Vincent Viola’s career obituary for Tallon. But: “When we purchased the Panthers in 2013 we did so with a singular goal, to win a Stanley Cup. We have not seen our efforts come to fruition.”
Tallon thanked Panthers fans and Viola in a parting statement issued through the club, but he is hurting. I texted Dale on Monday to ask if we might speak. He replied and, politely, wrote, “I will hold off at this time.”
Ironically, Tallon’s own successes as a GM raised the bar that ultimately caused his sacking.
His Cats made a cannonball splash during the past offseason in hiring star coach Joel Quenneville and top free agent goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. The moves screamed win-now-or-else.
How many years had Panthers fans been waiting for Florida ‘s promising young nucleus led by Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Aaron Ekblad to jell?
I remember Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, in a hotel bar on a road trip, once telling me he worried his team was “wasting the Marino years.” There is a parallel with the Cats and Barkov, whose sublime talent deserves a postseason stage, a chance at Stanley Cups.
Quenneville and Bobrovsky were supposed to be the final pieces to get him there. Instead, Florida would not have even made the playoffs had the season ended normally rather than been delayed by the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. The rejiggered format of the straight-to-playoffs resumption gave the Cats a postseason chance, but they lost a best-of-5 play-in series to the Islanders, 3-1, to finish the latest season with the familiar feeling of disappointment and underachievement.
Quenneville and Bobrovsky both underperformed based on expectations, so the man who signed them both takes the fall.
Tallon’s team made the postseason three times (counting this asterisk of a season) and topped 90 points in the standings four times. He leaves whomever replaces him with a talented roster.
It isn’t that he failed.
It’s that he didn’t succeed enough.
Florida was one of eight teams with an equal chance Monday night to land the overall No. 1 draft pick and certain top pick and prized winger Alexis Lafreniere, but he won’t be Tallon’s to inherit should the Cats get lucky.
Let Tallon’s departure be a warning that applies elsewhere in this market to others who are feeling job pressure, should be, or might be soon.
Because not many get the 10 years Tallon got, and everywhere you look — outside of the steadily competitive and stable Miami Heat — you see potential change.
Michael Hill has grown up in the Marlins organization and been president of baseball operations since 2013, with no winning season to show for it in that time. Now the club has done a ground-up reboot under Derek Jeter’s new regime, with a 7-3 record hinting at the promise.
If the Marlins aren’t a playoff team within two or three years, expect pressure to find Hill.
Chris Grier has been a Dolphins executive since 2007 and general manager since ‘16, unable thus far to assemble a team good enough to win the franchise’s first playoff game since 2001. Now the club has completely retooled, trading top players for high draft picks.
If the Dolphins aren’t a winning team soon, if the top draft picks including quarterback Tua Tagovailoa don’t hit big, it will be Grier feeling the heat.
Inter Miami is an expansion team in Major League Soccer, but its 0-5 start, albeit all one-goal losses, is the worst start ever for a first-year club. The honeymoon for coach Diego Alonso will be a short one if the losses continue to mount.
At the college level, the ignominy of last year’s 6-7 football season, including embarrassing losses to FIU and Louisiana Tech, heaps pressure on coach Manny Diaz and, by extension, on director of athletics Blake James.
Tallon was a fixture down here and now he’s gone.
Makes you look around and wonder who will be the next to fall, because somebody always is.
