While things were all good for the Boston Bruins under Claude Julien by the spring of 2011, their long-awaited Stanley Cup championship did not erase the various ?What if's?? from the diaries of the previous decade.
Consider where both the Bruins and the Cup were five years prior, in the 2005-06 NHL season. The team was seeking reformation after a non-playoff season under Mike Sullivan, while the trophy was lending a savory summer to the Carolina Hurricanes and head coach Peter Laviolette.
Attentive New England puckheads witnessing that state of affairs had to be recalling that Laviolette was almost their skipper. He had earned his stripes at every level below NHL head coaching before the eyes of Bruins buffs, yet he was allowed to take his winning touch elsewhere.
As the Boston Red Sox tumble down to what is bound to be a third straight MLB playoff no-show, they ought to read up on the not-too-distant history of their crosstown cohabitants. They must assess the almost uncanny parallels between Arnie Beyeler?s Pawtucket Red Sox of this young decade and Laviolette?s Providence Bruins at the end of the 20th century.
Beyeler has earned the same sort of stripes over 2011 and 2012 that Laviolette did between 1998 and 2000. The PawSox? 63-74 parent club would be wise to take notice of their own organization?s present, as well as the Bruins? past, organizational history.
Beginning on Wednesday, Beyeler?s second year as the PawSox skipper will conclude with the team?s second consecutive appearance in the International League playoffs. Pawtucket has not had this kind of consistent, year-to-year success since 1997, coincidentally the last time their parent club had a losing record.
Granted, they have not won a championship the way the Providence Bruins did under Laviolette in 1998-99, but being one of four postseason qualifiers in a 14-team circuit in consecutive campaigns is enough of a resume booster?never mind when a team does it two years in a row.
Furthermore, an unmistakable theme of defying adversity has highlighted Beyeler?s second season as a Triple-A sports skipper in Rhode Island.
Shortly before Pawtucket wrapped up the International League wild card on Saturday, Providence Journal columnist Jim Donaldson noted that, through their first 141 out of 144 games in 2012, ?the PawSox had suited up 67 players ? three shy of the franchise record.?
By the conclusion of the regular season on Monday, they had employed 69 individuals over the five-month journey.
Along the way, Pawtucket has lost heavy hitter Lars Anderson to a trade before the July 31 deadline. Other key batters such as Pedro Ciriaco, Mauro Gomez, Ryan Lavarnway and Daniel Nava have been missing for most or all of the homestretch due to call-ups. The same goes for pitchers Mark Melancon, Andrew Miller and Junichi Tazawa.
That qualitative and quantitative overhaul bent, but it did not break the PawSox. They did go 31-28 from July 1 through September 1, which dropped them from a comfortable 47-36 to 78-64, but it subsisted well enough to earn bonus action this week.
Under comparable circumstances, in defense of their Calder Cup championship, the 1999-2000 Providence Bruins set an American Hockey League record by suiting up 70 individuals over the course of the regular season.
Upon barely squeezing in a playoff berth, a much more stable roster swept through the first two rounds and eventually pushed the eventual champion Hartford Wolf Pack to overtime in Game 7 of the conference finals.
The following year, Laviolette was elevated to serve as an assistant on the Boston staff of Pat Burns and later Mike Keenan. When Keenan could not avert a second straight playoff no-show, the Bruins relieved him and sought an external successor in Robbie Ftorek.
Passed over, Laviolette sought thicker ice and immediately garnered his first NHL head coaching gig with the New York Islanders for the 2001-02 season. Just as he had done with Providence in 1998-99, he brought his new team back into the playoff bracket.
He did the same with Carolina in 2005-06, one season after he was tabbed as Paul Maurice?s midseason replacement. The Hurricanes? championship that year would constitute Laviolette?s first of two Stanley Cup Finals berths in a span of five seasons, the other being with Philadelphia in 2010.
In all that time, even though their steady progression under Julien reached its summit in 2011, Bruins buffs had to be wondering if they could have had more at an earlier point.
Do the Sox want a similar scenario?
Granted, there are other externally developed candidates to?take charge of?the Fenway dugout (retaining Bobby Valentine will not work), where they could have satisfying odds of replenishing the Red Sox.
However, one difference between the Laviolette era in Providence and the Beyeler era in Pawtucket is the more abundant and noticeable roles Beyeler?s graduates are already offering in Boston.
Clay Buchholz, Ciriaco, Felix Doubront, Jacoby Ellsbury, Gomez, Jose Iglesias, Ryan Kalish, Lavarnway, Che-Hsuan Lin, Melancon, Will Middlebrooks, Miller, Nava, Scott Podsednik, Tazawa.
All 15 of those established or up-and-coming BoSox contributors know Beyeler from at least one extended stay in Double-A Portland or Pawtucket. That amounts to either 60 percent of a standard 25-man Major League roster or 37.5 percent of an extended 40-man roster.
With such dense familiarity between the players and the successful Triple-A skipper as well as the general uncertainty as to how long any course of action will take to neutralize the current chaos in Boston, Beyeler is the wisest option.
Elevating the Paw Sox manager to the same post at Fenway and granting a one-year grace period over 2013 in order to let him and his smattering of ex-minor-league pupils acclimate would be a great idea. Perhaps he could at least bring the club back above .500.
When a top-level team is in a state as sorry as this, but has a chance to start redressing with a homegrown leader, why would the Sox brass not pull the trigger?
The Bruins once had that opportunity, passed it up and arguably cost themselves about five years of progression. The Red Sox can still make good on the same opportunity.
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