Lou Lamoriello and Pete DeBoer at the coach’s introductory presser in 2011. DeBoer’s tenure lasted a little over three years before ending today (NJ.com)

If it’s possible to be startled and yet unsurprised at the same time, that was my dual reaction when I read a lone tweet by TSN’s Bob McKenzie going through Twitter just before lunch today:

Head coach Pete DeBoer has been fired by the New Jersey Devils.

Given the team’s recent run of play – losing thirteen out of sixteen, massively getting outplayed even by other bad teams – this can’t really be a surprise to any Devil fan (or really any hockey observer), except to the extent that time’s already realistically run out if you were going to make a change to try to salvage this season.  Plus I figured if there was going to be a change made it would have been before the holiday, right after their latest ugly game against the Hurricanes.  While it’s a bit weird to make a change the day after Christmas, it’s not entirely unprecedented for Lou, who fired John MacLean two days before Christmas in 2010.  And it seemed like DeBoer had twelve or thirteen different lives over the last few years as opposed to the nine cats get, given the team’s horrendous record since the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals led to no significant changes until this afternoon.

I don’t really want to rehash the issues that led to Pete’s dismissal, that’s the epitome of beating a dead horse.  Clearly his tenure wasn’t a total disaster though much of the good happened in 2012 and most of the bad’s happened since then.  I do admit having mixed feelings over hearing about Pete’s dismissal, which fit perfectly into my love-hate relationship with the now-former coach of the Devils.  Don’t get me wrong, I still feel a change was needed, especially with the team’s level of play having gone in the toilet this month – and assuming you’re going to overhaul this roster, Pete really isn’t the guy to oversee a youth movement while he’s in desperation mode.   Still, Pete’s firing really to a degree severs the last link to the 2012 run and we’re not even three full years removed from it.  Everyone knows about Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk’s departures.  Obviously franchise icon Martin Brodeur is in St. Louis now.  And Bryce Salvador seems to have gone to neverneverland, perhaps already having played his last game as a Devil unfortunately.

It’s a bit sobering to think of how I and every other Devil fan felt about the team in June 2012 and how two and a half years has completely changed the outlook.  Of course I’m going through much the same thing with my football team, although the Jets are a couple more years removed from their 2008-09 conference championship game appearances.  My gallows humor joke today was ‘well, at least Pete beat Rex (Ryan) to the unemployment line…by a few days’, given that the Jets are also likely to make a coaching change on the NFL’s Black Monday.  Ironically the best moment of both their tenures involved beating their most bitter rivals, with Rex’s Jets knocking out the Patriots in 2009 and DeBoer’s Devils beating the Rangers in the 2012 Conference Finals.  Within that series also came my single favorite DeBoer moment when he and then-Ranger coach John Tortorella went at it during Game 4 after former teammate Mike Rupp took a gratuitous shot at Brodeur.  During that shining run, the Devils weren’t taking crap from anyone.

Now this organization’s completely broken for a myriad of reasons.  Of course much of it can be traced back to the dual departures of Parise and Kovalchuk, but that still doesn’t change the fact that DeBoer’s record now has one playoff appearance in six and a half coaching seasons, and that his best year came in his first season both places – leading an overachieving Florida team to 92 points in 2009 before things fell off there, and of course our 2012 season was his first here.  Things couldn’t have been much better at that point, but things certainly can’t be much worse now.  Sure, not all of what’s happened since 2012 can be laid at the feet of DeBoer.  As I’ve said for a while, he’s not the only problem but he’s certainly been part of the problem.  He could survive bad results for a while given that the 2013-14 teams at least gave effort on most nights.  This year’s team hasn’t, and looks even more like the collection of mercenaries, old fogies up front and kids on the back end than it should have.  While nobody expected the Devils to be a division leader or anything like that, few thought they’d be in serious contention for the McDavid/Eichel picks either…which right now they are.

Now that DeBoer’s gone, the intrigue comes in who’s next, since GM Lou Lamoriello declined to announce Pete’s replacement until speaking to the team tomorrow.  I was going to speculate on the number of names it could have possibly been but numerous Twitter rumors have Adam Oates (a former Devils/Pete assistant in fact) being the replacement.  If true, then I might be getting closer to the bandwagon of ‘Lou must go’.  It’s not so much Oates is a bad coach per se though his record in Washington wasn’t anything to write home about, but is he really any different from his former boss?  Both believe in a similar forechecking system, both are anal about having players line up on their correct ‘side’ – hence Pete shifting Ilya Kovalchuk to right wing and Oates switching Alex Ovechkin to right wing and both have been victimized by blown multi-goal leads.  At face value this is the ultimate ‘change the voice’ switch.  And this team is FAR from a mere ‘change the voice’ away from contention.  If anything this coaching hire needs to be about changing status quo rather than maintaining it.  I won’t go into full rant mode until tomorrow and I hear what Lou and the new coach – whoever it may be – has to say.