He’s out at Blue Jackets head coach.  Todd Richards is in.

Exit...Stage Right...

This morning the Blue Jackets announced that assistant coach Todd Richards will be taking over coaching duties of the struggling team (on an interim basis) for the rest of the season.  Richards joined the team as an assistant in June of 2011 and will make his head coaching debut on Tuesday when the club takes on the Chicago Blackhawks.

Scott Arniel now joins the every increasing list of fired NHL coaches this season – Davis Payne (Blues), Paul Maurice (Hurricanes), Bruce Boudreau (Captials), Randy Carlyle (Ducks), Jacques Martin (Canadians), and Terry Murray (Kings) – and we feel sort of bad for him.  He had a rough start to the season without James Wisniewski and a grip of players out with injuries.  They seemed to pick it up in Nov/Dec but have floundered as of late, essential sending Arniel off to collect unemployment.  Columbus is in dead-last place in the NHL, with just 27 points and 20 points out of a playoff spot.

There is no doubt that all the teams who have lost coaches this season have talented players peppering their rosters, so how come they aren’t winning?  Are the coaches not motivating the players enough?  Is their style of coaching not suited to the caliber of players on the team? Are the players being lazy? Or are they just not as good as we think they are?  Has the management just not put the right pieces of the puzzle together to build a winning hockey team?

So with this recent firing, we want to pose a question to our WUYS readers.

When a team is struggling & not winning games, who’s really to blame?  The coach?  The players?  The management?