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Former NHL GM got roasted by a Panthers executive on Twitter
When the Florida Panthers fired head coach Gerard Gallant on Sunday night, many around the world of hockey were surprised by the news. After all, Gallant built up some momentum in Florida and coached the Panthers to a 103-point season and a division title last year. But following a slow start to this young season, the team felt that a coaching change was needed.
Amongst the scores of surprised pundits was Doug MacLean, current analyst for Sportsnet in Canada and former NHL general manager and head coach. MacLean, who coached the Panthers from 1995-98, took to Twitter to fire off a string of tweets about how Gallant didn't deserve to get canned by Florida.
Say what you want about his confusing grammar and tweet structure, but MacLean's thoughts were certainly passionate. They were also just a little ironic, considering that MacLean once fired Gallant in similar fashion.
Back in 2006, while Maclean was serving as president and general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, he gave Gallant the boot as head coach just 15 games into a new season. The circumstances weren't quite the same (the Blue Jackets had yet to make the playoffs in their first five seasons and recently fell to last place in their division) and he had nice things to say about the coach after letting him go, but there are similarities.
"He has shown tremendous dedication to our organization over the past six-plus years and worked as hard as he could to help our team be successful," MacLean said back in 2006. "Unfortunately, we have not gotten off to the start we expected this season and while there are always a multitude of factors involved, we felt a change was needed."
From all indications, that's a similar line of thinking to what the Panthers feel now, so it's somewhat funny to see MacLean go after them so hard following Gallant's firing, regardless of how fair or unfair it was.
But MacLean wanted to reach out to Panthers' vice chairman Doug Cifu to let him know that he disagreed with the decision. He had some trouble initially.
But he managed to file his complaint, eventually.
Cifu eventually saw that complaint, then sent along a nice little response all the way from Ireland.
Given that MacLean's tenure in Columbus was largely unsuccessful, we can presume Cifu's retort was a very sarcastic one. MacLean either failed to come to that same conclusion, or decided to give with the most polite response to a burn ever.
Hopefully MacLean was just conceding and taking his L there, because the only thing more embarrassing than getting roasted online is getting roasted online without even realizing it.
@FlaPanthers I just got word that Gerardgallantwas let go . Omg . Are they serious? What a joke!!
— Doug Maclean (@DougMaclean) November 28, 2016
You know I have loved the @FlaPanthers deep down for 20 years ! A lifetime ! But this killed it ! This is a complete joke. Wow.
— Doug Maclean (@DougMaclean) November 28, 2016
@Dougielarge congrats you are now a hockey expert .
— Doug Maclean (@DougMaclean) November 28, 2016
@DougMaclean thanks! Studied all your terrific moves over 9 (?) years in Columbus! Well done.
— Doug Cifu (@Dougielarge) November 28, 2016
@Dougielarge thx appreciate your kind words. Good luck
— Doug Maclean (@DougMaclean) November 28, 2016
