It came as a surprise to many in lacrosse last week when the Toronto Rock fired their head coach Troy Cordingley. General manager Terry Sanderson said it was time for new voices behind the bench, which makes sense except Cordingley was the coach of the year and Toronto had the best record in the NLL.
In the team announcement, they say they relieved Cordingley of his duties, so this wasn’t him stepping down like Sanderson did from an assistant coach role. He was on the hot seat despite winning coach of the year, a first in professional sports.
Tony Rensch won coach of the year in 2001 but then retired while the same thing happened with Adam Mueller in New York. This happened to Cordingley in 2009 as well when he won coach of the year in Calgary but left on his own terms to go to Toronto.
So this means that this season, in 2013, was the first time a coach won coach of the year and then was fired. That again leaves us with the question, why?
In 2011 the Rock won a championship and the year before that they were in it and lost to Washington. This season they lost in the first round to Minnesota and the year before they suffered a second round exit to Rochester. If they were looking at a steady decline, that could make sense, however normally in professional sports you look for a larger sample size.
The Rock are an older team, but younger players like Garrett Billings have emerged as stars while Nick Rose was solid in net all season. We will probably never know why Cordingley was fired, but the results will be revealed soon.
