Yahoo Sports 
Claude Noel leaves WHL's Vancouver Giants, who will have fourth coach in three seasons
The success of bringing in a coach from the pro level to work with junior players usually depends on the material.
Sometimes it works well — Mark French inherited a lot of talent with the Calgary Hitmen — but in the case of the Vancouver Giants bringing in Claude Noel in December, the ex-Winnipeg Jets coach wasn't able to effect a quick fix with a young team. That's probably why it didn't work. On Wednesday, to little surprise, the Giants made it official Noel will not be back after they missed the playoffs for the second time in three seasons, finishing 20th overall in the 22-team Western Hockey League.
The Giants were 17-23-2-2 under Noel, mildly better than the 10-18 start they had before the coaching shakeup.
“We’d like to thank Claude for his time with our club,” said Giants majority owner Ron Toigo. “Claude would like to pursue pro opportunities, and we need to move forward. We really appreciate him stepping into this role mid-season; we’re ending our time together on really good terms, and we wish him all the best in the future.”
The Giants' issues were probably completely extraneous to the man behind the bench. Vancouver, which won the WHL title in 2006 and the Memorial Cup as tournament host in '07, has not won a playoff round since 2010. As Steve Ewen pointed out in a column on Monday, bringing in Noel was making up for the foot-dragging after Don Hay was let out of his contract to coach the Kamloops Blazers (who turned out to be the other non-playoff team in the Western Conference).
They had a chance to re-brand their product, reinvigorate their fan base. They fell flat. They waited and waited, and when last call for coaches came up, they wound up paired with Troy Ward.
Ward was the wrong guy for the Giants because he was no one’s guy. Owner Ron Toigo wanted Travis Green. Bonner favoured Steve Hamilton. The late Pat Quinn, a co-owner, politicked for Tim Hunter.
Green wasn’t ever coming. He stuck with the Vancouver Canucks’ farm club, the Utica Comets. Hamilton, then an assistant with the Edmonton Oil Kings, and Hunter, the former Canucks tough guy who had been an assistant coach with multiple NHL clubs, both talked deal with the Giants, but neither could come to an agreement.
... All the craziness all season seemed to filter down to the players.They lacked a a common direction. There was too much individual play at times. There was too little standing up for one another; it wasn’t unusual to see one Giant in a scrum of two or three opponents in front of the net after a whistle, with no cavalry coming to the rescue. (Vancouver Province, March 22)
The Giants were a model franchise in the second half of the last decade. They certainly could be again, or at least should be respectable in 2015-16 with projected high NHL pick Tyler Benson continuing to hit his stride. It is pretty clear issues at the top inhibited their ability to perform all season.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
