Victoriaville Tigres can Yanick Jean after 5-game loss in first round

The man behind the Flying V stunt has paid the price for too many playoff L's.

You might remember back to 2012 when the fourth-seeded Victoriaville Tigres, under coach Yanick Jean, arranged themselves in formation like migrating birds during pregame warmups while trailing in a playoff series against Baie-Comeau. The gambit failed to fire up the Tigres, who got swept, and that humbling only put more pressure on Jean to deliver. In the wake of adding seasoned players at midseason to try to get into the Quebec League's lead pack and losing out in five games to the Drummondville Voltigeurs, the club tied the can to its all-time winningest coach, confirming a Sunday report from RDS.

Jean, 38, has a good regular-season record but has only been to the Quebec League semifinals once in six seasons with the Tigres. The failure to win in the playoffs not re is something of a 'fall guy' element at play.

The Tigres weren't huge spenders during the Christmastime trade period, but GM Jérôme Mésonéro certainly added pieces. The Tigres added the likes of overage finisher Jean-François Plante, St. Louis-drafted goalie François Tremblay, parting with assets such as as including their second-rounder in this spring's draft, their 2015 first-rounder and 16-year-old defenceman Luc Deschênes.

Unfortunately for the Tigres, as Stéphane Leroux points out, they lost more than 250 man-games to injury. The club slipped down into 11th place in the Q with 74 points and drew the short straw to face the surging (pun appropriate) Voltigeurs in the first round instead of the banged-up Quebec Remparts (who were easy pickings for Rouyn-Noranda in a five-game win).

Give or take two points from someone's total and re-shuffle the seeding, and perhaps Victoriaville draws Quebec and advances. That's the way the chain reactions work in major junior. The Q always seems steady as rent for having one team that didn't make good on the promise that abounded after the GM went Christmas shopping, and the buck stops somewhere.

Jean, who has 301 career coaching wins, is a good bet to resurface with another club sooner or later. Chances are it won't be the Voltigeurs, the Victoria Royals or Vancouver Giants, which is a shame.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.