Lemaire retires from coaching

Getting a hockey team to win your division and earn the No. 2 seed can really energize a coach and a franchise. Getting your rear ends handed to you in five games by the No. 7 seed can really deflate a coach and a franchise.

And New Jersey Devils head coach Jacques Lemaire is so deflated, he’s decided to retire.

“It’s tough to leave what you like, but it’s a decision that I made,” he said.

Lemaire did say that the decision had absolutely nothing to do with the team’s poor performance in the playoffs, but please just allow us to believe what we want to believe.

“It’s not the team, it is not the result or the lack of result we had in the playoffs,” a slightly misty Lemaire said. “It’s not that at all. It’s the end of the line. I’ll be 65. It’s just time.”

“I didn’t see that coming,” goaltender Martin Brodeur said. “I think Jacques has a lot of passion for the game and he showed it all throughout the year and the playoffs, and I think that drive was there. It seems to be there, but he knows it better than anybody and you have to accept what he wants to do.”

Many experts are already speculating that because Lemaire is retiring that the Devils’ head coaching position will be vacant. This leads us to wonder whether or not the Devils will have a new coach on the bench next year.