Seg. 3: Sean McIndoe

Sean McIndoe (@DownGoesBrown), a hockey writer for VICE Sports, Sportsnet and The Hockey News, joined The Press Box to discuss the Blues firing Ken Hitchcock. He also talks about whether or not Jake Allen is a number 1 goaltender and if Mike Yeo is the right man for the job moving forward. Read some excerpts and listen to the full interview below: What was your reaction when you heard the news Hitchcock was gone? “My first reaction was surprise…because I’d expected when they made the decision (to have Hitchcock come back for one more year and hiring Mike Yeo has the coach in waiting), I felt like it would take a significant collapse for them to make a change during the decision. But certainly…it’s quite clear (Doug Armstrong) it was at a point it was no longer working. If you’ve reached that point…do it as quickly as possible because it’s the right thing to do and you have four weeks until the trade deadline. And Armstrong needs to figure out what he’s got on this team to either fix it or reload it for down the road.” On Doug Armstrong putting the onus on the players: “It surprised me a little bit to hear how emotional he was and how torn up he was he had to make that decision. Given that, it’s not surprising he’s putting it on the players a little bit. Hitchcock has always been a guy with a reputation that he’d come in, he’d fix a lot of your problems, he’d give you a big boost up the standings…and then he had a shelf life. And it was maybe three or four years and the dressing room would start to tune out and you had to make a change.” “Maybe that’s what happens here. There’s a lot of speculation the players were no longer playing for him and starting to tune him out. Armstrong is pretty clearly laying the gauntlet down to these guys…that if there was anyone who quit on this guy or didn’t want to play for him, you got your wish and now it’s all on you. It’ll be interesting to see if they respond and turn it around.”