Boston fires the head coach two months after the season is over. Way to be on top of things there, guys.

Boston GM Peter Chiarelli called head coach Dave Lewis into his office around 4pm today (or so the news stories report), and gave him the boot.

Getting fired on a Friday puts one hell of a damper on the weekend, and I can tell you that from experience.

My reaction to the news was three-fold:

-Um, what?
- HURRAY, IT IS ABOUT DAMN TIME.
and
- How is this going to affect my offseason?

Let's examine this, shall we?

Um, what?
We're two months into our offseason. Shouldn't this have been done sooner?

HURRAY, IT IS ABOUT DAMN TIME.
I wasn't a fan of Lewis in Boston. My roommate, ever the devil's advocate, used to argue with me that he was doing well, that there's a learning curve, etc, etc, talky talky talky. I expected and demanded more of Lewis. Boston fans are notoriously hard-to-please, and with a championship drought that's been going on longer then my entire lifetime, the Bruins have always had to fight doubly hard against the Patriots and the Red Sox - two teams that have both brought championships home lately- for a sports fan's dollar. There are maybe a handful of weeks in the hockey season where there is no overlap between sports seasons, and then is when the media begrudgingly pays the Bruins any respect. It's usually during this interim of no overlap that the Bruins hit a spell where they just suck out loud. (Timing is not our strong suit.) This past season, however, getting the fans interested was the least of our problems- getting the players interested and engaged in their season was one of our greatest issues.

The pure and simple fact to me is that Lewis just did not deliver. He had all these great pieces of the puzzle available to him, and he couldn't make them fit to create a hockey team. What I feel he could have done differently during the season is moot point, but the numbers produced by the Bruins team under Dave Lewis do not bring tears of joy or the warm happy fuzzies into the hearts of Boston fans (ok, THIS Bruins fan).

How is this going to affect my offseason?
This is a very selfish question on the surface, but once you look deeper and realize that the planets do not revolve around the sun, but actually around my whims and desires, you realize that this is a perfectly logical question to ask.

I have a love-hate relationship with the offseason for many of the reasons that any fan who gets over-attached to a sports team does: trades, free agency, and the crazy drugs that front offices are on when they negotiate contracts. Watching a team I spent the better part of six to eight months monitoring, tracking, and spending more time with then family or friends splinter off into the wilds of free agency and trades is always hard. It's always tough to downshift into mourning the loss of a player to another team, and sometimes it's tough to upshift into being enthusiastic for a new signing. It's tougher still when you're more invested in the prospects or the fly-bys that a team signs for one year to fill out a roster in their AHL affiliate, because you're always wondering how transactions are going to affect the affiliate's roster for the coming season. Roster-wise, the offseason is a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and I don't need that compounded by wondering who the coach is going to be for either team. Boston can be so inconsiderate of my feelings, sometimes.

But seriously: I'm psyched for the coaching change. Bring it on, offseason. Bring. It. On.