New Jersey Devils head coach Peter DeBoer questions a penalty called late in the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Pittsburgh, Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. The Penguins won 3-2. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

At first blush there is not a lot to recommend a guy like Peter DeBoer as a viable head-coaching option in the NHL.

He has just 217 career wins in 494 games, and one playoff appearance. This is over six-ish seasons worth of hockey (obviously he only coached 48 post-lockout, then got fired 36 games into this season) and, well, one playoff appearance in seven years, on its surface, seems to be the kind of thing that San Jose should be trying like hell to avoid. And yet here they are hiring this guy, who has broken 40 wins in a season just twice, and none since 2011-12.

This is basically Doug Wilson's job on the line here, and he hires a guy with that coaching résumé?

You can see why Sharks fans would be tugging at their collars.

But what that ignores is a number of factors that do not show the situations into which DeBoer was thrust and over which he had no control.

For instance, in 2008-09, he took over the Florida Panthers in his first-ever NHL head coaching gig (for context: this was so long ago that it was before Jay Bouwmeester signed in Calgary). When you're in that position you can't be choosy. That year the Panthers finished with 93 points, and they actually had a decent team. There was 25-year-old Stephen Weiss back when he was reliably in the 60-point range, 24-year-old David Booth when he looked like he might turn into something, and pre-injuries Nathan Horton at 23. On the back end his top pairing was 25-year-old Bouwmeester and (playing almost 27 minutes a night!) and aging Bryan McCabe, but also a 26-year-old Keith Ballard as the No. 3. In net, Tomas Vokoun when he was still putting up big numbers.

The next season the team crashed down to 77 points. Why? A number of veterans started to show their age, Bouwmeester jetted to Calgary, and the team's shooting percentage dropped almost a full point. The next year, his final one behind the bench in Sunrise, the Panthers put up just 72 points because even more contributors got even older (Cory Stillman dropped from about 50 points to 23 in a three-season span), Horton and Dennis Seidenberg got traded, and so on.

What basically ended up happening was DeBoer coached this team in the final years before management should have opted for a tear-it-down rebuild. Instead, the Panthers went out and signed close to a dozen mediocre NHLers, tried like hell to get into overtime every night, and made the playoffs under Kevin Dineen despite winning just 38 games. After that: Predictable disaster, with point totals of 36 (in the lockout-shortened season; that's a pace for 61.5 points over 82 games) and 66 the next two years before a slight return to form under Gerard Gallant, the fourth Panthers coach in five seasons.

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But by then, DeBoer had of course taken over the New Jersey Devils, and immediately drove that team to that improbable Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2012. That team featured 28-year-old Ilya Kovalchuk, 27-year-old Zach Parise, a still-useful Patrik Elias at 35. It also had the 30-goal season from David Clarkson, strong defensive performances from guys like Andy Greene and Mark Fayne, and the last season in which Martin Brodeur was even semi-presentable as an NHL starter (and he was still bad).

In short, he once again took over a team with a healthy mix of veterans and youthful talent, and got more out of them than their previous coach could or should have.

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