One of our favorite things about the NHL is the coaching carousel that seems to spit out roughly 17 new coaches every year — all of them former coaches, of course, of other teams. To wit: The Chicago Blackhawks fired coach Denis Savard, an all-time legend for that team as a player, just four games into this season! When you realize an NHL season is 80-plus games, it’s roughly the equivalent of firing an NFL coach early in the fourth quarter of the first game of the year or some such thing (and we know what you’re thinking: maybe sometimes that needs to be done). The man replacing Savard? Joel Quenneville, formerly a head coach with Colorado and St. Louis. Even the names and quotes associated with the story are true hoc-key. For your pleasure, with some bold from us:

The Chicago Blackhawks fired head coach Denis Savard just four games into the season on Thursday, replacing him with NHL coaching veteran Joel Quenneville.

The team canceled its Thursday practice and scheduled an afternoon news conference for 5:30 p.m. ET.

“I’m disappointed but I guess it’s the nature of the business,” Savard said from his Chicago home Thursday. “I know I was doing a good job, I’m dedicated to my work. Obviously they felt they had to make a change, so what can you do.”

Savard, who was in the last year of his contract, was told he’d been fired Thursday morning by GM Dale Tallon.

“I knew I had to do well this year. We talked this summer and I was aware of that,” Savard said.

The dismissal came hours after the team won its first game by beating Phoenix 4-1. The Blackhawks are now run by owner Rocky Wirtz, and the combination of a slow start and a big public relations push may have led to Savard’s abrupt ouster.

It’s almost as though Savard expected to be fired before 1/20th of the season had been played. Amazing.

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