I’m a hockey fan and my team, the Pittsburgh penguins, are circling the drain and as usual, the fans are calling for the coach to be fired. If I remember correctly his contract doesn’t expire until 2028, so in my head he can’t leave until that’s not an option. How does he actually get fired if they were to do that? Is it as simple as telling him to pack his desk up and leave? Or is there negotiations with lawyers?
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Team still need to pay the contract, they just tell the coach to not come to work. If they don’t want to pay him the contract, then yes lawyers would be involved. Some team are paying 3 coach at the moment like the Canucks who are still paying Travis Green, Bruce Boudreau on top of their current coach Rick Tocchet.
My dream job is to be a fired major sports head coach. Unless you commit some sort of crime, that contract money gets paid so they basically will be paying you to NOT work for them anymore.
Typically lots of legal nonsense is involved and it will boil down to them finding some reason to say he breached his contract.
Most firings like that are due to performance clauses that state if the team doesn’t perform to a certain standard then they pull the contract. Be it losing a certain number fo games or what not, the answer’s the same.”
For amounts this large and with contracts, there are always negotiations. Pretty much every employment contract will have clauses about termination. It depends on the initial negotiating position during contract negotiations but it is fairly typical to have things like non-performance, etc. Some even have “moral” clauses like bringing disrepute, or conduct unbecoming etc etc.
Most of the time, if the team wants to dismiss someone under contract, they negotiate some kind of settlement. Few people want to work in an organization that no longer has faith in them. In terms of hard bargaining, the team can say “we’re going to drag your name in the mud” but we won’t do this if you accept $xxx and leave today. The other party can also make the same threat eg “this will ruin your reputation” and ask for more.
Coaches can be fired before their contract ends, they just get paid the balance of the contract. Often deals have offsets, which reduce payout by amount coach earns at any future job. So if coach was to make $2m/yr but after taking a year off lands a new coaching job at $1.5m then the team who fired him would pay him $500k.
Generally, they have to pay out the remaining terms of his contract.
Depending on what exactly is going on, 2 things to routinely happen, though
1. They agree to “mutually part ways.” This usually results in a buyout of some kind but allows the coach to start looking right away for a new job. Usually something like “we owe you 2mil for 4 years, we’ll pay you 2.5 mil now but you can leave right away”. This is something where the coach sees the writing on the wall and thinks he can get a job somewhere else but doesn’t want to wait or waiting may mean he’ll miss out.
2. They fire the coach and pay out the contract, though alot of contracts come with offset language, meaning if he’s fired by team A and is owed 2 million dollars for 2 years, but gets hired by team B for 1.5 million dollars, Team A only needs to pay him 500k for 2 years. This is not ALL contracts but is in a lot.
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