Bruce!

You start your season with a 7-0 run and get to 12-9-1, 2^nd place, 3 points behind the red hot Panthers. Your team has the 5^th highest goals per game average in the NHL. So, if you're a General Manager, what do you do? You fire your coach of course.

That is exactly what GM George McOhee did to Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau on the Monday after Thanksgiving. And so the bold and portly Capitals coach is out – after parts of 5 seasons as Ovechkin's coach. Bruce was hoisted aboard around Thanksgiving of 2007, and now, at the same time of year 4 years later, he's tossed over the side rail.

Did he deserve it? There's not much of a case

1 – The Capitals are the 29^th team in goals-against average, letting up 3.3 tally's a game.

2 - Four exits from the playoffs – twice in the semifinals and twice in the quarters.

And that's it really.

So the main reason Bruce was let go is this: The Capitals have Alex Ovechkin. The Capitals have won the SouthEast division 4 straight years. And so – the expectation is that they should win the Stanley Cup. They haven't.

It's a simple as that. Boudreau is a victim of raised expectations.

Still, Bruce was an inspiration to older fatter balder men everywhere. We'll kind of miss him.

Good luck Bruce.