Gretzky the coach deserves a pink slip in Phoenix

	Perhaps the most damning indictment of Gretzky is that the woeful Coyotes were assembled on his watch and with his input. Tim Smith/Getty Images
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Last week, after another in the series of deflating losses that have characterized the Phoenix Coyotes' season so far, Wayne Gretzky worked in a little gallows humor about his predicament as the team's coach.

"I'll be the first owner to fire himself," the Great One joked to the assembled scribes.

Hey, sometimes you have to laugh. But after Saturday's 7-3 blowout at the hands of the struggling New York Rangers, it's getting harder to crack a smile. In fact, it might be time for Managing Partner Gretzky to start rummaging in his desk for one of those pink slips. Twelve games in, the woeful Coyotes (3-9) weren't quite at the point of a coaching change. But they weren't far off.

How bad are things in the desert? The team ranks at or near the bottom of the league in goals scored and goals allowed. There's plenty more statistical ugliness to illustrate their ineptitude, but a goal differential of minus-25 over the season's first month says it all.

It's one thing to start off the season winning just three of 12. It's another thing entirely that in eight of those nine losses, the team simply couldn't -- or didn't -- compete. Six of their losses were by at least four goals. Legend or not, the heat for those failings falls directly on Gretzky.

It has been said time and again that you can't question his hockey knowledge or his credentials. But really, why not?

What in his coaching career suggests that Gretzky deserves a little latitude while his team works through this rough patch -- a rough patch that has lasted pretty much the duration of his six-year association with the team?

Save the emails -- no one's taking anything away from Gretzky as a player. But his highlight reel and record book notations did not put a single point on the board for the Coyotes in 2005-06, his first campaign behind their bench. And they won't do it for them this season, either.

Separating Gretzky The Legend from Gretzky The Struggling Coach may be difficult, but the reality is that if his name were Ogrodnick or Kindrachuk or Kannegeisser, he'd have been gassed by now. That's what happens when things go this spectacularly awry.

Just look at the situation in Philadelphia. Ken Hitchcock is inarguably a superior coach, one of the finest in the game. He's got the skins on the wall, including a Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999, to prove it. Yet, no one blinked when he was thrown under the bus after the Flyers got off to their brutal start this season. And why is that? Because it's common wisdom that the coach falls on the sword in these situations.

And unlike Hitchcock, Gretzky wasn't just given 20 players and told to turn them into winners. As someone whose hands are involved in every aspect of the team's hockey operations, he shares a large part of the blame for the selection of the players who are simply filling those sweaters on most nights.

Gretzky's name gave the franchise an undeniable marketing hook last season. But sooner or later, the thrill of seeing him looking sharp in a suit behind the bench won't compensate for yet another feeble effort by the guys on the ice. A name on the marquee is nice, but piling up the Ls is the surest path to box office failure. Ultimately, that will be what it comes down to. No one's in this business to lose money, not Gretzky and certainly not majority owner Jerry Moyes. And a team playing like this is a license to burn cash.