"It won't make a dent in the unemployment numbers, but Randy Carlyle will be employed through 2014, at least.

This coming Ducks season will be his seventh. That's gold-watch territory in the NHL coaching business.

The Ducks hired Carlyle for the '06 season, the same year ex-Ducks coach Mike Babcock went to Detroit. Buffalo's Lindy Ruff started in '98 and Nashville's Barry Trotz in '99.

Nobody else has been around as long, and 11 teams hired their coaches in either the '10 or '11 seasons. Six others will have first-year coaches in '12.

There is nothing easier than firing a coach when the turbulence hits. The players usually are applauding, quietly. regardless of what they say. The media usually approves because it's news, and motion is preferred over quiet.

The Boston Bruins trailed Montreal 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs this spring and won Game 7 in overtime. Had they not, Claude Julien probably would have been boxing up the pictures on his coaching desk and surrendering his key card.

Instead, the Bruins are Stanley Cup champions. Julien was the same coach in June that he was in April.

To fire the coach in kneejerk fashion is just poor management. It's scapegoating. It gives the players the idea they actually run things. It means the executives have run out of answers or that they hired the wrong guy in the first place.

"There's a little more continuity now," Carlyle said Monday, after the Ducks extended his stay. "I've been fortunate to be able to coach good players and to work for good ownership."

Carlyle also has taken the Ducks to the '07 Stanley Cup and to five playoff appearances in six seasons.

But he was considered vulnerable on several occasions, and for several reasons.

. He is a high-volume taskmaster whose practice regimen has brought exhaustion to every player except Scott Niedermayer.

He was anything but avuncular when it came to rookies. He was demanding on the ice and not inclined to spare feelings in the media."