Andre LaFleur's departure enforces the notion that Jim Calhoun has picked a successor

The news flew a bit under-the-radar on Sunday night and Monday morning, but Andre LaFleur, who has been on Jim Calhoun's staff at UConn for a decade after failing to fulfill his destiny as an enforcer in the NHL, left the program to take the associate head coaching position at Providence under new hire Ed Cooley.

The move is interesting for a couple of reasons.

On the one hand, UConn is losing a key recruiter. LaFluer played a major role in bringing in Kemba Walker, Hasheem Thabeet, Stanley Robinson, and Jerome Dyson, among others.


What's more interesting, however, is that the Hartford Courant reported LaFleur is leaving because he felt like he would not be able to land a head coaching position if he remained with the Huskies. Calhoun doesn't having the most impressive coaching tree, but he still has had a number of former assistants -- Howie Dickenmann, Tom Moore, Karl Hobbs, Dave Leitao -- land head coaching positions.

That same paper also reported that LaFleur was afraid he would be left in the cold should Calhoun opt to retire.

That reinforces the notion that Kevin Ollie is being groomed as Calhoun's replacement. Ollie is in his first-year as an assistant coach in the UConn program and there has already been plenty of speculation that he's currently the leading candidate as a successor. He was an unheralded high school recruit and collegiate player -- he played for UConn from 1991-1995 -- that managed to carve out an 11 year NBA career.

There is no indication if Calhoun actually intends to retire before the 2011-2012 season -- his contract spans the next three years -- but regardless of when he finally pulls the trigger and hangs up the loosened neck ties, it will be a risk to hire someone with as little experience as Ollie has on this level. For it to work, UConn would have to retain George Blaney as associate head coach, promote Glen Miller (the current director of basketball operations and a former Ivy League head coach) to fill Blaney's role, or make a similar move that would put some experience on Ollie's staff.

Maybe LaFleur saw the writing on the wall.

As valuable as his contributions were to the Huskies -- he was a part of two national titles and three Final Fours -- LaFleur was no longer the most important member of the UConn staff.

Ollie is.

And LaFleur's decision to leave makes it seems all the more likely that Calhoun knows who the next head coach at UConn will be.