Monday, November 27, 2006
that OTHER defenseman hated in Alberta
I hope Trent Yawney gets another crack at an HC job in the NHL. While I despised the guy as a Flames player (think 05/06 Cory Cross, except playing 20+ minutes a game), I wrote last year (after his team ended an 8-game Flames winning streak) that it looked like he might make a decent coach. I still think that; he's smart, and I assume he'll learn from Opportunity #1.
Obviously the injuries hurt this year too, though that's been a bit overblown in the post-mortems. Martin Havlat was not going to score 160 points this year: even if he had stayed healthy, he would have gone through a long slump where he looked awful, on account of he's Martin Havlat. Khabibulin has a Cup but has never been a elite (i.e. Top 10) NHL goalie, and often he's been much worse.
Nevertheless: despite all the above plus the fact that surely he was better at his job than Dale Tallon was at his, I still don't know that I could say he deserved to keep his job. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: at every other level of hockey, if your team constantly gets killed because they take more penalties than the other team, that's on the coach. I don't see why that shouldn't be mostly the same in the NHL.
Tyler has noted this a couple of times too; my comment last season after Chicago earned 4 points in Alberta was this:
Yeah.
Obviously the injuries hurt this year too, though that's been a bit overblown in the post-mortems. Martin Havlat was not going to score 160 points this year: even if he had stayed healthy, he would have gone through a long slump where he looked awful, on account of he's Martin Havlat. Khabibulin has a Cup but has never been a elite (i.e. Top 10) NHL goalie, and often he's been much worse.
Nevertheless: despite all the above plus the fact that surely he was better at his job than Dale Tallon was at his, I still don't know that I could say he deserved to keep his job. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: at every other level of hockey, if your team constantly gets killed because they take more penalties than the other team, that's on the coach. I don't see why that shouldn't be mostly the same in the NHL.
Tyler has noted this a couple of times too; my comment last season after Chicago earned 4 points in Alberta was this:
...if they expect to be a playoff team, they have to stop cheating so damn much.
Yeah.
# posted by Matt @ 10:54 pm 
Comments:
Tallon just wanted a puppet and him and Yawney had been fueding in the press PLUS Savard is an old school Hawk and Dale T would do anything to try and sell some tickets.
Two things on this
1: I saw today wher Ruutuu said they can't expect everything to change just because the coach did. Smart kid that one.
2. Savard's gonna make them play uptempo. So that means he's trying to get them to generate more chances but that doesn't mean that the guys who'll get those extra chances will all of a sudden be blessed with enough talent to bury said chances.
It's cool to play uptempo if you have guys who can finish and great neminding to back you up when the other team easily rbeaks your forecheck. But Chi has neither and they're going for entertainment more than results.
Of course this isn't brand new either. For years the Oilers tried to play uptempo with a roster that was more Panther's '96 then it was Oilers '85.
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Tallon just wanted a puppet and him and Yawney had been fueding in the press PLUS Savard is an old school Hawk and Dale T would do anything to try and sell some tickets.
Two things on this
1: I saw today wher Ruutuu said they can't expect everything to change just because the coach did. Smart kid that one.
2. Savard's gonna make them play uptempo. So that means he's trying to get them to generate more chances but that doesn't mean that the guys who'll get those extra chances will all of a sudden be blessed with enough talent to bury said chances.
It's cool to play uptempo if you have guys who can finish and great neminding to back you up when the other team easily rbeaks your forecheck. But Chi has neither and they're going for entertainment more than results.
Of course this isn't brand new either. For years the Oilers tried to play uptempo with a roster that was more Panther's '96 then it was Oilers '85.
Post a Comment
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