Quote:
Originally Posted by Oil Stain
Babcock lost in the finals his first NHL season and Bowman lost in the finals his first 3 NHL seasons so yes, yes they were instantly great coaches.
Anyway I think Gulutzans system is a little mean right now. You can't just go around beating teams 5-2 and 5-0. It will motivate them for the next game. Better to take your foot off the gas and cruise to a 3-2 victory. Then the other team can think they were close and didn't get the bounces and they won't try harder next time. Sad!
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Well, let's have some perspective here.
Bowman started coaching the Blues in the first year of expansion. The team went 27-31-16 to finish 3rd in the expansion division. They went to the cup finals mainly because they were in a conference with no teams that had a .500 record (
someone had to get out of that conference each year).
In 69/70, St Louis won their division (conference, whatever you want to call it), so good on them. But 5 of the 6 teams in the other, original 6 division had a better record.