Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
...However I do have a little gripe which is less about Sven and more about how Hartley seems to have tiered expectations for certain players like Baertschi, Horak, Smith, Backlund, Jones, etc. Horak under Brent in his first season played 61 games and didn't look out of place most nights. In two seasons under Hartley he can't even get in the lineup. Meanwhile guys like Galiardi who IMO has been just going through the motions never lose their role and Jackman to me is no longer a full time NHL player. Heck even Jones has been ho hum. Just seems to me that some players seem to escape his wrath while others can do no right. Maybe I am reading too much into this but I don't want to waste these rebuilding years with no accountability for players that aren't part of the long term plans. I would like to see some of these other guys take their turn in the pressbox for poor play like Galiardi last night with that poor giveaway and poor overall play.
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I understand the concern, and god knows the optics of the situation are not great. However, I also think that the facts that we only see a fraction of what the coaching staff sees, have no input nor insight on what is happening behind closed doors in the dressing room, and also have virtually no experience with coaching professional hockey players, all contribute significantly to our inability to properly understand what's going on. I've mentioned it before in other threads, but there are a couple of other key factors at play here: First, our perception of the purpose behind scratching healthy players is probably not accurate, or at minimum, horribly simplistic. Second, it is also likely naïve and inaccurate to assume that all players will be—or even should be—treated identically.
In the end, I suspect that the decisions being made are at minimum the right ones, but most certainly better than the choices that I or any one else on this board would offer alternatively.