I'm only going to make one post on this, since it seems a lot of people on this forum seem to think I am overreacting.
After the Dallas game, Gelinas came out and said Baertschi was the best player. Picked up a point, and followed it up again on Saturday with another good game and another assist. He was physical (clearly taking a few shots at Yakupov), he was always the first forward back on the backcheck. You could clearly see the effort was there.
Now he's being sat, which is completely contradictory to what Gelinas said about his game (right away, we can already see that the coaches disagree about something). This is obviously not about Baertschi's play or his effort. Nobody was complaining about his game on Saturday. You can no longer argue that he's being sat because apparently he's not playing a two-way game, or he's not giving effort. This is completely personal.
Hartley is being completely irrational. A lot of people are bringing up a missed check against Hall against the Oilers as the reason. Why, again, is Sven being singled out? He was the only forward who was actually backchecking, and the only forward in the defensive zone when the goal was scored. He lost his check against Taylor Hall, a point per game plus player. A lot of players lose their check against a speedy forward like that.
And then Hartley comes out to the media last night and says "It’s going to be a game for men. There won’t be any room for kids out there". Wow. This is ridiculously childish stuff by our head coach, obviously directed at Sven. This is no longer about Baertschi's play, it's about Hartley simply not liking him. He's going to cost us a very good prospect. All the confidence Baertschi has exemplified these last couple games? Gone. One mistake, and you're on the bench kid (even though a dozen other players, including younger players like Monahan and Colbourne, make the same mistakes and get a pass).
It doesn't make sense to me that Burke would say that Monahan needs to play at least 16 minutes a night, but the same rule does not apply to Baertschi (who is more of a top 6 or bust player than Monahan).
So go ahead, tear my post apart. But there is simply no way you can defend Hartley's choices anymore. He probably won't be our coach after this season anyway, but apparently we're going to let him take one of our best young prospects down with him. Hartley is seeing only what he wants to see, and even our other coach disagrees with him.
