Hartley's not incompetent, you don't make it to an NHL coaching job by sucking. I agree that they are spoon feeding Wideman minutes to hopefully get him going, so they can move him.
There's a reason why coach's tend to lean on veterans more then youth, because they are more proven. Some posters on here think just replacing veterans for youth at every position is the way to go moving forward, I disagree. How has that worked for the Oilers over the years?
I'm sure Hartley would like to play a puck possession game but we don't have the personnel. We're a small fast skating team, hence all the stretch passes and flying the zone early and getting the D to jump up. It's no coincidence that a team like the Kings are one of biggest and have the best possession stats.
Our results are more on the players not trying as hard and terrible goaltending. I don't even know what to say about the power play but to me it's more on the players then the coaching staff. Winning more faceoffs and being able to setup and hit the net would definitely help. It's so easy to scape goat the coaching staff for the teams issues, especially when we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We caught lightening in a bottle last season, wasn't going to happen again this year, all part of a re-building team trying to learn to win consistently.
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