Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
no coach can save a team that has it's best 5 or 6 players floundering.
Gaudreau, Monahan, Brodie, Giordano, Hamilton have all spluttered to start the season. That's what? 38M dollars of salary not playing up to snuff.
Like last week when we heard Gulutzan F-bombing the players for poor decisions on zone entries, it's largely performance based so far this season.
He's not coaching "hey guys lets make sure we take the puck into the most traffic possible. Oh and guys when the pucks loose make sure you turn the wrong way and let the opposite team collect it. And Gio ... lets get that stick up, we need more minor penalties buddy!"
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Absolutely, but I think the spluttered start is because of the coaching/system change.
To me it looks like someone trying to learn to write with the wrong hand.
It's a slow process and takes a lot of relearning, too much thinking and not enough comfort and instinct. Hamilton had the same problem adapting to Hartley's system but finally caught on and had a decent year after he adapted. It looks like all of the "talent" is having the same problems, overthinking, over compensating and falling back into habit. This slows them down, causes bad passes, penalties and total system breakdowns. Except for Gio it is also all young guys having problems where guys who have been around the league and had to adapt to different systems are faring better.
When you have 2 guys falling back into Hartley's system and 3 guys trying to play the new system everything is going to look a mess. It has to be so frustrating for GG, but after reading about the normalcy of the problem it doesn't surprise me anymore. Game 20? Game 30? Who knows when but they will adapt. GG isn't getting fired anytime soon because he is the long term guy, no change by New Years might be different. Part of the stupid Oilers problem has been coach changes every year.