Quote:
Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames
To top that off Gaudreau is 6th in the league in Giveaways while only having 2 takeaways this season. He's usually a turnover machine due to having the puck so much, but he's always had a knack for taking the puck right back. That hasn't happened at all this season.
Is GG telling him not to retrieve the puck or does Gaudreau have no compete level this year now that he's got this fat contract? He had a hell of a lot of compete at the WCOH and now he's horrible in every facet of the game.
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Gully isn't telling Gaudreau to not compete, but Gaudreau is falling into the exact same hole as everyone. They're trying (and failing) to play a system first type of game at the expense of playing to their own strengths.
Bennett, since being benched a few times for taking undisciplined penalties, has been awful. He's playing against his own instincts, as are a lot of players, as they try to stick to the system.
Perhaps this is required pain. Perhaps Coach Bob's system was so poorly structured/unstructured, that right now we're suffering through fixing some bad habits.
Or, perhaps the system is a bad system that forces square pegs into round holes. I'm not certain this is the reality of what's happening - but I am seeing a lot of similarities Between what's happening now and what happened in Pittsburgh. It's a system first style, when the system itself wasn't built around the strengths of the team. Why haven't we seen Gaudreau show elite level skill? Why haven't we seen Gio and Brodie lead the rush the way they used to with their speed?
Why have we seen multiple disntinctly different PP and PK strategies?
Good coaches build systems that exploit their player's skill sets. Gulutzan got dealt a bad hand on this as well, with how poorly structured our training camp was (too many PTOs, Monahan and Johnny being absent).
It's far too early to be placing the blame on the coaching staff, or individual players, because it takes months, not a month to install a system. Until the system is fully adopted, the best we can hope for is that we keep our head above water. We're doing that right now, which is a good sign. We're "in the mix", despite all of our struggles.
November and December will be very telling months - by the end of December, we'll see what we have in our coaching staff. Our team is young and a lot of important positions are filled with players we will have for a long time - so it's up to the coaching staff to teach them, and to get the best out of them