All the talk about 'systems' - I just can't take it anymore.
Hockey is a basic game. There are only so many different ways you can move a piece of rubber a couple hundred feet along a sheet of ice with five guys sharing the tasks.
If you have the skills to play in the NHL you can adapt to any system quite easily. The adaptation time where mistakes happen for a bit is really only due to the fact that they play at such high speed in today's game. You don't have time to think the play up when you get the puck...you already have to have a pretty good idea which of two, possibly three, things you are going to do. And then you have to execute it - fast and pretty accurate most of the time.
Performance at the NHL level is massively dependent on mental preparedness and confidence. If you lack either of those two things, it doesn't matter how brilliant your system is supposed to be or how skilled your players are. They will under-perform.
Hartley won coach of the year because he was able to get mostly high end performance out of the team by setting a tone of mental preparedness and confidence. Part of that came from him being demanding of a work ethic but a huge part came from not clamping down on young players for making mistakes or micromanaging (i.e. suffocating) game play.
It's a balance - a mixture of physical and mental practicing.
I never came close to the show, but I played with and against guys that made it and I have coached a couple that did as well. I have some clue of what I speak.
What I see in GG is a coach with no credibility in the eyes of the players. He tried to come in with some mind-blowing game-reinventing system built around the concept of increasing statistical metrics. If you build the numbers the wins will come I guess was the idea. (In fairness, it appears it is what he was asked to do when he was hired).
Monitoring stats can be your plan for your late night coaching staff blab-fests. Get off on stats all bloody night long.
For practice, for the room, for game time - you need a General. Commanding the troops with confidence. Getting them to lay it all on the line because they decided they want to...not because you ordered them to.
Sometimes that is in the form of yelling and flailing your arms. Others can just quietly stare. Every coach can have their own ways of doing it. But if you don't command the troops, then you lose games. Plain and simple.
In my view, GG is completely forgetting to do that part of the job. Be a 'players coach' whatever that really means. But lead them for crying out loud.
Don't tell your star players how to play hockey - wtf makes you qualified to do that? The only real reason to have a 'system' at all is so that your team is working together on the same page when they are out there.
It is not about you coach. It is not about showing the hockey world how insightful and smart you are about the game and your freaking 'system'.
It is NOT supposed to be dictating where everyone goes at exactly what time and how to pass and how to shoot. News flash - these guys all made it to the show without you GG. Your job is not to teach them hockey.
The first hint of leadership I've seen was him saying they have to find ways to win...stop making excuses and playing the victim. A start I guess, but to say it was uninspiring at this point of the season is a Trump-sized 'yuge' understatement.
I bet GG can score 100% in a coaching theory exam...but most of the players would not even come close to that. And that is exactly why we are seeing a terrible on-ice product. We are trying to ice a group of coaching theory experts instead of hockey players.
Unless Burke comes down and screams this in their faces I do not see a turn around happening under this coaching staff.
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