Quote:
Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN
It's Gulutzan's fault his goalie played awful?
That series is nowhere near a sweep if Elliott even plays average. To say they were swept "handily" is laughable.
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Elliott did play awful, but:
- It's Gulutzan's fault he continued to go back to Matt Bartkowski in that series instead of taking full advantage of his top 4 defense. Bartkowski was somehow -5 across those four games - that's the worst on the team and has a lot to do with the fact that he was on the ice.
- It's Gulutzan's fault he went back to Elliott after the total game 3 meltdown.
- It's Gulutzan's fault he had a 35 year old borderline 3rd pairing dman killing penalties against Ryan Getzlaf when he had better options available. You need your top PKers to retrieve pucks.
- it's Gulutzan's fault that he didn't shuffle the lines once over those four games where no line except Versteeg-Bennett-Chiasson was generating any offense at 5v5
- it's Gulutzan's fault he had no strategic versatility (like adding a stretch pass, or forecheck modifications to key in on scrubs like Bieksa, or giving the defense more of a green light to open up scoring lanes on Gibson) to play when a team has locked it down against the Flames.
Elliott didn't do Gulutzan any favors. But Gulutzan getting styled on by Randy Carlyle was pretty independent of that.