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Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe
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I will say this, however. I have felt for a long time that a team's captain and his leadership is not even a quarter as important as that of a coach. The coach is (and imo, always has been) the de facto leader of any team. Darryl was a great leader, and his teams always seem to work cohesively. Hartley was a good leader I felt, and that is why for ~2 seasons or so, this team worked cohesively. I still haven't seen the same representative sample out of Gulutzan for any significant length of time. I didn't see it under Playfair, or Keenan, or Brent Sutter. I wouldn't say that at this point, Gulutzan isn't capable of becoming that leader, but I haven't seen a Calgary Flames team that goes on a long stretch playing with the same mindset.
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Agreed on this. I find it hard to see the coaching as working when the team was playing great to end the season last year but looks so uninspired and out-of-joint this year. I really enjoyed watching them on their winning streak, as they played beautiful possession hockey, but they are painfully boring to watch now. Taking time to learn the system is one thing, but learning it and then not performing it is a problem.
The story of the beers on the train could also be much more a story of player leadership than coaching leadership. If that's what it takes to get a team to play together, the coach may not be doing a great job of managing the team's emotions. Emotion and inspiration is largely the domain of leadership.
I can't say I dislike the system itself, because the system looked great end of last year, but I hate the lack of emotion.