Originally Posted by Kovaz
I'd also add, in terms of evaluating Gulutzan as a coach, who cares if it's Monahan or Tanner Glass getting the chances? Gulutzan can't make his team better shooters. All he can do is teach them a system to play, get them prepared for the game, and make adjustments on the bench - all of which should be reflected in the number of shots and scoring chances. If we're out-chancing other teams 2 to 1 and getting out-scored, I don't blame that on the coach.
Any team can look good when they're shooting 20%, or getting .975% goaltending. These aren't necessarily due to luck, but they're still not often sustainable over a full season. Hot shooters will cool off. Goalies will have a string of bad games. But regardless of who's hot and who's cold at any given point, a well-coached team will generally have the puck more often than not, and generally get more chances for than against. And that's something you can deliberately, reliably control.
Carolina is an extremely well-coached team. Their problem for the last few years has been shooting talent. To be successful, they should change nothing about how they play, but they need to add some better scorers. Edmonton's numbers are somewhat boosted by generous shot counters in Rogers Place. And in the top 10 you find teams like Tampa Bay, St. Louis and Columbus, excellent teams who deserve to be where they are in the standings.
It's never going to be a 1-to-1 correlation between possession stats and standings, because at the end of the day each team is going to get 6 or 7 chances, and it comes down to whose shooters execute better, and whose goalie makes more saves. You can't always finish all of your chances. You can't always rely on your goalie to make highlight-reel saves while allowing no softies. What you can do, is commit to an effective system, and stick to it night in and night out. That leads to, maybe, 10% more chances for, and 10% fewer chances against, on average, every night. Over the course of a season, maybe a few games that would've been a 2-1 loss become a 2-2 game we win in OT. Or maybe we go up 3-0 instead of 2-0 before a third period collapse, and hang on for a 3-2 win instead of going to a shootout. Or, a brutal first period leads to a 1-0 deficit instead of 2-0, and we manage to come back. On each of those individual nights, we'll point to a Mike Smith save, or a Gaudreau pass, or a dominant 3M shift as the reason we won. But what isn't nearly as visible is that Smith only needed to make one save, instead of two. Or that Gaudreau got a third try with the puck, instead of only two. Or that 3M got to start in the offensive zone, instead of their own zone.
Our underlying numbers are pointing in the right direction, now it's up to the players to see how far they can take this team.
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