People really need to tone it down here, Gulutzen has done a pretty good job. His ability to manage games has been phenomenal as evidenced by his 33-0-1 record leading after 2 periods last season. It's really not his fault that certain individual performances have lead to losses because of bone headed penalties, turnovers, lack of finish and poor special teams. These are all things that he doesn't control.
The onus is on the players to execute, upper management who have made questionable roster decisions and the assistant coaches (especially penalty kill) who run the power play and penalty kill. We're dead last in the penalty kill again just like the start of last season and it's crushing us in games. It's so unbelievably passive that teams have figured out a way to get open and score in tight all the time. It's not performing at an acceptable level right now and even at the start of the season it was Mike Smith bailing the PK out with miraculous efforts. Now that he's not, the cracks are showing and escalating.
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