[Cali Panthers Fan]

I'm just going to copy my thoughts from the PGT of last night's game:

I'll say this about the mental preparation:

Yes, the players are accountable for their own mental preparation and they also need to take cues from the coaching staff on how to mentally prepare and what to focus on. They did a great job of this against St. Louis and they knew exactly how they needed to play to beat that team. But whatever worked against the Blues just didn't work at all against the Habs tonight, and it wasn't just a slight drop in play, it was night and day. THAT is what's concerning to me.

It seems to me that Gulutzan and Co. are probably putting together adequate game plans for most opposing teams, and when the Flames are motivated properly and mentally ready, they can be one of the most effective teams in the league and can beat anybody.

The problem is they are just not ready to play about 1/3rd of the time...maybe more often. Now if it was a game here or there, I could live with it, but it's becoming such a common theme with this team under this coaching staff, going back to the beginning of last year. It's beyond frustrating to see a team be so effective against the top competition in the league and play such thorough and complete games, and then turn around 2 nights later and basically not be able to do anything well and take 50 minutes to find their game again. That makes no sense to me. Even if they had a bad first period, the coaches should know what to do at this point to get the team back on track. The fact that they cannot seem to do that means they are not dialed into these player's mental outlook, individual motivations, tendencies etc. They've spent enough time around these players that they should be able to see signs of bad nights early on and make the necessary adjustments quickly to get them back on track within the same period, never mind the same game.

It's one of two things at this point: 1) The players are tuning out the same message over and over again from the coach because it's not delivered in a way that's very effective, or 2) The coaches have zero idea on how to reach these players and it's never going to get any better.

In either scenario, coaching IS the problem. The coach is still responsible for the final results in a season for the entire team, and the players are responsible for their individual performances. On the balance of the season, I'm betting that most players will probably get a passing grade from management, but I doubt the coaching staff will get that same pass. As always, it's easier to fire 1-3 coaches than replace 23 players.

It sucks, because I LOVE the system that Gulutzan gets them to play and I think it's a Stanley Cup contending team using that system....IF he could get them to play somewhat consistently. Being as that he can't seem to do that, the system's effectiveness is lost, so they may as well not be trying to play that system any way.

I'd take an imperfect system, with excellent effort every night over this. I just don't have the patience for this any longer. I'm now reluctantly on the fire Gulutzan bandwagon. I'll give him until the end of the year to figure this out, but if they don't get one of the top 3 spots in the division, he deserves to lose his job.