Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
We aren’t contending for anything with Gulutzan around. People are whistling past the graveyard thinking that. Gulutzan would turn the Tampa Lightning into bubble team because his system would not leverage their strengths. Therein lies the problem with Gulutzan. He doesn’t use the talent at his disposal, which is a recipe for failure every time.
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I keep seeing this "doesn't use the talent at his disposal" argument and I'm not sure if it's true.
Of the "core" guys:
Gaudreau, Monahan, Backlund, Tkachuk, Hamilton, Ferland have all been pretty good, and have been able to thrive and utilize their talent under Gulutzan.
Giordano has still been really good but we have seen his offense drop off a bit as he has become even stronger defensively.
Brodie has been a disaster under Gulutzan and that is fair. Bennett has been able to produce in a 3rd line role but should have developed into more. Frolik was good last year but has been pretty snake bit this year under GG.
For the most part I think these guys are our "most talented" guys and they have all been pretty productive under Gulutzan. Really only Brodie is the one where I'd say something just hasn't been a fit under Gulutzan's system.
But every coach has those guys. People here claim that Harltey was so good at utilizing people's strengths but forget the he ran Baertschi out of town, had Hamilton on the 3rd pairing and he struggled to the point that he was almost traded after 1 season, and according to Rhett on the radio was the reason Kipper wanted to retire and have nothing to do with hockey anymore.
The argument with Gulutzan that I think is way more valid is that he can't get the less talented guys to play above their skillset and contribute more than their skillset says they should. The skilled guys do just fine for him for the most part though.
It's actually the one thing that Hartley was great at - getting the grinders and lower skill guys to be able to contribute in other ways and to the score sheet every once in a while. GG has really failed at that though as our bottom 6 FWDs and bottom pairing D have really struggled under him both seasons.