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Originally Posted by Bingo
You just can't post without inflammatory language can you?
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I thought you said you were always open to being challenged, Bingo.
The reality is, you are by far the biggest Gulutzan booster on this forum. And that's fine. But you very much do appear to take challenges of him, or his Corsi, as a personal challenge to you or your own viewpoints. I'm just calling it as I see it.
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I do see a group of posters that get angry any time someone suggests a deeper dive into anything that changes the course of the conversation of "fire the coach" as a knee jerk response.
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Mirror images, Bingo. You are incapable of letting criticism of the coach's performance pass without an angry "but Corsi" response.
Also, speaking of "terribly weak", you're still going with the narrative that any call to fire this coach is a "knee jerk response"? After two years of crap hockey, that's still going to be your position?
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The correlation as it looks though?
Four teams in the top 16 clubs have poor underlying numbers, so that's 25%, the other 75% seem to line up reasonably well. These exceptions are Nashville, Washington, Anaheim and Los Angeles.
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Umm, you sure you are looking at the right table? Seven of the top 16 teams by CF% missed the playoffs: Carolina (1st), Calgary (3rd), Chicago (4th), St. Louis (6th), Dallas (11th), Edmonton (14th), and Montreal (15th).
The top four teams by HDSC missed the playoffs, as did six of the top ten. Of those, four were also below average offensively. The Islanders are an easy call for the "but goaltending" argument, sure. Even the Blackhawks - though they have other issues, because...
Any "deep dive" that ignores special teams is really just a high dive into a shallow puddle. What these seven teams largely have in common is crap special teams. Either bad power play or bad penalty kill or both. For us, our power play's woes have been obvious for a long time. However, even the statistically very good penalty kill rate of 81.8% shows major concerns. We were 7th in the NHL by PK%, but 14th by goals allowed because we take so many penalties. And that not only means more goals against, but more time in situations were offence isn't even a twinkle in Gulutzan's eye.
As to your question of why did just about everything suck this year? Bad luck and talent gaps certainly are part of it. However, the biggest single issue is the coaching staff. Particularly Gulutzan who has not shown at any point in his NHL career that he can read the game and respond - which in turn helps cause these panic attacks the Flames have been so prone to under him. He has not shown that he is willing to adapt his strategies to suit the players he has on his roster. That he can prepare this team. That he can formulate an identity for his team. His style can best be described as passive and does not favour quick transition. Consequently, we play as a much slower team than we are. That, in turn, ties into both the turnovers, panic attacks and penalties we take. It also inhibits offence.
Oh, and here's a fun stat about Glen Gulutzan: His teams always wilt under pressure. To wit, the last 10 games played for each of his four seasons:
2011-12: 3-7-0
2012-13: 4-6-1
2016-17: 4-6-0 (excluding playoffs)
2016-17: 2-8-0 (including playoffs)
2017-18: 2-8-0