Quote:
Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy
I don't know how you guys can be so sure what players would or wouldn't flourish with Sutter.
Dustin Brown is a hard nosed physical player and his career nearly went down the toilet with Sutter coaching.
Look at that. I can't believe how blatant it is. |
That's my position.
Now maybe Darryl
can work wonders with Bennett but it doesn't mean 'Bennett is made for Darryl's style'. You have 27 point Dustin Brown on the Darryl end of the spectrum (2014) and 61 point Dustin Brown the first yeazr away from Darrytl. What if that's Bennett right now - a 60 point player playing 26 point hockey under Gulutzan (and maybe it isn't, but my eyes tell me it's a possibility). We need to find a solution to his woes and I am of the opinion that needs to be priority number one in the coaching search. That doesn't mean I'm not a huge fan of Darryl Sutter. In fact Darryl pretty much wrote the book on awesome coaching and he's far more adaptive than people give him credit for - but to me this team was lacking a coach that would push the individuals to flourish for the good of the team.
An individual breakout for Bennett, especially as a center, would go a long way for this team. Even if Bennett was only average as a two-way player, his ability to impact the game down the middle when on his game is unparalleled even by Monahan, Backlund, or Jankowski. There's some things - reads, dynamism, etc that only Bennett possesses in our center group and the coach who can successfully harness will mean a lot for the long term future of the team - even if said coach can't immediately take the team to the next level the way Darryl could. I don't think you can always have your cake and eat it too - some players' development paths need to have years of learning offense from some coaches (as Monahan and Gaudreau did for two years under Hartley) and learning the full game under others. I've seen it elsewhere too - Kadri in Toronto, Seguin under his three coaches. I felt Backlund needed the switch to Hartley even if Hartley had toxic qualities.