[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe

I am not convinced of this. You can pretty much say the same thing about any team when they are winning. I think the Flames did in fact follow Gulutzan's system. I am positive there were other issues outside of the system itself - and it showed in things like the repetitive slow starts to games.

I don't see how this contrasts with anything I said above.

...I do think that outside of McDavid and Puljujarvi, that Edmonton team is a slow team. I do think that the '5 man breakout' will work better for them, and give them easier entries and more zone time. At the same time, with the way that Brouwer was utilized and the success he has had in Calgary, I can't imagine Gulutzan is going to help get Lucic going in any other direction except down.

I generally agree with this, but without knowing in what capacity Gulutzan would be coaching in Edmonton it is impossible to say what sort of impact he may or may not have on the Oilers.

I don't think he makes a good head coach, and I don't see anything to believe that he would make a good assistant.

The fact that he continues to find work rather quickly in the NHL I think rather suggests fairly strongly that he is a good assistant coach.

Brent Playfair is an excellent assistant for defence. Sutter would probably make a good assistant for the defence. Hartley would make a good assistant for the offence. Keenan.. well... he was practically semi-retired on the job here, but I am sure with his experience he would have made for a good assistant. I just don't think that Gulutzan 'thinks' the game really well, and I am deducing this based on what I think was a history of a lack in-game adjustments, implementation and adherence to a system that didn't ever seem to take this teams' strengths and weaknesses into consideration, and an apparent lack of awareness on the pulse of the team (like them being rattled and allowing consecutive goals 23 times this season).

I just don't see it.

I don't recognize the bolded name, but aside from that I am also unsurprised that you "just don't see" how Gulutzan could be a good assistant coach because—let's be honest—NONE of us sees what assistant coaches are doing most of the time. We have intuitions, but I suspect that these are only occasionally accurate. Like I said, if he continues to find work in the NHL, then he must be doing something well.