Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
Not everything Hartley did was bad. His activation of the defense led to several of them having career seasons and the team being dangerous offensively and never out of a game. There were issues in that he didn't have the forwards backchecking and covering enough leading to breakdowns but at least he had the defense playing to its strengths. Gulutzan simply went too far in neutering what this defense group was actually good at which is why we saw a lot of the defensemen struggle under his watch and the team losing some of it's edge.
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Not to give him a free pass, but Hartley's biggest shortcoming was that he didn't have the personnel to execute his vision at ES. He had at the very top end (Backlund / Brodie / Gaudreau / Giordano / Frolik / Hamilton and I'd even toss Bennett out there) but Monahan was still developing his two-way game while Ferland was just plain snakebitten. We didn't have guys like Tkachuk, Kulak, Hamonic and Jankowski, and the guys who couldn't execute his uptempo stretch pass heavy system really struggled to make the desired impact (Russell, Jones, Granlund, Engelland, Bollig, Stajan, Smid) and Wideman... we all know skating and D-zone play were a bit of an issue for him even if he was decent at executing Hartley's vision. Two guys who really made Hartley's system work were Paul Byron and David Schlemko and I think both were legitimately missed in Hartley's final year here. Hartley had other issues on the penalty kill and purportedly behind closed doors, but I truly think the roster we have had the last two years is tailor-made to play that style that Hartley had them playing. TBH I think Peters still has them playing with too much puck support and too closely spaced - I'd like to see them stretch the ice a bit more in both directions. Last year's Bruins played roughly what I envision this team excelling at - structured enough, but only enough.