Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
It's been said a bunch of times now over the past couple months, but this bears repeating: I LOVE what depth does for a team. The sort of line juggling that Peters is doing this season is something that really was not even an available option to Guilutzan's coaching staff.
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I beg to differ. With some more, and more intelligent, line juggling, I believe there is no way Eatbread should have gone ten games without a point, Bennett fifteen games without a point, Jankowski an eleven game pointless streak, Backlund with eleven and eight game pointless streaks.
Gulutzan made that not an option himself by expecting lines to just get out of slumps themselves. Before him, Hartley was successfully juggling lines with guys like Bouma, Colborne, Jones, and Jooris and getting top ten in NHL type offensive results. Even Hunter Shinkaruk looked like he arrived under Hartley and Garnet Hathaway gave us a game where he drew eight penalties on the Sharks, I believe that never would have happened under Gully.
Gulutzan didn't have a stacked roster but he had at his disposal guys like Lazar, Brouwer, Jagr, Mangiapane, Shinkaruk, Foo, Shore, Stewart, Jankowski, Bennett, Ferland, Frolik, Backlund, Ferland and he had zero interest in any useful experimentation. His was a rigid style of coaching and it resulted in a team that didn't believe in themselves most of the time. Czarnik might not have played a minute on the PP or top nine for us yet and then we'd be wondering if it was a bad signing.