Quote:
Originally Posted by DropIt
CP is too enamoured with winning the Hamilton trade that everyone seems to excuse the defensive deficiencies. Sure, Smith hasn't been at his best, but the overall team defense is a far bigger concern for me than the individual in net.
This defense is a major problem outside of Gio and to a lesser extent Hamonic. Everyone else is a tire fire who may skate well but cant defend or clear a crease for ####.
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Defense is the area of play most affected by coaching.
Under Hartley our D was at one point highly appreciated, to the point where acquiring Hamilton was called "almost not fair" by a rival GM. I think it's safe to say in retrospect it wasn't about the high quality of players really. Hartley was a competent coach. Not the greatest coach ever, but experienced and competent.
Gulutzan was flat out incompetent in creating a working defensive structure, and, Peters so far has looked almost as bad. The only difference seems to be that Peters can at least do the bare minimum basic head coach stuff like shuffle lines when needed, change things when they don't work, and call a time out.
When a coach always seems to have terrible goalies, it might not actually be simply about the goalies.
Carolina still has two bad goalies. McElhinney and Mrazek are both way under .900, but they manage to keep the GAAs at a decent level because their team defense isn't a poop show.
We suck defensively, and it's not because of lack of player material. We have the players for success.
But at this level, coaching makes a massive difference. Now, I'm not quite ready to give up on Peters because this is a very young season. Maybe he gets this thing together. I really hope he does.
But I can't help but wonder why are we rolling the dice on an unproven coach, when Darryl Sutter was available. His WORST stretch as a head coach was when he made the playoffs with the Sharks 4/4 times and won a round twice....makint that one "weak" stretch better than everything the Flames have done without Darryl since 1990.