I normally agree with much of what you post but strongly disagree with a lot of this.
Johny starts on the third line so that he can do his Johny things, aka 1 man show. When he is feeling it, Ward moves him up with better players. When he looks slow, disinterested, etc and isn’t driving the play for his line, he stays where he is. I was actually bothered to see him move up the line as the top 2 were playing well and as soon as Johny showed up on that line, it wasn’t as effective.
Isn’t Ryan our top face off guy? Nothing wrong with putting your top face off guy in for a offensive zone draw while lines 1-2 catch their breath. It was unfortunate that Ryan got waived from the draw which is why it ended up in our own zone.
Ward doesn’t make the call on coaches challenges. There are people hired for this role and while ward is the one to call the ref over, he is getting his intel from others.
The breakout is much better than it was. We are flipping pucks up high and placing them, ringing them around the boards hard enough to retrieve on the other side or making short support passes. To each their own but the breakout has been something I notice great improvement on. There are multiple options unlike Peters dump and chase with no speed through the zone.
Last night was a fun game to watch against a average team with above average goaltending and a better win % than the flames. Rittich likely regrets all 3 of the goals but I don’t blame him as he stopped 4-5 that could have went on and nobody bats an eye. Positioning on the first was actually good, just bad luck to go through.
I feel the flames were warned about post whistle scrums. Lucic goes right to the bench, Tkachuk went from 4-5 scrums to maybe 1, Bennett has been in a couple but keeps his hands low and doesn’t do anything.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how so many blatant calls go missed and we are one of, it not the most penalized team in the league. My only conclusion was that refs hate post whistle antics and we were great at starting them leaving the refs more likely to give benefit of doubt against us.
AC should do one of his video montages on missed calls and the can opener from last night that has 0 excuse for being missed.
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Originally Posted by Resolute 14
It's interesting how the officiating turns to complete dog crap right when a bunch of eastern conference teams come through.
Anyway, one thing last night's game has really underscored for me is my concerns about Geoff Ward's coaching strategies:
- Gaudreau with Lucic and Ryan completely wastes our best scoring forward's abilities. It was no surprise that Gaudreau looked ten times more dangerous when Ward shifted him back up to skate with guys with skill.
- Late in the game, 3-3, Montreal takes an icing. Better get Lucic and Ryan out there again for the key offensive zone faceoff. Predictably, they lost the faceoff, and we got buried inside our own zone. Inexplicably, after Rittich bailed them out by covering the puck, Ward left them out for the defensive zone faceoff, which they again lost. I think in the end, Lucic had the single longest shift of any forward for us at that point. And all of it was buried in his own end.
- Ward absolutely sucks at coaches' challenges. The entire reason why it's a delay of game penalty now is to prevent exactly what Ward is doing: wasting time with a faint hope challenge. He's actively hurting the team by doing this.
- Our breakouts are turning into a hot mess. We're starting to rely again on multiple lateral passes before moving the puck up, and those passes are becoming increasingly predictable. Too slow getting out of the zone, too easy to be stripped of the puck.
All of these issues are things that we saw under Gulutzan, and that is very concerning to me.
That being said, the one thing that really differentiates Ward from Gulutzan is adaptation. Ward did recognize that Gaudreau on the third line was dumb and changed it. And later in the game, we did start prioritizing north-south passing out of the zone. So there's still a lot of hope there. But man do we need to clean up some of these issues.
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