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Originally Posted by Jimdon
This might be the most apologist post I've seen so far to try to take the blame on the coach and excuse the players.
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There were players deserving of blame in Hartley's final year here. Jonas Hiller was the worst goaltender in the NHL. Kris Russell and Dennis Wideman were also awful.
But the players on that team who were there then and are here now - Gaudreau, Bennett, Backlund, Monahan, Brodie, Giordano were all strong that year. Anyone who watched that season would remember that. Gaudreau is everyone's whipping boy this year and even he was a plus player that year. Brodie had his best season. Bennett had his best season. Backlund had a near 50 point season. That team was around top ten in scoring before they sold off at the deadline (I think they finished twelvth?).
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To take Hartley and Peter's accomplishments of getting this team to perform at an elite level and dismiss them as being flawed without putting any responsibility on the team takes mental gymnastics that I'm just not capable of
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Hartley got this team to perform at an elite level? What? Our entire strategy under Hartley was to back off and have every skater play goalie for the whole game until the other team got tired of shooting, and then hope to score on odd man rushes. I had a ton of fun in 2014-15 - but we weren't an elite team.
Peters lost four straight games in the playoffs to a wildcard team without any meaningful tactical adjustments. No, Monahan and Gaudreau and Backlund and Lindholm and Tkachuk didn't have very good playoffs. But despite all that the primary issue in the playoffs was how the second defense pair was getting absolutely pummelled to submission and nothing was done to shelter them.
Brodie was our best Dman in the playoffs and he only averaged 22:28. You know what Hartley had Brodie playing in the playoffs? 27:07. Maybe those nearly 4 and a half minutes of ice time could have been shifted towards our top defense pair instead of the second D pair who were atrocious.
Bennett was our best forward in the playoffs and he only averaged 13:14. You know what Hartley had Bennett playing the playoffs, which were games two to twelve of his entire NHL career? 14:01. Seriously, How the heck do you excuse a guy giving you 5 points in 5 games and not think to maybe give him a few extra shifts?
The Gaudreau - Monahan - Lindholm line was ineffective long before the playoffs. They stopped clicking around the all star break. Despite revisionist history, it wasn't Gaudreau that was the issue on that line down the stretch, it was the other two, particularily Lindholm who stopped shooting altogether. Peters didn't split them up until game 5 of the playoffs. The same Peters who when he first came in (and started winning) had no problems turning on the blender. He was a completely different coach down the stretch and that carried into this season big time.
Beyond that? After game 1 Bednar implemented a forechecking strategy that gave our team fits on the breakout. Peters had no answer. We're not the first team to ever come across a team-specific forecheck in the playoffs - but Peters literally had no counter. The playoffs are about playing chess and Peters was still playing Angry Birds five games in. How the #### was it a "historic season" as you put it when the playoffs were so underwhelming?
But sure, call it mental gymnastics.