Quote:
Originally Posted by transplant99
Im amazed you actually believe it was coaching that produced the entire inability to make or receive simple 5 foot passes....particularly when i watched them do just fine in that department the vast majority of the year. Why wasnt it "coaching" then?
But please do educate me on coaching....im all ears.
|
I know you're a coaching apologist as is timbit so this will be in one ear and out the other because apparently if you're a coach you're too smart to have to hear that coaches have to actually coach.
But the Flames' issue is not an "inability to make or receive simple 5 foot passes".
These are pro athletes who can do things with precision that us normal humans can't even fathom if we were out there on the ice.
So way do passes end up in skates or too far ahead or behind the target?
Because the game is played between two teams.
The other team doesn't give our players wide open targets to pass to. This is because they have scouted our pitiful breakouts and countered them.
This was obvious six periods ago.
We wonn the previous game because the puck went in the net, not because we outplayed the other team for sixty minutes.
In fact, the Flames have yet to outplay an opponent all season.
Even when they outchance the opponent, it is because of individual talent.
Never do our systems put our players in position to play at a level exceeding the sum of the parts.
We do not utilize the middle of the ice in our breakouts.
We do not break out with pace, but instead make D-to-D passes with zero urgency.
We have zero strategy for keeping the puck in the offensive zone when the other team is breaking the puck out. We just passively back up and wait to get the puck back.
We have zero strategy in the neutral zone. Bingo posted a chart the other day about how we're one of the worst teams in the NHL at zone entry denial. What does that have to do with five foot passes, huh? You don't even need the puck to play tight gaps and force dump-ins.
When the other team has scouted our breakout as Travis Green's Canucks have, we have no counter to it. We just continue trying the same thing over and over for six periods. Yeah, if we get a lead, we can maybe dictate the play a little bit more, but that shouldn't be so situationally defined. We should be dictating the play whenever possible.
But according to coaching apologists, the players should just go out there and play and if they win, that means the coaches did a good job. And if they lose, that means the players did a bad job.
Sorry, but not making five foot passes is a symptom, not a cause.