Quote:
Originally Posted by transplant99
He hasnt even been a HC for a seasons worth of games. I, you, BT, no one knows what kind of coach Ward may or may not be yet. There simply isnt enough data, but if you want to use what is available
He is 31-21-4 in the regular season.
1-1 in playoff series.
Where is the issue with that?
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The players have to take a lot of the blame too. I don’t think there is person who is critiquing the coaches that hasn’t said that, but it’s pretty clear this coaching staff isn’t very good either and isn’t the solution.
The record is irrelevant to me as they had a bit of a bump right after Peters was fired, but really they’ve been .500 under Ward outside of that, and the bigger issue to me is the style of play he has them playing and his player utilization.
It became obvious in the series against Dallas, and it’s continued into this season, IMO he’s trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and is playing a system that doesn’t suit this roster. It’s a boring and safe system that you’d expect a team like Ottawa who is rebuilding to play, take no risks and reap no rewards.
Collapse in front of your net, safe plays up the wall to exit the zone, don’t try to attack with speed turn back and make the safe pass, don’t try to make a play at the other teams blueline - just get it deep, and don’t try to step up at your own blueline just back up and give them the zone entry. Those all seems to be things that this coaching staff preaches because the team has played that safe, grind it out style of hockey since Ward became coach.
Playing this style means you are handcuffing your own skill guys. Play a low risk style of play that a rebuilding team would play, and you will get rebuilding results on the ice. Except even worse because the young guys and grinders will probably execute dump and chase better than a smaller veteran team with skill.
The GM and Coach seem to want this team to play boring, heavy hockey when they have built a roster not suited to doing so at all.
Then on top of that Ward has made questionable personal decisions in terms of how he utilizes his bench, and really I don’t like how he never takes responsibility for any of the poor performances (going back to throwing Talbot under the bus after he was the one who made the stupid decision to pull him).
And this isn’t all Geoff Wards fault, it’s Brad Treliving. Ward should have never been put in this position to start with. Treliving was given a mulligan with this coaching staff after the Peters incident and he had a chance to go a different direction, instead he decided to stay course with the exact staff we had the two seasons prior (minus Peters), just a stupid decision.