Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
Maybe, but Hartley (in his one good year) had playoff Ferland, Hudler, Wideman in a weird career year, Brodie, prime Gio, close to a career year for Hiller. You can’t ignore the deletions. It’s a better team, but maybe some intangibles were lost too. Engelland, Stajan, were 100% guys with or without Hartley.
Ward isn’t a very good coach. But I think this is more on the players.
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Gio got injured that year. Hartley was playing guys like Diaz, Schlemko, and Wotherspoon in the playoffs and still managed to find ways to not have them cost us games on the blueline. Our 4C in the playoffs was Markus Granlund, when it wasn't Josh Jooris. Hiller lost his net mid-season to Karri Ramo. That team had a double digit game losing streak and still looked more exciting than we look in our wins.
Gulutzan had that same Engelland you refer to, yet managed to make our third pair of Bart-Engelland an absolute liability like Diaz-Wotherspoon never was.
I think these are the kind of small things that get magnified big time in big games, and these mickey mouse coaches (GG, Post ASB Peters, Ward) continue to cost us.