Two seasons ago the team played a fast, uptempo and exciting style of hockey that was offense-focused, had the team aggressively attack the puck in the defensive zone and move the pick up the ice quickly to gain the zone and generate chances off odd-man rushes. This led to one of the best regular seasons in franchise history.
Unfortunately, Peters was throughly out-coached in the playoffs, as the Avs had the perfect system to stifle the Flames aggression in the Dzone and fast transition to generate a crazy amount of odd-man rushes and grade A chances the other way. Peters had no answer to the Avs system, and we all know the result.
The next season the team looked different. The exciting uptempo style was gone, replaced by a more plodding transition, less aggression in the dzone (keep the puck to the outside), and a more formulaic gain possession and cycle offense. It reflected in most players as this defense-first style was not geared to the skills of the players.
Then Peters was fired. I still remember the Athletic article that interviewed Ward after taking over. He said that he wouldn't be changing the system too much as that's what the team has been playing with all season thus far, and last year they tried a offensive-style of hockey and look how that turned out. It was reading this where I began to lose hope. The embaressment by the Avs caused them to completely revamp the system to defense first rather then identify how to counter what the Avs put into play against us in the playoffs. As the saying goes, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. They absolutley should have continued the same base system that led to 2nd in the leauge and tweaked it as needed based on opposition.
I firmly believe that any "success" last year or this year is because we have skilled players and it is in spite of the systems the Peters put in place after the Avs loss and Ward simply continued with. This team now has better personnel then two years ago, and it is inexcusable at this point that the coaching is so bad.
Now I don't know systems as well as NHL coaches (neither does Ward *zing*) but this is the first time I remember as a fan where I'm just completely deflated. I have zero hope in turning this around until new coaching is brought in. And by that time we'll be having to rebuild anyway.
I honestly believe that the answers are in the room, and this team does have the horses to make noise in the playoffs. We just need competent coaching now to bring that back out, as we saw 2 years ago.
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