Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
The thing that is so strange about Ward is that he comes off as a pretty intelligent guy in interviews but he's a total dufus behind the bench. This is Twilight Zone level coaching we have seen from him this year. The roster mismanagement and player deployment is nothing like I have ever seen before but as the losses accumulate I'm seeing some parallels with Greg Gilbert as he's taking out his frustrations on one player and starting to lose the room in the process.
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Could be a case of "I'm smarter than everyone".
Here is a telling stat for me, which supermat (I think) pulled up.
In his one successful North American pro year as a head coach he took over in the middle of the season from Claude Julien, who was promoted to the Canadians HC position. Here are their respective records.
Julien - 33-6-3-3
Ward. - 16-13-5-1
These are shockingly different records with what would seamingly be the same team. I don't know the context of player call-ups, injuries or anything else, but this is a large disparity.
I just don't see what in Ward's body of work make anyone in the Flames organization think he could be a good NHL head coach.
Blaming "the core" because someone with no meaningful history of success can't win is just plain foolish.
I think this reminds me of GG hockey because they both seem to play more to not lose than to win. It feels like players are coached with their major focus to be in not making mistakes.