Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Actually they've been on then off, then on then off.
Saturday against Ottawa ... fast.
Monday against Ottawa ... fast in the first flat after that.
Thursday against Ottawa ... fast to start, mostly fast through the game.
Saturday against Edmonton ... fast in the first, then lost it (tired)?
Sunday against Ottawa ... odd game, territorial with no execution. They seemed fast.
If Sutter can keep them
a) on their A game more often and
b) improve their off game they'll be much better
Have never debated that Sutter isn't an upgrade, but Ward didn't coach them not to be fast. They just kept losing the program.
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I don't think he purposefully coached them to be slow, but I am not sure that he actually coached them to be fast either, and I am making the assumptions on two things that I regularly saw:
1) Flames would exit the zone slowly all too often. I didn't sense that Ward was telling them to move the puck quicker. He seemed to be fine on those all too common occurrences. Maybe I am being a bit unfair here, and he did continually try to make them exit the zone at speed, but it didn't appear to me that he did based on how often the players were doing so, and his demeanour on the bench at times as the camera panned.
2) The comment today about how fast-paced practice was. Ward apparently wasn't having fast practices. I can assume speed wasn't something he was coaching for if they never practiced with that speed. Maybe he didn't want slow, but since he never practiced at game-speed, one could then assume he wasn't coaching the Flames to actually be fast either.