Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
His .438 team he still had, aside from Jaybo and Iginla, guys like Cammi, Tanguay, Glencross, Stempniak, Hudler, Stajan, Backlund, Wideman, Gio, and Brodie. Not a good team, but .438 is horrific. That team is better overall on paper than his 14-15 team, IMO.
Atlanta was OOP for all but one year and that year they finished first and then dropped 4 straight to a mediocre NYR. And don’t we always complain about PO performances here? Then he got fired after 6 games the next year.
Hartley’s big claim to fame around here is, at the end of the day, winning 3 more PO games than Ward. And that’s if you don’t count the play-in (which sure felt like PO games to me). And the team that Ward lost to went to the finals, so there’s that.
If Hartley was a good NHL coach, he’d be in the NHL. Heck, if he was good, it wouldn’t have taken him as long as it did to get hired after Atlanta. Only Jay Feaster would even talk to him.
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Hartley’s 1st year, we weren’t sure if Backlund was even going to make it as an NHLer.
Stempniak, Glencross, Stajan, Hudler, past-prime Cammalleri, Brodie just beginning to establish himself as a full time player, Iggy, Bo and Kipper on the way out the door, and an ascendant Gio.
No Johnny, no Monahan, but hey, he did have Sven!
He didn’t make the playoffs with THAT in a shortened season?
No.
Way.
That garbage roster he had to work with was the same one that hadn’t made the playoffs without Mike Keenan, and Hartley didn’t even have the benefit of a healthy Kiprusoff.