Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
The 64,000 question here, is why the hell is Calgary such a black hole for player talent?
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IMO the organization is in a rut and it all goes back to the Gulutzan hire. His hiring stunted the growth of the team as he's the coach that started snowball effect with Bennett. His square peg in round hole approach wasted the talent of guys like Brodie (playing him on the wrong side) and Hamilton (was 2nd powerplay QB for a long time which is unforgivable). He turned the team from a quick transition team to a plodding, methodical team that looked much better in advanced metrics than they did on the ice. I feel the reason the team looked so good in the first 2/3 of Peters first season is that the players had the exuberance of feeling unchained from Gulutzan hockey. Brodie wasn't playing on the wrong side and the forwards were no longer playing that perimeter hockey. We will never know what happened after that all star break but after that they kind of lost that edge and continued down the path that Gulutzan set for them. Peters Babcockian approach wore on the team and once again they had an uptick going to Ward but that pley eroded as Ward made more and more questionable decisions behind the bench and moved the team back to perimeter hockey. I feel what happened to this team is a cumulative effect of a really, really bad coaching hire setting the decline in motion.