Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
People keep blaming Sutter but (as I posted in another thread) there are half a dozen or more guys on pace to have career years offensively or very close to it.
When Toffoli, Kadri, Lindholm, Coleman, Dube, Backlund, Zadorov, Andersson and others are on pace for their best or second best season offensively this year, and guys like Gaudreau and Tkachuk scored over 100 points last season, it becomes entirely evident that people who blame Sutter’s coaching for a lack of offence are doing so because they want to, not because the evidence points that direction.
Whatever the problem is, it’s Huberdeau’s to figure out. Why is he so special that he gets excused for not producing when everybody else has managed to produce well under Sutter?
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The coach has publicly insulted him ("
well he is the best passer the organization has ever seen"), publicly embarrassed him ("he had to take a ****) and publicly called out his character ("Now Lindholm is playing with guys he likes"). The coach also sets the lines and had him playing with a 13th forward for a month. Huberdeau is a possession, set it up and make plays player, while Sutter just wants poor quality shots on net. The winning teams play a possession game in the NHL, while desperate teams just put pucks on net, Sutter is not coaching to get the best out of his (supposedly) best player.
We could also look at players who have taken steps backwards under Sutter, Sutter's terrible deployment of the forward lines, Sutter's decisions around starting goaltenders, the teams pitiful power play and lack of discipline, the fact that the team does not play with pace, is not physical, refusal to play young players. Those are all obvious while we can also see signs of poor chemistry, lack of emotion, poor communication between staff/ players, a rift between management and the coach, I mean the list goes on. That's why Sutter is to blame over Huberdeau.