Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashasx
Wasn't the team 32nd in royal road attempts this season?
The fact that they are told to play such hard nosed north-south hockey tells me that coaching is having an impact on these numbers and it's kind of hiding how poor of a team they really are.
Cross ice passes just weren't part of the team's strategy this year.
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It's really tough to say IMO. I think they are a playoff roster. I think coaching helped them in some ways in terms of maintaining possession, but I do think that coaching was meant to be very risk averse and it hurt them in terms of generating quality.
I'd love to see a similar roster roster (get rid of 4th line vets, play Pelletier, Ruzicka, Zary, Coronato) with a different coach...but I'm not sure that's smart with 6 upcoming UFAS that you need to make decisions on this summer.
And yeah Meghan Chayka posted a great chart showing some Year over year changes ...the inability/lack of attempts to make cross ice passes in the o-zone stands out. The odd-man rushes against change YoY stands out.
And so does the save percentage IMO. That save percentage on shots through traffic is abysmal, and it's something that was noticeable all year. Markstrom was terrible at fighting through traffic this year. Pretty much top 10 in goaltending by every metric last season, and this season bottom 6 in pretty much every metric. Just cratered the team.
