Quote:
Originally Posted by saillias
My hot take has always been the good year was also bad. They got shelled every game and were the worst team on the ice most nights. Their metrics were near the bottom of the league. They got very lucky with shooting percentages and goaltending. And then faced a very weak round 1 opponent.
It's been crazy to me how Hartley has maintained this sort of aura like he was good here. No he was really really bad. Worse than Gulutzan or Ward. not even referring to how he dealt with people. But by the numbers as a coach he is one of the worst of the salary cap era.
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I respectfully disagree .
The record was a function of the roster. Feaster blew up the corpse of a post apex team that had run its course.
The style of play post blow up, the good year, was a style built for an inexperienced roster and resulted in the stats.
They freely gave up the outside and collapsed a lot. High volume of low danger shots.
They also had emphasis on a fast transition. The old guys like Sarich complained that he didn’t want passes back in the zone
By contrast it was under Gulutzan where they had Smith in net, he’d take the puck, and both D would go in opposite corners so Smith could pick his outlet. That was seriously the strategy. Gave the opponents all the time in the world to set up. And pretty much no chance of developing odd man rushes from that state
It’s disingenuous to point at his record and say he is the worst. He had very little to work with.