Quote:
Originally Posted by activeStick
Seravalli mentioned that in talking to execs around the league, the consensus seems to be that Tocchet and his staff are seen as one of the top groups in the league. I know some don't think he's an insider, but he's proven to be one in my view.
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He coaches the most boring, uninspired hockey I have watched in a long time. As a head coach he has regularly coached offensive instinct and skill that modern NHL players have away and discouraged imagination. Watch Lekkerimaki in the AHL and his first few games in the NHL. He was regularly attempting plays and attacking the net. After being on the NHL roster for an extended period you could watch him process what he was being coached to do in real time. He would go to make a play and would stop and back off. Literally just stop moving the direction he was going and just drift back and then make a pass to the point. We saw the same change in Nils Hoglander as he would regularly get benched after making or attempting to make a skill play. He is on record for trying to remove Pettersson's east-west game that made him so effective at the start of his career to try and turn him into any other north-south grinder. It happened in Arizona and Tampa. Since February last year, his team has been the worst offensive team in the NHL while having a set of players that should not be that bad.
He does this in the name of a better defensive structure and a "play-off" style. I have never seen a team with such rigid structure give up so many odd-man rushes and easy back door plays because of how their rigid structure positions players.
He also preaches accountability and being a professional but under him we had a player flame out and get traded for half their value due to their lack of professionalism. The players regularly do things that Tocchet will then come out and say "I am not telling them to do that!" Which would mean the players are just doing what ever they want and it's not coached into the... with no punishment or change in deployment.
He coaches an out-dated style that willingly gives the puck up when the modern NHL is about retaining control and attacking and is doing so in an out-dated way that is out of touch with modern players. The style he coaches in is forgivable if you're winning, a la Jacques Lemaire, but if you choose this style and don't win you're knee capping your players and alienating fans. This is legitimately the same play style that Travis Green started coaching in the last three months of his tenure here. He is exactly the coach I thought and was worried he was. We had a five month mirage and then he turned into all that he knows. Boring, rigid, uninspired, unimaginative hockey.
I don't know if a new coach fixes this team, but it certainly fixes the entertainment value which does matter if I am going to pay $400 for the game.