[2macinnis2]

Originally Posted by TOfan

What a surprise, it's the coaches fault.....again.

The OP is just silly. Grasping at straws such as a whole sale change in the teams system (play the trap) during the playoffs would somehow have had an improvement on the results with little thought given to how disruptive that would have been. Did the Flames play the trap at all this year? Ever?

At this point in time, you run with the horses who got you here. You expect the same. The fact the Flames bowed out in 5, is on the players. Full stop. They under performed. And it wasn't one or two guys, it was the majority. Brodie was almost unplayable for at least two games, Monahan has shown he is far from being a legitimate No.1 C, Gaudreau seemed scared (like he did two years ago), Backlund made a number of plays that hurt the team, Gio's age started to show, Neal is going to be a big problem moving forward, Hanafin was 'just a guy', Frolik looked indifferent, Jankowski was no where to be found. Tkachuck was so-so, as the series went on his impact seemed to diminish.

On the other hand Bennett's stock continues to rise with another solid playoff performance, Smith was their best player, Anderson & Valamaki should make Brodie expendable this offseason, Mangapane looked like he's progressing nicely.

Pinning this on Peters is lame. His decisions were fine, he played his hand with cards he was dealt.for the Flames to get better, they'll have to address it through roster composition. The coach is fine. He's better than fine.

Lastly, I don't consider this loss to be 'catastrophic'. At the beginning of the year, what were you honestly expecting? The Flames improved considerably over last season and that's the standard they should be evaluated on. The coach deserves a lot of credit for that in my eyes.

Maybe I’m just ruined being forced to watch the best coach in the history of any sport (Belichick) have a team be able to shape shift from week to week. Hockey is a fast but fairly simple game. Every team should have some system in place that they can go to to assume an effective defensive posture without emphasizing aggression. In my opinion the Flames needed to go to that early in this series, as soon it was evident how fast the Avs were playing and how solid Smith was making routine saves. The Avs has a plan for Gaudreau. The Flames has no plan for MacKinnon. You need to be able to adjust... trying to force a square peg through the round hole (even if it’s ‘what got you here’) is the hallmark of bad professional coaching.