[CaptainCrunch]

Ok, I thought I would open the floor for discussion, maybe this post can go into another topic. I would be fine with this.

But I think the question has to be asked, about what the role of coaching is in a modern day big money professional league like the NHL

I think that there's a bit of romanticism attached to what people think coaches do in the NHL. A over reliance based on sports movies where Coaches stand up and make grandiose speeches appealing to the players pride, and sense of team, and the small town he came from. Maybe playing for the memory of an injured team mated or a dead relative

"Whatever you do, if you can win one for the Gipper".

We used to hear terms like "Players Coach", or "Authoritarian" or "Systems Coach". The Roger Neilson breaking down of film, Iron Mike beating down players to get the best efforts out of them, the Badger Bob's or Terry Crisps.

Do these terms even exist anymore?

Where does this debate come from, well obviously from the massive calls for GG to be shown the door, right now this fracking instant. The insistence that everything that vexes the Flames is due to the coaches themselves.

I want to be clear, I do firmly believe that GG is probably going to be gone at the end of this season. However I do believe that the problem with the Flames, and in fact the problem plaguing a lot of teams is more then systematic in nature. We're not alone as a fanbase when it comes to that coach screwing things up argument.

I also think that all to often we go back to the argument that you can't fire 20 players, but you can really fire a coach.

But the game has shifted in the last several years to one where the power is really held by the players.

It used to be that a player could be demoted, benched, traded to the worst team in the worse city in the league, or even set adrift and not signed. But the fact is that the key players the guys that drive your franchises have none of those threats hanging over their head.

You can't demote a star player anymore, if you had a player without a NMC and try to demote him, its likely that he's rewarded by being snapped up by another team. You can bench them, but do they really care? They're being paid, and the ability for coaches to fine players for playing lazy or giving the puck away is gone. In a long season, a night in the press box is probably appreciated. Traded to the worst team in the league? Not likely the players and the agents pretty well hold the cards, and even if you could, they still get paid.

Frankly these players aren't the farm boys who were hardened by brutal outdoor games in 30 below weather. The experience of riding the iron lung buses on long road trips across the prairies that built a sense of history. The brutal nature of the minor league systems designed to be hard.

Instead players that are identified from an early age are pampered and taken care of, they're lavishly coached and developed. There's really not more elite players getting time off from the game to go and play baseball or football, and really develop a yearning to play hockey, they're made to learn and play systems through the enforcement of muscle memory, and tactical learning.

Meanwhile the coaches are rarely the same ex players that they used to be. Instead these are educated men who are forced to learn the systems and theories of the game. They can design a power play or a penalty kill, or a breakout like a nuclear sub technician can draw a reactor on a napkin.

So to me its no surprise that for players, the leaders the guys like a Crosby for example are natural and not built leaders. Sports isn't developing leadership anymore by putting them with coaches that appeal to the emotional side of the game, Sports isn't about a squared peg in a round hole. Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard those guys that show up in dictionaries under pictures of perseverance and leadership and suffering for their game and their team are rare.

Instead we've got lavishly paid and trained very athletic guys who rarely step out of the box that they've been trained to occupy, they rarely take chances, they rarely really inspire anymore.

the dressing rooms are too civilized.

The idea of a leader or a group of leaders, charging from the front, and kicking asses from the back has now been replaced by the term chemistry, everyone pulling in the same direction like oarsmen on a boat. A harsh comment by a player against his team is now considered to be wrong and throwing his team under the bus. A player calling out his team mates in the dressing room is probably greeted by apathy, because his pay is guaranteed, and he has control of his ultimate fate in every single way.

Its the same with a coach. A inspirational speech once might get results similar to chucking a stick into the crowd. But the effect is going to wear all too soon, and then just ignored as "That same old bullspit" by the players the next time its pulled out.

So where does that leave us. A league where the players have nothing to lose, and are actually doing their jobs by playing a system where you don't take chances and stay in the box.

Where does it leave us, when the term chemistry is bigger then leadership, and following the game plan matters more then charging ahead and doing whatever it takes and living with the consequences?

As much as we want to say this is on the coach, when the players come out flat. This is the coach that the team wanted, a systems guy with new ideas who can draw a nuclear power plant on a napkin. After the experience of Bob Hartley the players wanted someone low key and since they have the power, that's what they've got now.

There is a failure on this team and it goes beyond coaching. On paper this team should be solid, but there is a chemistry issue. personal wise, this team should be doing way better, but there's a disturbing lack of give a crap at the start of every game.

And as much as we believe this is on the coach, who could yell and scream and extort as much as we want. The players in that dressing room have the power. They have security and predictability and the power.

And they don't have leadership because this team isn't designed to have it.

If you fire this coach and bring in someone new next year, you're likely to get the same result. Because the coaches are all approaching the game the same way. The authoritarian coaches might get you half a season now, before the team tunes him out, because those authoritarian coaches have been denied the tools that made them effective.

If the coach goes, there has to be a real look at how this team is built, because the chemistry isn't there, and there's literally no leadership.

Then the question is, is there a natural leader in this dressing room, is there a natural leader that's out there that the Flames can pick up from a team that's not going to let that asset go.

I firmly believe that Gully is a good coach in the right situation, in a situation where there's development and teaching, he's going to be a superstar. But in a situation where the power lies with the players, he's got no tools.