The trials and tribulations of Glen Gulutzan

[ASP#26525]

Originally Posted by AC

I used to be that way. It was excruciating during the tough seasons. Basically from 2006 until when the rebuild seemed imminent.

I still get pretty damn high after wins, but the key is be as OK with losses as possible. Its a long season filled with many distinct trends and storylines. Throwing a tantrum after any 1 loss has frankly just got to be bad for your health, and for sure isn't a fun way to be a fan of a professional sports team.

Same, and I also keep in mind that this is a game that I watch for relaxation and entertainment, and that my team is populated with human beings that cannot possibly be perfect every single day.

I wonder how much of the emotional overreacting has to do with fantasy leagues or other means of investment in the game's outcome, if you catch my drift.

[joejoe3]

Gulutzan Snek according to CP, he should've been fired twice based on .500 benchmark. (*and shot 6 times if Brukey may add)

[Racki]

Originally Posted by Backlunds_socks

Even with the wins I don't think GG is a good coach.

he has no clue when to put which line out - yesterday playing JG and SM after the brawl, wtf?

First real show of emotion after the game, a little too late bud.

Stubborn on his D-pairings - why not reunite Brodano again? Oh sorry left right.

I hate to admit but I'm with you on Gulutzan. I like the guy, I want him to succeed but I just don't think he's a great head coach.

I have little to no faith in his ability to manage a game. He tends to be stubborn and robotic.

How long will it take him to make a move with Brodie and Hamonic? Until it's too late? Hell, I'm still waiting for him to move Brodie back to the opposite side of the ice where he excelled. He's been lost ever since.

[home_sweet_dome]

LOL at everyone saying it's only 1 loss after a nice stretch of wins. This is about the big picture. He continues to struggle with player utilization, in game adjustments, and line matching but more importantly let's focus on his NHL body of work in a fact based manner.

FACT - good coaches get their teams to overachieve.

FACT - bad coaches have their teams underachieve.

FACT - GG2.0's Dallas Stars team underachieved in 2011-12 and missed the playoffs with 89 points.

FACT - GG2.0's Dallas Stars team underachieved in 2012-13 and missed the playoffs with 48 points in 48 games.

FACT - GG2.0's Calgary Flames team underachieved in 2016-17, making the playoffs as a wild card team and winning a grand total of 0 playoff games.

FACT - thru 18 games this season, GG2.0's Calgary Flames team is 10-8, with a -5 goal differential, on pace for 91 points despite receiving very good goaltending in the vast majority of the 18 games and having a top 10 talent team on paper (arguably top 5 considering the goaltending provided so far). You can argue just how good you think the Flames should be but there is no question they should be better than a 91 point team with a negative goal differential and thus GG2.0 has his team undeniably underachieving again!

Therefore there is an undeniable 234 game sample size of GG2.0 being a poor NHL coach. The sample size is large enough to no longer make this an OPINION but rather a FACT. He may be better than the original GG that was Greg Gilbert, but he sure as heck ain't good.

Anyone who continues to ignore this FACT, whether it be the GM of the team, or the owner of this site, or whoever else, quite frankly is living on a hope and prayer instead of reality.

[Red Slinger]

Aren't "overacheived" and "underacheived" subjective terms and therefore unable to be considered FACT?

[bax]

I think that if you need to type in all caps to get your point across then the point probably isn’t all that great in the first place

[PsYcNeT]

I read that whole post in Glenn Beck's voice.

[Gaskal]

Originally Posted by ASP#26525

I wonder how much of the emotional overreacting has to do with fantasy leagues or other means of investment in the game's outcome, if you catch my drift.

I don't recall any particular instances myself that stand out... other than the one time people were upset because Dougie got one of Monahan's goals. It seemed like an odd thing to fuss over unless of course you have one and not the other in your fantasy league, and we had a handful of irate posters because of it.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Draug

It could be that the Flames win despite the coach, not because of him.

If one were to bring up a coaching change during a win streak, the rebuttal from the GG supporters would be "We are winning. What more do you want?". Bring up a coaching change after a loss, and the rebuttal will be "It is one game. Relax. We need to patient". It's a lose - lose.

By the time it can be unequivocally proven we need a new coach, the season will be lost. I get the frustration. At the same, I hear where the GG supporters are coming from too.

Do you not see the difference between a winning streak, which usually shows consistent good play and "a loss" which is the world's smallest sample size?

If the team generally is playing poorly despite having good players, that's on the coach at any time. But the Flames have generally played very sound hockey this year. They have special teams holes and individuals sometimes, being human, have bad games. This last game was a snowball effect of numerous catastrophic errors combined with a lack (heh) of incredible saves. Had the Flames been rewarded after a pretty good start I think they win that game. The same team, however, played an incredibly good game just prior to that one.

[Classic_Sniper]

People really need to tone it down here, Gulutzen has done a pretty good job. His ability to manage games has been phenomenal as evidenced by his 33-0-1 record leading after 2 periods last season. It's really not his fault that certain individual performances have lead to losses because of bone headed penalties, turnovers, lack of finish and poor special teams. These are all things that he doesn't control.

The onus is on the players to execute, upper management who have made questionable roster decisions and the assistant coaches (especially penalty kill) who run the power play and penalty kill. We're dead last in the penalty kill again just like the start of last season and it's crushing us in games. It's so unbelievably passive that teams have figured out a way to get open and score in tight all the time. It's not performing at an acceptable level right now and even at the start of the season it was Mike Smith bailing the PK out with miraculous efforts. Now that he's not, the cracks are showing and escalating.

[kevman]

Originally Posted by home_sweet_dome

LOL at everyone saying it's only 1 loss after a nice stretch of wins. This is about the big picture. He continues to struggle with player utilization, in game adjustments, and line matching but more importantly let's focus on his NHL body of work in a fact based manner.

FACT - good coaches get their teams to overachieve.

FACT - bad coaches have their teams underachieve.

FACT - GG2.0's Dallas Stars team underachieved in 2011-12 and missed the playoffs with 89 points.

FACT - GG2.0's Dallas Stars team underachieved in 2012-13 and missed the playoffs with 48 points in 48 games.

FACT - GG2.0's Calgary Flames team underachieved in 2016-17, making the playoffs as a wild card team and winning a grand total of 0 playoff games.

FACT - thru 18 games this season, GG2.0's Calgary Flames team is 10-8, with a -5 goal differential, on pace for 91 points despite receiving very good goaltending in the vast majority of the 18 games and having a top 10 talent team on paper (arguably top 5 considering the goaltending provided so far). You can argue just how good you think the Flames should be but there is no question they should be better than a 91 point team with a negative goal differential and thus GG2.0 has his team undeniably underachieving again!

Therefore there is an undeniable 234 game sample size of GG2.0 being a poor NHL coach. The sample size is large enough to no longer make this an OPINION but rather a FACT. He may be better than the original GG that was Greg Gilbert, but he sure as heck ain't good.

Anyone who continues to ignore this FACT, whether it be the GM of the team, or the owner of this site, or whoever else, quite frankly is living on a hope and prayer instead of reality.

Opinions aren't facts.

FACT - The Flames season save percentage is .901. That's good for 11th worst in the league. The Flames have received slightly below average goaltending this season.

I think maybe it was Itse in another post who said we're getting average goaltending. We're just used to seeing terrible goaltending so we think this is what great goaltending looks like.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by stone hands

Strange, for me the best I can hope for is that the team continues to play playoff-bound hockey and wins a lot of games

If that is the best you can hope for then your expectations are too low. I would think that is roster has enough talent to be better than the bubble team that we are right now.

[stone hands]

They’re called realistic expectations, where in the last 3 or 4 years of this core showed you that they should be be doing any better than they are right now? They’re 2 games off leading the division. If you were expecting the flames to have a Tampa’s record, I don’t know what to tell you, there’s lots of parity in the nhl

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

If that is the best you can hope for then your expectations are too low. I would think that is roster has enough talent to be better than the bubble team that we are right now.

Yeah that's what bums me out. The Flames are supposed to be getting better but aren't. There is enough talent that it's not out of the question that they could or should win the division but the reality is that they will be fighting for one of the last few playoff spots like last season. Even flat-lined teams like the Sharks seem to be able to maintain a higher level of play on a regular basis. It would be nice to see this team in the top four of the conference even for a little bit in the season but it seems they are forever relegated to bubble team status and there's just no indication that the coaches are getting the most out of the roster.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by stone hands

They’re called realistic expectations, where in the last 3 or 4 years of this core showed you that they should be be doing any better than they are right now? They’re 2 games off leading the division. If you were expecting the flames to have a Tampa’s record, I don’t know what to tell you, there’s lots of parity in the nhl

There's no excuse for a team with this defensive personnel to play as poor defensively as the Flames do. Absolutely no excuse. There's no way teams like the Canucks and Oilers should have better GAA and defensive stats than the Flames when you compare the rosters. I don't know how anyone can argue that this team isn't underachieving. Can you say with a straight face it's not realistic to expect better play out of this defense than the Oilers or Canucks?

[nik-]

We'll basically burn another year of this core unsure of whether they have what it takes or not. Is it the goalies? Is it the coaching? Is there just a lack of top end talent? We won't have definitive answers if decisions are delayed. Soon everyone will be off their ELC's and we'll have really done nothing.

[stone hands]

This team has had the exact same leaky defence for the last 4 years. This isn’t a new or gg specific problem. The flames have really creative, offensive defensemen who really lack defensive responsibility. That’s all there is to it. Top defence core on paper sounds nice, but when they are a top defence core because of their offence and not their defence thenyoure going to have an almost never ending problem keeping pucks out of your net without stellar goaltending - which has been exactly the case. How many times over the last few years have awful goaltenders problems been exacerbated by totally porous defense?

[VilleN]

Originally Posted by home_sweet_dome

FACT - GG2.0's Calgary Flames team underachieved in 2016-17, making the playoffs as a wild card team and winning a grand total of 0 playoff games.

Explain how it's a fact that we underachieved. We were a lottery team the year before GG was hired and a playoff team the year after. I think that's pretty good progression.

Also, I think it's a FACT that you don't know the definition of the word fact.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by stone hands

This team has had the exact same leaky defence for the last 4 years. This isn’t a new or gg specific problem. The flames have really creative, offensive defensemen who really lack defensive responsibility. That’s all there is to it. Top defence core on paper sounds nice, but when they are a top defence core because of their offence and not their defence thenyoure going to have an almost never ending problem keeping pucks out of your net without stellar goaltending - which has been exactly the case. How many times over the last few years have awful goaltenders problems been exacerbated by totally porous defense?

Yeah but Hartley got fired for the leaky defense. Gulutzan was supposed to fix this and clearly hasn't. Treliving did his part and improved the roster as Hamonic and Stone are superior to Wideman and Russell yet the team is arguably worse defensively. If Hartley had to walk the plank while being burdened with historically bad goaltending and a leaky defense why is Gulutzan getting a pass for achieving less with more?

[stone hands]

At some point the onus has to be on the players after this long and 2 different coaches. If your teams defensive identity varies between "dominant" and "oilers level bad" because of which version of tj brodie shows up to play that night, it's not a good look. Hamonic hasn't been great, brodie has had a really rough year and a half now, hamilton is a very productive player but makes huge gaffes, they are finally getting some stability there, but the 3rd pairing has been a tire fire from a depth perspective until stone was moved there this season, etc

I really dont think gg is doing less with more. he's doing better with more and he certainly is getting better results than hartley did during his tenure. I am happy to see that their system in the d zone isn't simply to put your face in front of a shot and hope for the best. The degree of "better" the team actually is vs what you find acceptable seems to vary from person to person