Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
Hartley lost his job because he could not follow up a miracle-season with any sort of sustained results. He lost the room, and his players became quickly exhausted by his tactics.
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Simple narrative. Let’s take a trip back in time and refresh our memory as to the circumstances.
Do you remember how that season started?
D - Gio returning from major injury, Brodie, who emerged as the leader on D when Gio was out, started being out for 6 weeks with a broken hand, and Dougie Hamilton settling in .
Hartley was starting out with a major set of challenges on D. Remember they were collapsing a lot, blocking a ton of shots, and using their speed and transition game and Hamilton was being asked to do some things defensively that were out of his comfort zone. In his first 9 games, he had one point and was -11.
G - the three headed goalie monster
Do you think that it was easy for the coach to run a normal practice, or do you think that having to work around a third goalie introduced logistical distractions and interfered with that?
And how did that work out? The team started out winning 3 and losing 10, allowed 56 goals in their first 13 games.
The team had settled quite a bit, dug themselves out of the hole, and Ramo emerged as the number one. He put up a .919 sv% in each of December and January (2.27 and 2.34 GAA)
When Ramo was injured in early Feb, Hiller picked up the workload and the team collapsed. Hiller put up 3.62/ .889 in Feb and 5.27 / .825 in March
Hartley didn’t just lose his job because he was a big meanie.
Not to mention that Hartley was, shall we say, not Tre’s guy. I am not going to elaborate, but there is more to that
I know people like to have their own narratives, they are comfortable, and the simpler the better.
Let’s look at it another way. If the GM was turfing a Cup winning coach, that just won the Jack Adams, because a young mentally fragile team were frustrated and couldn’t use the colour chart to articulate their feelings, what message is he sending?
Is he instilling a culture that equips people to deal with adversity? Is he looking at how the season unfolded and using that keen analytical eye?
Is he taking the opportunity to turf the coach he grudgingly inherited? Maybe even a coach that he felt threatened by (a green GM working with a veteran coach with a pedigree, and likely strong opinions?)
Is he validating a culture where the inmates know they can run the asylum, and players aren’t accountable?
That’s what assistant coaches are for. Nobody liked Scotty Bowman.
Tre had all the info to assess that season, formulate the interpretation and path forward he wanted, and his answer was to hand pick Glen Gulutzan
Tre’s handling of coaches has been nothing short of disastrous. I expect he rationalizes keeping Ward.
