Favorite: Backlund, He's such a mainstay, great in the Community and we've gotten to see him grow into the hockey player he is today and into the man he is today.
Least Favorite: Rooney... why did we extend the guy that couldn't even hold down a consistent NHL spot last year? An older vet eating up a low leverage spot on the roster... and he's not even particularly entertaining.
I don't mind if someone disagrees, it would be nice though if people gave legit reasons why Huska has shown any sign as a pro coach of being a good one. Saying he did a good job coaching a roster that had all the ingredients of a playoff team to start the season into a sell off and rebuild is a positive for the rebuild crowd but certainly doesn't indicate a capable coach.
Like this?
I don't love everything about Huska's system, but I think that he helped a lot of players succeed:
Markstrom looked like a top 10 goalie.
Sharangovich became a 30 goal scorer and broke the records for Belarusian players.
Coleman found his offense and scored 30
Weegar got 20G from the back end while being a very good 2 way D
Kadri looked like a #1B Center, scoring at a PPG pace after the first 10 games
Kuzmenko found his offense again in CGY, scoring at a 40G pace
Hanifin had a career year both offensively and defensively, solidifying himself as a top D in the league.
Zary, and Pospisil provided more offense and pace than anyone imagined at the start of the year.
Waiver claims Greer, Pachal, and Hanley all looked like found gems under Huska.
Huberdeau showed a lot of flashes of his old self, the 3rd period benching was a good move by Huska
Rooney and Hunt looked like effective 4th liners
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Hm. I dont really know too much about Huska, but I don't think he's done anything to actually acquire my ire.
Is he the 'Greatest Coach?' I dunno. Probably not, but is he maybe the coach we need right now?
But he's got some new ideas, fresh ideas, for what is going to be a very young, learning team, and maybe thats a good fit?
I'm not sure. But at the moment we dont have a lot to lose in order to find out.
If anything I'd wager that Marc Savard was useless.
Was he useless? He coached a good PP in St. Louis with not much better talent.
I do think he stuck his nose in a bit on the offensive side of the puck and PP. He said so himself and it is his right because he is the head coach, but the final decision lays with him. He did say the PK was his baby so he would he helping on that side, and the PK was good.
He did the right thing in scrapping the man on man defence to a zone defence, not sure you can blame him for the players not grasping the system well. Same group who would get knifed through, and make dumb switch mistakes under Sutter and his man on man.
I don't love everything about Huska's system, but I think that he helped a lot of players succeed:
Markstrom looked like a top 10 goalie.
Sharangovich became a 30 goal scorer and broke the records for Belarusian players.
Coleman found his offense and scored 30
Weegar got 20G from the back end while being a very good 2 way D
Kadri looked like a #1B Center, scoring at a PPG pace after the first 10 games
Kuzmenko found his offense again in CGY, scoring at a 40G pace
Hanifin had a career year both offensively and defensively, solidifying himself as a top D in the league.
Zary, and Pospisil provided more offense and pace than anyone imagined at the start of the year.
Waiver claims Greer, Pachal, and Hanley all looked like found gems under Huska.
Huberdeau showed a lot of flashes of his old self, the 3rd period benching was a good move by Huska
Rooney and Hunt looked like effective 4th liners
I like Huska - I feel he has the makeup of a coach who players want to play for and one that may have a decent shelf life, which is very much needed in this city. I do think much of your list is pretty circumstantial and hard to attribute solely to the coach though.
Who's to say a different coach doesn't have similar results with similar players? Also, Conroy has as much a hand in all of the above positives just by tossing away the shackles that Treliving had tied to the team for so long with his archaic approach to building a roster.
The claim of Huberdeau showing flashes of his old self though? That is a reach if I've ever heard one...Come on Jiri!
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I don't love everything about Huska's system, but I think that he helped a lot of players succeed:
Markstrom looked like a top 10 goalie.
Sharangovich became a 30 goal scorer and broke the records for Belarusian players.
Coleman found his offense and scored 30
Weegar got 20G from the back end while being a very good 2 way D
Kadri looked like a #1B Center, scoring at a PPG pace after the first 10 games
Kuzmenko found his offense again in CGY, scoring at a 40G pace
Hanifin had a career year both offensively and defensively, solidifying himself as a top D in the league.
Zary, and Pospisil provided more offense and pace than anyone imagined at the start of the year.
Waiver claims Greer, Pachal, and Hanley all looked like found gems under Huska.
Huberdeau showed a lot of flashes of his old self, the 3rd period benching was a good move by Huska
Rooney and Hunt looked like effective 4th liners
The hope with him is that as roster evolves and we add more skill and young players, he adapts his system to them. Kind of like AV did in Vancouver as they brought in more talent, minus the diving and relying a lot on the PP.
Well, Jiri is simply putting forward observations of how the team looked. We can't directly measure the impact of a coach; it is always a combination of team metrics and observations of the squad.
Last season, the Flames were in positive all situations CF%, FF%, xGF% - at least according to Natural Stattrick. At the very least, it does not suggest that the team was getting caved in and shows positive signs that correlates with Jiri's comments.
A similar roster the prior season with Darryl Sutter also had positive in all situations CF%, FF%, and xGF%. The numbers were better under Darryl and the team was more competitive in the standings. So, an argument could credibility be put forward on numbers alone that the change in coach did not assist.
Now, do I think that it is fair to attribute the reduction in numbers season over season to Huska? That seems difficult to me given the contract issues and the progressive deleting of roster players through the year.
The roster looks worse this year. In my view, if there are still positive team metrics this year even with poor results, then I think that helps demonstrate Huska is doing the best he can with a limited roster.
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Huska is a developing coach for a developing team. I don't see the problem.
Developing how? He has been a head coach in the AHL, an assistant coach at the NHL level, and now an NHL head coach. What has any of those teams accomplished? One year his team had a positive record as an assistant and that was the Sutter head coach bump. He is fine right now because the team needs to suck but when the team starts to turn the corner this guy will never get a sniff of the NHL as a head coach again. His coaching of the forward group is the worst since Gilbert.
It's the offseason...I love all of them equally...give me until the 10 minute mark of the first game then I can pick my new favourites and new scapegoats.
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Developing how? He has been a head coach in the AHL, an assistant coach at the NHL level, and now an NHL head coach. What has any of those teams accomplished? One year his team had a positive record as an assistant and that was the Sutter head coach bump. He is fine right now because the team needs to suck but when the team starts to turn the corner this guy will never get a sniff of the NHL as a head coach again. His coaching of the forward group is the worst since Gilbert.
Wasn't he an assistant in 2018-19 as well?
As far as his record in the AHL, his main goal was player development. The Flames' top picks made the jump to the NHL right away, so Huska didn't have that much to work with.
Here are his top scorers
2014-15: K. Agostino, E. Poirier, M. Reinhart, D. Wolf
Made NHL: Hathaway, Baertschi, Granlund Ferland, Kulak, Jooris*
2015-16: K. Agostino, D. Grant, F. Hamilton, D. Shore
Made NHL: Grant, Hathaway, Kulak, Kylington, Granlund*, Jankowski*, Lomberg*
I would argue that a lot of those teams were pretty mediocre, and lacked impact forwards. Overall Huska didn't do too bad of a job at the task the organization set for him which was developing prospects.
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I don't really have much of an opinion on Huska except that his players seem to like him, he hasn't made any real lineup blunders that I can think of and his team performed about how I expected.
I just think it's hard to figure out why he's anyone's least liked Flame. Mind you I think the team right now is very likeable. There's no locker room dicks, dirty players, lazy players or prima donnas that I can see.
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I don't really have much of an opinion on Huska except that his players seem to like him, he hasn't made any real lineup blunders that I can think of and his team performed about how I expected.
I just think it's hard to figure out why he's anyone's least liked Flame. Mind you I think the team right now is very likeable. There's no locker room dicks, dirty players, lazy players or prima donnas that I can see.
If you see the OP this topic clearly started to turn it into a Huberdeau bashing thread, but it didn't go their way.
Not sure what his issue is, starting to believe he is madly in love with Huberdeau but that love is not being reciprocated.
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I like Huska - I feel he has the makeup of a coach who players want to play for and one that may have a decent shelf life, which is very much needed in this city. I do think much of your list is pretty circumstantial and hard to attribute solely to the coach though.
Who's to say a different coach doesn't have similar results with similar players? Also, Conroy has as much a hand in all of the above positives just by tossing away the shackles that Treliving had tied to the team for so long with his archaic approach to building a roster.
The claim of Huberdeau showing flashes of his old self though? That is a reach if I've ever heard one...Come on Jiri!
Wasn't my list. Was a post from earlier from gvalty.
The ask was for people to give legit reasons, to avoid being accused of 'being fooled'. People have taken time to give their reasons.
Even when the team had the talented players before off-loading them the PP was pretty weaksauce.
Three of the players that were traded away were defencemen, and two of those weren't even on the PP.
The roster had plenty of depth players but no stars – wasn't that the complaint all season? Your first unit PP is where the stars get to rack up points. If you have no stars, the points don't get racked up.
After Kuzmenko arrived, the team had an actual sniper and the power play improved dramatically. But by then the season was toast.
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As far as his record in the AHL, his main goal was player development. The Flames' top picks made the jump to the NHL right away, so Huska didn't have that much to work with.
Here are his top scorers
2014-15: K. Agostino, E. Poirier, M. Reinhart, D. Wolf
Made NHL: Hathaway, Baertschi, Granlund Ferland, Kulak, Jooris*
2015-16: K. Agostino, D. Grant, F. Hamilton, D. Shore
Made NHL: Grant, Hathaway, Kulak, Kylington, Granlund*, Jankowski*, Lomberg*
I would argue that a lot of those teams were pretty mediocre, and lacked impact forwards. Overall Huska didn't do too bad of a job at the task the organization set for him which was developing prospects.
What? Multiple forward prospects that had decent upside petered out into nothing under his watch. It isn't those teams lacked impact forwards, it's that they failed to develop under his coaching.
