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.
Most prospects don't pan out, no matter who the coach is.
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In his time here Huska certainly hasn't shown any evidence of being a top up & coming coach in this league but I'm curious what other profiles of coach we'd want to bring in at this stage in the rebuild?
I mean it as a genuine question, who's available at this point that would be an upgrade? It's promising what he was able to get from giving Zary and Pospisil a chance, if we stink while also developing our players isn't that the goal for the time being?
Backlund legacy-wise has been my favourite, but admittedly it's become Coleman since he's been here. Love how he's kind of a throwback, plus an American who actually wants to be here...rare these days!
Went through the entire roster again to make sure, there's nobody I really dislike.
Huska isn't someone to complain about or write home about, just my opinion.
Easy mediocre coach that seems to do decent with the young guys is all I want, so success in my book, unless he over-coaches the Flames out of a top 10 pick this year lol
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.
Alright, I can agree with most of that, I was just disappointed in Savard as for the most part the powerplay looked SLOW.
You dont have to be Elite to pass the puck quickly, but again, yes, there is a case to be made regarding lack of talent.
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Alright, I can agree with most of that, I was just disappointed in Savard as for the most part the powerplay looked SLOW.
I can agree with that, too.
When Dave King became coach of the Flames, he immediately saw that the players were not passing the puck quickly enough. He set a target for how many passes the players had to complete every period, and stuck to it. The pace of the offence improved in a hurry. I wish Savard had done something similar for the power play last season.
King also made Kevin Dahl a regular on the third pairing, despite his overall lack of NHL skill, because Dahl was the first defenceman to block shots for him. King had been complaining because his D were unwilling to use their bodies to stop opposing shooters. The other defencemen, seeing how Dahl was rewarded with ice time, started blocking shots as well, and the team's defensive performance improved markedly.
Did I mention that I like Dave King?
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When Dave King became coach of the Flames, he immediately saw that the players were not passing the puck quickly enough. He set a target for how many passes the players had to complete every period, and stuck to it. The pace of the offence improved in a hurry. I wish Savard had done something similar for the power play last season.
King also made Kevin Dahl a regular on the third pairing, despite his overall lack of NHL skill, because Dahl was the first defenceman to block shots for him. King had been complaining because his D were unwilling to use their bodies to stop opposing shooters. The other defencemen, seeing how Dahl was rewarded with ice time, started blocking shots as well, and the team's defensive performance improved markedly.
Did I mention that I like Dave King?
Haha! Lol! Cool.
But its one of the things that annoys me highly about Huberdeau.
He makes a lot of fancy but low-percentage passes.
Thats enough to annoy me, but as someone billed as an 'Elite Playmaker' what really grinds me isnt just the low-percentage passes but how slowly how makes them.
If you want to pull those off they've gotta be FAST.
The whole point of the powerplay really is tugging guys out of position to try and shut you down, that takes energy, tire the defenders out, if you're just playing a casual game of pitch and toss you're not going to accomplish much.
And if I've said it once, I've said it a million times. If you want to make the playoffs your special teams need to be in the top half of the League.
You cant lean on your powerplay to do all the scoring for you, but you need to be able to lean on PK fairly reliably and keep your PP numbers up there.
If your special teams aren't in the top or middle of the pack you're dead.
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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.
How exactly do you gauge who in the organization ruined a forward? Also which forwards do you mean?
1st rounders
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Jankowski had a steady progression under Huska. After playing 1 full season scoring 56P in 64GP, he started the season with 8P in 6GP and was called up.
Poirier had a great upside, and an awesome rookie year, but also battled with alcoholism.
Baertschi - Huska only got him for 36 games. In a season he spent between Adirondack and Calgary before being traded. Baertschi's confidence was ruined by Hartley, and it is well documented.
Klimchuk simply failed to take the next step and out-produce other forwards in Stockton, but you could make a case here. He still went from a 10P player to a 40P+ under Huska.
Shinkaruk was a former 1st that was acquired from VAN in the Granlund trade. He was Utica's leading scorer when acquired(39P in 45GP). He had a drop in production right after the trade(12P in 17GP), but was back to a similar pace the next year(35P in 52GP).
2nd rounders
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Hunter Smith - yep Huska completely ruined the guy. He had all the size and you can't teach that.
Granlund - Had 17P in 21 GP in his first season under Huska before getting called up and playing 48 games in Calgary. He only played 12 games in the 2nd season before getting traded for Shinkaruk.
Dube - Huska had him for 6 games in the AHL, in which he had 4P. Then Huska took the assistant role in Calgary.
When Dave King became coach of the Flames, he immediately saw that the players were not passing the puck quickly enough. He set a target for how many passes the players had to complete every period, and stuck to it. The pace of the offence improved in a hurry. I wish Savard had done something similar for the power play last season.
King also made Kevin Dahl a regular on the third pairing, despite his overall lack of NHL skill, because Dahl was the first defenceman to block shots for him. King had been complaining because his D were unwilling to use their bodies to stop opposing shooters. The other defencemen, seeing how Dahl was rewarded with ice time, started blocking shots as well, and the team's defensive performance improved markedly.
Did I mention that I like Dave King?
Well this seems like alot.
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The whole point of the powerplay really is tugging guys out of position to try and shut you down, that takes energy, tire the defenders out, if you're just playing a casual game of pitch and toss you're not going to accomplish much.
I would suppose that the best way to speed up the tempo of the power play is through plenty of practice at game speed. Of course, this risks taking away practice time from players who aren't on special teams.
This in turn reminds me of another old-time Flames coach. One of Bob Johnson's clever ideas was to have every player on the team practise on either the PP or PK, even if he wasn't planning to use them that way during games. That allowed him to devote more practice time to special teams while keeping everyone active and involved. Also, he could do 5-on-4 scrimmages with every player getting shifts.
It strikes me that this could be a good way of preparing the PP to react at full speed, instead of slowing down their play as they tended to do last year.
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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.
Huska has been at it one year and followed in sutters footsteps. To expect he would have gotten amazing results in year one with a team that Sutter couldn't get into the post season seems like a really hard bar to clear. It's possible the team just wasn't very good, Sutter got everything he could out of them and the front office belatedly came to this conclusion as well and dismantled the team.
Alternatively, you could be right. Maybe Sutter wasn't that good and the roster was decent. In which case Huska underperformed. But that doesn't explain why the front office tore it down rather than replace Huska.
Newcomer Kevin Bahl is someone I am actually really excited for. Young, massive. Some pretty reasonable numbers. Seems like a good skater. He was a key factor in the taylor hall trade from Jersey, so scouts have been watching him for a while.
I think he's got interesting potential as a linemate for parekh into the future. Good skater with a lean towards d, where parekh is o focused. Parekh is a bit of a #### disturber and bahl has the size to back that up. Both have Indian heritage through one parent, and grew up in the Toronto area, so may even have a lot in common personally.
Feel like we aren't really talking about him at all but I'm really excited for this acquisition!
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Had to go to Flames website to see who is actually still on roster.
I guess fav player (and that might be a reach) is Sharangovich (I think I like that the criticism against him was unfounded).
least fav - everyone is so new, it is hard to say. I actually don't mind Huberdeau (don't love his contract, but is still a decent hockey player and hasn't said anything that bugs me).
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Newcomer Kevin Bahl is someone I am actually really excited for. Young, massive. Some pretty reasonable numbers. Seems like a good skater. He was a key factor in the taylor hall trade from Jersey, so scouts have been watching him for a while.
I think he's got interesting potential as a linemate for parekh into the future. Good skater with a lean towards d, where parekh is o focused. Parekh is a bit of a #### disturber and bahl has the size to back that up. Both have Indian heritage through one parent, and grew up in the Toronto area, so may even have a lot in common personally.
Feel like we aren't really talking about him at all but I'm really excited for this acquisition!
He's being overlooked for sure.
Played in all 82 games for the Devils, had the 2nd lowest offensive Zone faceoff start % on the team behind only Brendan Smith, and played the third most minutes.
Looking at his pairing usage is a bit interesting, he had 4 main partners:
Every single partner that Bahl played more than 100 minutes with actually had a better expected goal outcome when partnered with him than they did without him.
And that's even considering that when partnered with Bahl they had less favourable zone starts than they did when they weren't paired with Bahl.
IMO he should be a big add for our second pair and reminds me of an Erik Cernak or Alexander Romanov type.
I don't know but getting a 24 year old, 6'6" d-man, who seems to make all of his linemates better while actually playing tougher minutes seems to be a pretty big win.
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Played in all 82 games for the Devils, had the 2nd lowest offensive Zone faceoff start % on the team behind only Brendan Smith, and played the third most minutes.
Looking at his pairing usage is a bit interesting, he had 4 main partners:
Every single partner that Bahl played more than 100 minutes with actually had a better expected goal outcome when partnered with him than they did without him.
And that's even considering that when partnered with Bahl they had less favourable zone starts than they did when they weren't paired with Bahl.
IMO he should be a big add for our second pair and reminds me of an Erik Cernak or Alexander Romanov type.
Wow, excellent post. Very interesting and encouraging.
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