Hartley vs. Peters

[GranteedEV]

a whole lot of cyclical back-and-forth. It'd be draining to really get involved.

I think Bob Hartley is a good coach.

I also think Bob Hartley employed ineffective systems. This issue was most magnified against opponents like Hitchock's St. Louis Blues who had a tight neutral zone game that shut down his stretch pass breakout. We saw immediate improvement against the Blues the next year under Gulutzan simply by employing textbook breakouts instead of stretch passes.

I think many veterans disliked Bob Hartley, but that's okay. It's preferable to veteran favouritism that has plagued certain other coaches.

I also think young players have benefited from his coaching. Whether that was Tanguay in Colorado, Hossa and Kovalchuk in Atlanta, Monahan, Gaudreau, Backlund, Brodie, even Sam Bennett here in Calgary.

I also think veteran star players have benefited from his coaching. GioforPM mentioned Sakic won the Hart in 2001 under Hartley. Yeah. He doesn't have any other Hart trophies. You could say Sakic carried Hartley, but the flip side of that is true as well - Hartley got the literal most out of Sakic. Who was Mark Giordano before Bob Hartley? Just a solid, unspectacular #4-ish defenseman. Suddenly, and this goes back to the 2013-14 season, Hartley works with Gio on details of his game and Gio is suddenly a late bloomer Norris Candidate for the next five years. Does that happen under Brent Sutter? I doubt that. Marc Savard... we had him before Hartley got his hands on him. Lazy, out-of-shape, attitude issues, one way player. Bob Hartley turned him into the star #1 two way center that we regret losing. You really gonna call Greg Gilbert a better coach than Bob Hartley? PLEASE.

No coach is perfect. Darryl Sutter isn't perfect either, this is a guy who was literally locked out of the Kings Locker Room towards the end of his tenure there. A guy Drew Doughty threw shade at the next year for not playing an offensively free system.

Bob Hartley was a good, and also flawed coach. On a whole, I would say he was more capable than Gulutzan, Peters, or Ward. Maybe Gulutzan could have developed into a better coach with a few more years of patience, but the Gulutzan who coached here did not have the fine details of coaching down the way great coaches do.

[dissentowner]

Both are history and never coming back, good riddance. We can all agree on that part.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

Gulutzan is a bad coach.

Peters is a bad coach.

Greg Gilbert is a bad coach.

Dallas Eakins is a bad coach.

Hartley finished 1st and went to the Conference Finals or better four years in a row. He took a team that was supposed to achieve great things and got them
To achieve great things. He did his job.

Yes, I know those Avs teams were incredible. They weren’t the only ones - Detroit, New Jersey, and Dallas were no less stacked than the Avalanche.

He still had to go through Scotty Bowman, Ken Hitchcock, and he beat Larry Robinson and Prime Marty Brodeur to win his title.

You don’t have to put the guy in the Hall of Fame, but he’s quite clearly not a bad coach.

In those days, no, no team was as stacked. Detroit was moving between the Yzerman/Federov team and the next generation team. NJD’s best player aside from Brodeur was Patrick Elias. Dallas was post apex, had old Brett Hull, Mike Modano and Joe N. And I’m not sure what you mean by “going through” Bowman and Hitchcock, since their teams lost in upsets to other teams. Detroit lost to LA, Dallas lost to St. Louis. Hartley’s team beat the Canucks, LA, and St. Louis.

But moreover, other coaches have had success with stacked teams and it doesn’t mean they are good coaches. Crisp, Sather, Babcock, etc moved on and had zero success.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

a whole lot of cyclical back-and-forth. It'd be draining to really get involved.

I think Bob Hartley is a good coach.

I also think Bob Hartley employed ineffective systems. This issue was most magnified against opponents like Hitchock's St. Louis Blues who had a tight neutral zone game that shut down his stretch pass breakout. We saw immediate improvement against the Blues the next year under Gulutzan simply by employing textbook breakouts instead of stretch passes.

I think many veterans disliked Bob Hartley, but that's okay. It's preferable to veteran favouritism that has plagued certain other coaches.

I also think young players have benefited from his coaching. Whether that was Tanguay in Colorado, Hossa and Kovalchuk in Atlanta, Monahan, Gaudreau, Backlund, Brodie, even Sam Bennett here in Calgary.

I also think veteran star players have benefited from his coaching. GioforPM mentioned Sakic won the Hart in 2001 under Hartley. Yeah. He doesn't have any other Hart trophies. You could say Sakic carried Hartley, but the flip side of that is true as well - Hartley got the literal most out of Sakic. Who was Mark Giordano before Bob Hartley? Just a solid, unspectacular #4-ish defenseman. Suddenly, and this goes back to the 2013-14 season, Hartley works with Gio on details of his game and Gio is suddenly a late bloomer Norris Candidate for the next five years. Does that happen under Brent Sutter? I doubt that. Marc Savard... we had him before Hartley got his hands on him. Lazy, out-of-shape, attitude issues, one way player. Bob Hartley turned him into the star #1 two way center that we regret losing. You really gonna call Greg Gilbert a better coach than Bob Hartley? PLEASE.

No coach is perfect. Darryl Sutter isn't perfect either, this is a guy who was literally locked out of the Kings Locker Room towards the end of his tenure there. A guy Drew Doughty threw shade at the next year for not playing an offensively free system.

Bob Hartley was a good, and also flawed coach. On a whole, I would say he was more capable than Gulutzan, Peters, or Ward. Maybe Gulutzan could have developed into a better coach with a few more years of patience, but the Gulutzan who coached here did not have the fine details of coaching down the way great coaches do.

I think you are ascribing some things to Hartley that have no evidence behind them, like his work with Sakic, Gio and Savard. I’ve never heard any of those players credit Hartley for their rise. And Sakic, while he never won the Hart before, had 120 points way before Hartley got there. The only difference between his Hart year and any previous one starting from that 120 point season was that he never only got 65 games a year in on average. Gio had 43 points under B. Sutter, and 27 in 61 games the year before Hartley.

I’m not saying Hartley was worse than Gilbert. I’m saying he managed a worse winning percentage than all but one other coach of the Flames ever, and he did so with a team that had some decent players. Some of that was the short season and some was Kipper’s big decline, and reliance on backups. And of course, winning percentage isn’t everything - Terry Crisp was a bad coach and he won a freakin’ cup. But IMO Hartley is, at the end of the day, a mediocre coach who can do well under very specific circumstances and who no team chooses to keep even after some success.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I think you are ascribing some things to Hartley that have no evidence behind them, like his work with Sakic, Gio and Savard. I’ve never heard any of those players credit Hartley for their rise.

Prior to Bob Hartley, up to the age of 29, Joe Sakic received one vote for the selke trophy in his entire career.

During Hartley's tenure, Sakic received many, many more to the tune of his three highest selke finishes.

Gio has repeatedly credited Hartley for his rise in media availabilities. This was even after Hartley was fired. I'm surprised that you even reject this one. Go dig through Giordano's fan960 interviews from 2014-16ish, he was regularly crediting Hartley for working with him on details he never even knew about before that.

As for Savard?

"In Marc's mind, it was everybody's fault, but I give him credit. He took the plan and went with it."

The plan was simple. Work harder, check harder, be a team player. In return for a new work ethic, Hartley gave him ice time with rising stars Ilya Kovalchuk, Dany Heatley and Marian Hossa. It paid off handsomely for all.

"[Hartley]was like a father figure to me," Savard says. "He really helped me out."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/spor...rticle1343981/

An article written after Savard nor Hartley were no longer Thrashers.

[CaptainYooh]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

LOL why are you people doing this to yourselves?

Right? I feel like a troll by starting this thread.

[CSharp]

To add to GranteedEV, without Hartley, I don't think Ferland would've lasted as long as he did in the NHL. Hartley definitely turned his life around. And the Flames might not have gotten Lindholm without Ferland.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

In those days, no, no team was as stacked. Detroit was moving between the Yzerman/Federov team and the next generation team. NJD’s best player aside from Brodeur was Patrick Elias. Dallas was post apex, had old Brett Hull, Mike Modano and Joe N. And I’m not sure what you mean by “going through” Bowman and Hitchcock, since their teams lost in upsets to other teams. Detroit lost to LA, Dallas lost to St. Louis. Hartley’s team beat the Canucks, LA, and St. Louis.

But moreover, other coaches have had success with stacked teams and it doesn’t mean they are good coaches. Crisp, Sather, Babcock, etc moved on and had zero success.

From 1995-2003, Colorado, Dallas, Detroit and New Jersey combined for 12 finals appearances and nobody else won the Stanley Cup.

Hartley lost to Ken Hitchcock twice in the conference finals and Scotty Bowman once.

He beat Darryl in two straight seasons with the Sharks.

He out coached Joel Quennville to get to his Final. The next year he lost to Scotty Bowman in the WCF.

My point is, he didn’t have some cupcake opposition that wouldn’t make him pay for foolish mistakes - he matched wits with some of the best to ever do it, and he cashed one in.

As for “no success elsewhere” -

Only coach to get Atlanta to the dance.

Took a Flames team that belonged in the bottom 5 and won a round with them.

Just won a championship in Russia.

He never had six Hall of Famers again.

But he’s a bad coach.

And hold up, Babcock is a bad coach now? He’s got one of the most sterling resumes in the history of the game.

You’re incorrect.

[GranteedEV]

Hartley just needs to add Olympic Gold and he'll have won a championship at every single level imaginable.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

From 1995-2003, Colorado, Dallas, Detroit and New Jersey combined for 12 finals appearances and nobody else won the Stanley Cup.

Hartley lost to Ken Hitchcock twice in the conference finals and Scotty Bowman once.

He beat Darryl in two straight seasons with the Sharks.

He out coached Joel Quennville to get to his Final. The next year he lost to Scotty Bowman in the WCF.

My point is, he didn’t have some cupcake opposition that wouldn’t make him pay for foolish mistakes - he matched wits with some of the best to ever do it, and he cashed one in.

As for “no success elsewhere” -

Only coach to get Atlanta to the dance.

Took a Flames team that belonged in the bottom 5 and won a round with them.

Just won a championship in Russia.

He never had six Hall of Famers again.

But he’s a bad coach.

And hold up, Babcock is a bad coach now? He’s got one of the most sterling resumes in the history of the game.

You’re incorrect.

Babcock is not hireable. Turned out he was FOS. There’ve been plenty of openings and he’s toxic. He walked into a great situation in Detroit. And then, when he had work to do, led the Leafs to horrible results. Oh, now he claims he was tanking, so I guess he lied about what he was doing at the time.

And yeah, you’re not convincing me about Hartley. He never “outcoached” Quenneville. Or Sutter for that matter. His teams were better. Simple as that.

No, Hartley didn’t have success elsewhere in the NHL. One PO in 4 only to be swept by a mediocre NYR team. And, again, his one round win in Calgary in 4 years = 3 more wins than Ward. Not counting play-in. If you count that, they are tied.

But don’t listen to me, listen to every GM with a coaching position open between 2009-2012 and 2016-2021.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Hartley just needs to add Olympic Gold and he'll have won a championship at every single level imaginable.

Fat chance.