The coaches.

Wasn't Kitchen the guy that won the Cup with multiple teams recently and Pierre was verbally blowing him during the '13 Cup run? Not sure I'm remembering that right.

 

Start the remodel in the kitchen.

 

Can anybody keep track of Pierre's man-love?
Gruden is the only other player gusher that makes my head swim.

 

Even the dalai lama is calling Trent Green the nuck nucks newest rookie head coach.

 

From the greenside of the ditch, I see Travis Green with 970 NHL game experience.
From the muddy side of the ditch I see the Travis Green that inherited a cheaterizing Portland Winterhawks team that won the WHL after Mike Johnston left.
From the greenside of the ditch, he is of the same age when the nuck nucks promoted AV in 2006.
From the muddy side of the ditch, his current talent still sucks.
From the green side of the ditch, looks like a four year contract.
From the muddy side of the ditch, Nolan Baumgartner looks like he tagging along.
From the middle of the ditch, wish it would warm up.

 

Broonz officially name Cassidy head coach. Not surprising. Not sure what to think either. He seems kinda insane but he did alright in his short tenure here.

 

good luck to the unknown
same same to me

 

McLellan, Babcock, Tortorella finalists for Jack Adams Award...

 

Los Angeles Kings promote player friendly John Stevens as new head coach

Roughly two weeks after ousting Darryl Sutter, the Los Angeles Kings did not reach too far to replace their head coach, announcing Sunday that John Stevens has been promoted to fill the position starting in 2017-18.

The move lifts Stevens to a role he held for four games in 2011-12, when he went 2-2 as the interim fill-in for Terry Murray, and prioritizes familiarity -- and an apparently easygoing mentality -- for a team that is only two seasons removed from a Stanley Cup title and five seasons removed from its first-ever championship.

The familiarity obviously stems from the fact that Stevens has been in the Kings organization for nearly seven years. Hired in June 2010 after more than three seasons as the Philadelphia Flyers' head coach, he spent time as an assistant coach and associate head coach, helping craft the Kings defense that won L.A. a pair of titles between 2011-12 and 2013-14.

And the easygoing mentality, a contrast to the apparently more rigid approaches of guys like Sutter and, from Stevens' Flyers days, Ken Hitchcock, is one that may very well appeal to the Kings' experienced, albeit under-performing lineup. Couple a more player-friendly atmosphere with Stevens' familiarity with L.A.'s title-winning defense, and maybe it's not so crazy to think the Kings could get over the hump and back into the playoffs in a year's time.

 

I like the hire.
They're stuck with that core for a long time, best to stick with the continuity imo.
Stevens unlikely to get barricaded out of the dressing room, that's a good start.

 

Babcock? WTF? 95pts misses the playoffs some years and he was 4th in an underwhelming division. So sick of how overrated this guy is.

Carlyle (I heart me some bashing) had a more impressive season.
Trotz was a beast behind the bench.
Boudrea still had 106pts, that's a huge number.
Yeo walked into a very difficult situation and performed admirably
Boucher picked his team out of the dumpster
Clode was awesome given all that roster turnover.
Good argument that even Q had a better regular season having to lean on so many rookies for so much TOI, notching 109pts is a big number, I think Q's 2nd best season in Chicago.

All those guys did more with less desirable circumstances than Babs imo, and they all had more points.

 

Lennie can eat me.
I need to bury my head come award voting time.

 

Sullivan kicked some serious arse too, didn't mean to omit him.
Tough to get a vet team to perform like that all year with the injuries and short summer.

 

just think a 26 point swing w/ a roster/organization that hasnt smelled success in a long time is noteworthy.

 

Weak division, no expectations, all the resources a coach could ask for, 4th in the division, following a year of INTENTIONAL tanking. Not hard to jump 20+ pts following a year of intentional losing.

It's an outstanding year of progression but not as much as what MTL did jumping 21pts and WINNING something without tanking the year before. Minnesota under the mighty Bruce went from 87 to 106. Neither team took a year off.

WAS actually went UP from 118.

Anyway, the only reason Babcock is in the discussion is because of a successful tank. This isn't what Calgary did in 15', or Roy in 14' in terms of shocking turnarounds.

So yeah, I'm pretty much disgusted that he's in the conversation. Put him in a US market not named Chicago or NYR and he's an afterthought with 95pts.

 

true but i think that speaks more to the value of Carey Price and the total suckitude of the '15/16 Habs. the Habs jump in points also netted them a fired coach, not all that impressive.

im sure every Leafs fan hopes that youre right on this.

 

They completely changed their look, including how some of the skill guys were deployed. The pairings and lines were shaken up effectively. I don't think Price was as influential as Weber, especially for a coach like Clode.
Anyway, I find MTL's season more impressive (relative talk, I don't think they did anything particularly special) from a coaching aspect. Babcock was able to implement an identical system with more skill and everybody was easier to slot once Matthews showed up.

I'm just having a tough time finding what Babcock did that was so much better than even 2/3rds of the coaches this year. Last year not only were they tanking, but JVR and Bozak missed a huge chunk of the year and their top d was moved out. If he's going to get accolades for a mediocre finish to a season then he should have been absolutely pounded for underperforming last year. (obviously his management team was building to tank, but that wasn't how he coached).

All he did was let his young high skilled players fly around and score. He was building them up, he wasn't coaching like a contender would. It's easy to let skill guys play a systemless, defensively lax game, it's not an accomplishment. If that was worth anything, Maurice should have been a finalist for the Adams several years of his career.

Anyway, I'm just not a big fan of seeing Babcock get credit for having a year literally almost every coach in the league could have had playing that type of game with that much skill. I thought he would get fewer points because he was going to reel the guys in to develop a defensive system while making sure they had the right goalie, instead he just let them fly around.

 

im fine with that but i think it's a separate issue.

that seems oversimplified to me. Id say that Babcock utilized his players to their strengths and built the system around that. I dont think that defensive-minded coaches are necessarily better or that defensive systems are even necessarily harder to play. Locking down zones on the ice is easy if all 5 guys do their job and have good sticks. At the NHL level all 5 guys better be able to that. Positional play is also important in up-tempo systems but the decision making of risk vs reward is different.
I also dont think the Leafs roster is all that impressive at this point, just some young core studs there already leading the way. Building around that should be easier moving forward. I really think making the postseason was a success for them but now the basement bar has been set.
Next year we'll really see what Babcock can do, for better or worse.

 

When you're talking about the defensive system, you can't judge it on the individual defencemen. They really don't have a top tier defensemen that can play that role to perfection, the only one that comes close is Polak. You have to look at the way he coached the forwards to play the full rink, guys like Kadri and Marner who became top two way players. You have to look at the way he coached to his strengths, you have Rielly, Gardiner and Zaitsev that are talented puck carriers, and his ability to devise a break out based on these strengths.

When it comes to coaching, you could always point to the roster that the coach is given, but have you ever seen so many first year players on a roster that overachieved like this? Babbs already had a resume coming in, it's hard to second guess anything he does based on his past success. The leafs paid for their guy and you don't have to look to far down south of the border to see what a different choice could've meant.

 

That's true.
I should clarify, the reason he wasn't pounded is exactly why I'm aggravated about the accolades right now. He wasn't tanking last year and he wasn't doing anything different this year. The results were on management.

I'm looking at deployment, possession numbers, and slotting.
I'm looking at the games and the underlying numbers for a coach that has a long track record of slotting players certain ways. And yes, he did coach to strengths, that's part of my gripe with him getting recognition for a mediocre season. Anybody can coach to strengths, they didn't drastically change as players, and I'll support that opinion with fancystats.

They scored alot and didn't shut people down and had favorable deployments/TOI comps...I'm not sure they've overachieved in that context. Matthews was drafted as elite and the others had solid years relative to projections.

Toronto's low expectations (and why Vegas had them low imo) for 17' was largely based on the assumption of them moving out some or most of Kadri, Komarov, JVR, and Bozak. They kept all of them. That's alot of matchup heavy lifting that freed up the kids. That was the design, not the coaching imo.

oooohhhh, I can second guess him for about 20 pages or so.

I don't get it.
Detroit was falling apart for several years and I'm saying most coaches could have done what Babcock did this year. The Maple Leafs tanked last year and finished with a very average point total as 95pts doesn't always make the playoffs.

He performed to the design, it was a good year but the credit goes to management. If Babs throws up 104pts next year, I'll be pouring the Koolaid, but right now he has been sitting on autopilot...and that's not a knock in terms of his ability, just a knock on Adams consideration.