About Hakstol

[WIP CALLER]

Take a look at the practice schedule, he only had a few days to install his basic scheme with a full roster of rookies and veterans (and you want the rookies, especially the ones going to Allentown, to get a taste of the scheme in case of callups or end of season additions). Obviously, you work on the basic ES scheme before you spend a lot of time on special teams. And the new ST coach has to see his players in action, which is why I don't fret about personnel decisions on STs right now, it's a long season, adjustments will be made.



Gee, a coach watches film and makes decisions, instead of listening to inebriated fans or clueless media? What a concept!

His benchings were not unwarranted, they were focused on young players who had never been required to play in a highly structured environment, junior and college hockey are very different from the NHL (and even someone like Lindblom will have to adjust to smaller ice, different angles, different risk assessments). We saw that with Sanheim to start TC, he was out of control, when Hakstol talks about him being steady, he's not trying to take away the flashy plays, he wants those plays in the context of the scheme, not free lancing. Sanheim was solid on defense, which is just as important as his offensive game (since he is, uh, a defenseman?).

It's not about playing favorites, it's about not putting young players in position to fail. Ghost is the worst player to have out there in situations where other teams are going to be aggressive in the O-zone late in games because physically he's overmatched when the ice gets crowded - that's an advantage Sanheim has as he learns to use his frame, at 6'4 205 he can be a "defensive" defenseman when needed - Ghost can't add 20 lbs in the last 5 minutes of a game to anchor in front of the net! And Konency as a rookie lacked strength and hockey IQ, he's improved but still can be over aggressive.

Manning actually was solid on the PK, his problem comes when he tries to do too much on offense and his athletic limitations get exposed.
MacDonald is a limited but wily veteran, he's lousy at preventing entry but good at taking away shooting angles.
I doubt they'd be Hakstol's first choice, and as he gets confidence in the younger defensemen, they'll be history.
Provocop had the most minutes of any defenseman last year, was he a "favorite?" or just a young player who has off the charts hockey IQ and quickly learned from his mistakes and engendered confidence in his HC?

so when hak is overplaying players like flip on the 1st pp and MacDonald in a top 4 roles on d , will the excuse for him still be "but he didn't have any other options."

 

[deadhead]

So who's the ST coach?
Funny, when he was hired, the Hakstol haters said he was hired to replace him, now they want to pretend he doesn't exist.
Because otherwise you have to admit the new "boy genius" likes Filp on the 1st PP.
Or maybe he's just experimenting with different looks and combinations? Nah. Everything is set in stone before the season begins.

 

[Lindberg]

I liked Berube more than Hakstol. He also didn't have nearly the same level of quality of players that Hakstol now has on his hands. Emotionless coaches are just garbage (Hakstol), not that you need a coach like Lavi all the time though. Sometimes you need to set the fire under a player which it appears he doesn't do at all. This team completely lacks a killer instinct and it seems that Hakstol has no interest in playing to win vice playing not to lose.

 

[Lindberg]

So who's the ST coach?
Funny, when he was hired, the Hakstol haters said he was hired to replace him, now they want to pretend he doesn't exist.
Because otherwise you have to admit the new "boy genius" likes Filp on the 1st PP.
Or maybe he's just experimenting with different looks and combinations? Nah. Everything is set in stone before the season begins.

Give it a rest. You seem to be in denial that Hakstol doesn't make poor decisions.

 

[Beef Invictus]

I predict this will be a deeply angry thread by the end of Game 1

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I predict this will be a deeply angry thread by the end of Game 1

I'm getting angry just thinking about it.

 

[joez86]

I think he has done as good a job as could be reasonably expected. No coach is perfect, but I won't throw him under the bus for every issue and not ever give him any credit when things go right like many others do.

It's almost like scratching a fan favorite player or two in favor of the whipping boy is an irredeemable action that couldn't have possibly been justified.

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I think he has done as good a job as could be reasonably expected. No coach is perfect, but I won't throw him under the bus for every issue and not ever give him any credit when things go right like many others do.

It's almost like scratching a fan favorite player or two in favor of the whipping boy is an irredeemable action that couldn't have possibly been justified.

But the term "whipping boy" usually implies that the abuse is not warranted. In this case, the ones we primarily "whip" or abuse are the farmer and Manbearpig, and the abuse in those cases is warranted, and then some. If we are talking about Flip or some others there might be some wiggle room, but for those two (and previously PEB and VdV) he absolutely should be taken to task for continuing to play and rely on them in the wrong situations. His hands were tied to a degree by a roster that was (and is) a work in progress, but he exacerbated the situation with some (a lot) of his decisions. There is a gray area here between just hating his guts and not seeing anything good, and blindly defending him almost as an intellectual exercise or kneejerk reaction to criticism or general contrarianism. That gray area is starting to darken as the evidence of his ineptitude lengthens, but he still has time to prove his doubters wrong, I guess.

 

[Tripod]

I predict this will be a deeply angry thread by the end of Game 1

Nah. It will be the next day because everyone will go to bed angry with such a late start time.

In the end, I want him to succeed as it means we are good.

 

[Alex91]

We also need media personnel to ask Hak and Hex the tough questions and keep them honest when they make bad decisions game in and game out. Are beat guys are to busy making jokes, being all buddy buddy, and focusing way to much effort on people who don't even play for Philly and past flyers history stuff. I can't member the last interview I've watched that isn't scripted or made to make the brass look good.

 

[Amorgus]

We also need media personnel to ask Hak and Hex the tough questions and keep them honest when they make bad decisions game in and game out. Are beat guys are to busy making jokes, being all buddy buddy, and focusing way to much effort on people who don't even play for Philly and past flyers history stuff. I can't member the last interview I've watched that isn't scripted or made to make the brass look good.

As far as Hextall is concerned, they're probably just trying to avoid this...

 

[Beef Invictus]

Nah. It will be the next day because everyone will go to bed angry with such a late start time.

In the end, I want him to succeed as it means we are good.

I mean, I've seen him change things up in the season and adapt. He's tried different things. He just doesn't quite get there though. But, an ability to adapt brings hope. A stubborn coach is screwed the second the team hits problems.

His perimeter-heavy system might work against NCAA goalies but I've got a lot of doubts about the NHL. Boosting talent on wing and D will help (as will the centers continuing to play at the net instead of behind it like they were during that infuriating mid-season stretch), but...not sure how far it goes. Better goaltending would make everyone look better all over.

Special Teams are my biggest concern. Maybe they aren't trying to tip their hand in preseason or something goofy, but I hate that PP2 is mostly playing with the same makeup. I don't care if you want to give your assistants autonomy, at some point f***ing step in. Or, he agrees with the way it's being run and that's way worse.

I'm still on the fence with choices in player usage. For a lot of that I can find logic to justify it, the main exception being Andy.

I don't know that he's as bad a coach as everyone thinks. But so far he's definitely just mediocre at best, which isn't gonna get it done unless the team is stacked. Then again, among coaches in the NHL I think only Sullivan is someone who can take a flawed roster way over where it should be on paper.

In short I'm confused.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Oh, also not having his 4C play like a 1930s rover would definitely be helpful too. Our 4th line wingers were routinely outnumbered after the puck was sent deep, and since one was VDV it was basically 1 on 2 or 1 on 3 since he was useless.

It was begging to have the puck come right back into our zone. But hey, at least PEB had a head start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Lindberg]

My biggest gripe with Hakstol is I have a hard time quantifying exactly what he is doing to help the team. His perimeter style of play doesn't cut it and requires a great deal of luck to work like the scoring anomaly of last season at the beginning. The special teams weren't great last year and he over values veterans.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Yeah, that's something I wonder about as well.

 

[VoiceOfTheFlyers]

Fans need a scapegoat to explain why a mediocre team isn't skating around with the Cup.

Most of what Hakstol does makes sense, people just don't like that goofy look (and the new guy, the junior genius, has the same look).

Benching the young players was for a reason, Hakstol wants to drill in fundamentals - and I suspect Hextall is 110% behind that - which is why he keeps guys in the AHL to learn defense. Hextall was a goalie, and I'll bet he has bitter memories of defensive breakdowns leaving him out to dry! Guys like Ghost like to freelance, they've been doing that their whole lives, becaue they were talented enough to get away with it and at the junior and college levels, coaches didn't want to restrain those tendencies because they helped their teams win. At the NHL level, those bad habits lead to goals for the other team.

Hakstol has a scheme, and it takes time to get a veteran team to buy in, some players have more than others, just watching last year and pre-season, Filppula has an innate sense when to cycle, and Weal is very aware of the cycle, Voracek not so much. Hakstol doesn't try to keep his young defensemen from being aggressive, but it's supposed to be controlled aggression, and it requires the whole team on the same page - when a defenseman attacks in the O-zone, check the forwards, one should be cycling back to the blue line to prevent 2 on 1 breakaways off a turnover or blocked shot. But we've seen Sanheim, Ghost, Morin, Provorov and Manning attack deep in the O-zone, that certainly would look like it's the scheme and not a player free lancing.

Right now the lineup is in flux, we've had a lot of player turnover and Hextall probably wants to see different combinations before he makes his final personnel decisions (which probably won't be final until the end of October) and hopefully makes a couple trades. This team will be in flux next year as well when they bring up Vorobyev, MV, AK, Myers and Friedman, before the flow of new players becomes a stready trickle, not a stream.

As far as judging Hakstol, let's wait until January or so? This is the first team where he can do what he was hired to do, coach up young players. The last two years were a holding pattern while Hextall took out the trash.

It's like judging Gordon, everyone here hates him, why is he coaching the Phantoms - then people start realizing that all those players that were sent down to be coached by him seemed to have made significant strides in their development (Laughton, Hagg, Morin, Sanheim) - isn't that his real job? Wouldn't we trade the Calder Trophy for the Stanley Cup?

So he benched Ghost multiple times in favor of Brandon freakin Manning because Manning had the fundamentals Ghost lacks?

Respect your opinion brother, but I just can't buy that.

 

[Rebels57]

Hakstol is a bad person and is bad at coaching.

 

[joez86]

But the term "whipping boy" usually implies that the abuse is not warranted. In this case, the ones we primarily "whip" or abuse are the farmer and Manbearpig, and the abuse in those cases is warranted, and then some. If we are talking about Flip or some others there might be some wiggle room, but for those two (and previously PEB and VdV) he absolutely should be taken to task for continuing to play and rely on them in the wrong situations. His hands were tied to a degree by a roster that was (and is) a work in progress, but he exacerbated the situation with some (a lot) of his decisions. There is a gray area here between just hating his guts and not seeing anything good, and blindly defending him almost as an intellectual exercise or kneejerk reaction to criticism or general contrarianism. That gray area is starting to darken as the evidence of his ineptitude lengthens, but he still has time to prove his doubters wrong, I guess.

I agree with everything you have here, except the bolded, as there really hasn't been any new evidence of Hakstol's "ineptitude" just yet.
You are right that "whipping boys" are usually implied to not deserve the criticisms they receive, and in this case, I think its kind've in the middle. No question MacDonald, Manning, PEB, and VDV were all basically trash last season, but I don't think their usage made much of a difference. The same goaltending tandem went from having a very good/lucky season overall to a very bad/unlucky season overall, and that was the biggest reason the team "regressed" in Hakstol's second season (IMO).
Scoring was also an issue, but it wasn't really any worse last season than the season before... they actually scored 1 more goal (though admittedly 5 less at 5-on-5, where most seem to claim is Hakstol's system is most deficient), but they gave up 21 more goals than the season before (with 24 more 5-on-5 goals against, in particular). If the 5-on-5 scoring doesn't improve this season, then Hakstol will legitimately deserve a large portion of the blame for it, barring another season of really bad/unlucky goaltending being the clear reason for it.

But as for this pre-season, so far:
-The G on the wing move hasn't even been shown to be a failure yet (he has played 2 games each at C and W, with 0 points at C and 4 at W), and it remains to be seen if it even happens at all during the regular season. FWIW, I don't care where he plays, as long as the team wins. This may be another case of "any failure is Hakstol's fault, and any success is in spite of him"...
-Neither Lindblom nor Sanheim have been cut from the team at this point in time, and even if they DO get cut, Hextall is primarily responsible for that decision.
-The PP setup is also not primairly his responsibility, however we still don't even know for sure who is slotting into the slot (hehe) come game 1. Lindblom was there in his last game before the scratch yesterday... a scratch which doesn't necessarily mean anything about his chances to make the team, of course.

Those are the three things I have seen cited the most as some kind of "Hakstok" failure in the early going. The only other common complaint directed at him is how he has talked about certain players to the media, and frankly, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything at all about how he coaches the team. "Veterans" are treated differently in the media than guys who are considered to still have room for growth in their game, and no coach will ever be any different in that regard. It is 100% "for public consumption", and cannot really be used to gauge how a veteran is viewed by the team/GM/coach relative to a more talented young player.

What else has he done during training camp that can be seen as a sure sign of his "ineptitude"?

To be clear, I had several issues with his coaching last season, but I don't think those issues were a significant reason why the team failed to make the playoffs last season. I also don't expect to agree with everything he does this season.
However, the roster is looking like it will be good enough now that, IMO, not making the playoffs this year can be chalked up as a failure by Hakstol (again, barring another season of really bad/unlucky goaltending, a string of injuries to key players, etc). If Hextall dicks around with the roster and ties Hakstol's hands, it would be hard for me not to give him a pass for missing the playoffs again, especially in such a strong division where every game will matter.

 

[deadhead]

So he benched Ghost multiple times in favor of Brandon freakin Manning because Manning had the fundamentals Ghost lacks?

Respect your opinion brother, but I just can't buy that.

He benched Ghost and Konency because they need to play with discipline, Konency got that faster than Ghost, probably because Ghost may have an inflated ego coming off his college performance and his rookie start (but not finish) which can fool a young players into thinking they know it all (how many stars have you heard say if they only worked harder and listened to their coaches when they first started playing). Konency coming out of junior had never been "the star" and you can see that he's focused in TC to improve his game. Same way a message was sent to Sanheim early in TC to get his act together.

With a young team, you have to combine patience, teaching and a strong hand - you're dealing with 19-23 year olds who aren't exactly mature (what were you like in terms of judgement at that age?). For every Provorov, there's a Diagle or Gagner, wasting their talent. One of the biggest tools a coach has to discipline players is playing time.

And you handle different players differently, you don't need to ride Provorov, he'll do that himself, you may need to ride some other guys, you may need to boost the confidence of some, and to deflate the ego of others.

Manning played a lot less than Ghost, and will play a lot less this year until he's traded (with Myers and Friedman on the way, his days are numbered). You don't ride fringe players hard for the most part, the fear of getting cut does the job for you.

We'll get a much better feel for Hakstol this year, but for God sakes don't start quoting what he says about players - good coaches lie to the media rather than throw their players under the bus - then ream them behind closed doors. Watch what he does, not only benching guys, but their PT as the respond/don't respond to coaching. And watch what draws a benching, I suspect carelessness far more than physical mistakes - you can encourage a guy to concentrate more and be more of a team player, but it's difficult to push a guy with average talent to play at an elite level.

 

[WestrnPhlyr]

I was in the "Give Hak a chance" camp last year because, to a point, I agreed with deadhead regarding the talent level of the team (especially the bottom half). Now that is coming from someone who does not get to see half the games everyone else does nor do I have the really in-depth knowledge of hockey that others here do.

All that said, that ship has sailed this year if we do not see a marked improvement in the play of this team this season. This team just looks better this year so far and definitely has added or can add some talent. There are still some issues but they shouldn't warrant some of the questionable decisions we saw last year and that is where I will draw the line with Hak.

There is no way anyone can watch the preseason play and say that #47 or #23 deserve to be on this team over the likes of Sanheim or Hagg. I have seen 4 of the preseason games and without knowing exactly everything to look for, I can STILL tell that Sanheim/Morin/Hagg deserve a shot on the team because they have just visibly played better than either AMac or Manning (sorry boxcar, callin it like I see it). That is not to say they have been perfect but the team seems to have a better jump or flow when the rookies have been out there thus far. And also put me in the camp of G MUST be our #1 center for now. If the Flyers get off to a slow start and G is playing on wing then I will firmly be in the Fire Hakstok camp.

 

[kelmitchell]

Everyone knows my opinion on hak (i hate him with more of a burning passion than striker hates weal) so im gonna continue to read the comments and smile at all the hak hate

 

[eramosat]

my opinion?

there are simply way too many positive Flyer storylines to embrace to get too worked up about Hakstol. much bigger and impact-ful storylines, than
-who was benched for a game or 2 or 5 when they weren't a worse player than someone who played, or
-any of the others that circulate about him.

Continue to get worked up about Hakstol if you like, it seems to sustain a lot of interaction on the board. Not me, thank-you.

 

[VoiceOfTheFlyers]

He benched Ghost and Konency because they need to play with discipline, Konency got that faster than Ghost, probably because Ghost may have an inflated ego coming off his college performance and his rookie start (but not finish) which can fool a young players into thinking they know it all (how many stars have you heard say if they only worked harder and listened to their coaches when they first started playing). Konency coming out of junior had never been "the star" and you can see that he's focused in TC to improve his game. Same way a message was sent to Sanheim early in TC to get his act together.

With a young team, you have to combine patience, teaching and a strong hand - you're dealing with 19-23 year olds who aren't exactly mature (what were you like in terms of judgement at that age?). For every Provorov, there's a Diagle or Gagner, wasting their talent. One of the biggest tools a coach has to discipline players is playing time.

And you handle different players differently, you don't need to ride Provorov, he'll do that himself, you may need to ride some other guys, you may need to boost the confidence of some, and to deflate the ego of others.

Manning played a lot less than Ghost, and will play a lot less this year until he's traded (with Myers and Friedman on the way, his days are numbered). You don't ride fringe players hard for the most part, the fear of getting cut does the job for you.

We'll get a much better feel for Hakstol this year, but for God sakes don't start quoting what he says about players - good coaches lie to the media rather than throw their players under the bus - then ream them behind closed doors. Watch what he does, not only benching guys, but their PT as the respond/don't respond to coaching. And watch what draws a benching, I suspect carelessness far more than physical mistakes - you can encourage a guy to concentrate more and be more of a team player, but it's difficult to push a guy with average talent to play at an elite level.

Oh please, this is nonsense. You don't bench a player in favor of playing an AHL fodder stiff to send a message. Whatever Ghost's perceived weaknesses were last year, he was always and will always be far more talented and far better than Manning could ever be. Better offensively, defensively, and all ways in between.

It also works the other way around as well.with young players. Hakjob took a risk benching because he could have easily shattered his confidence and wrecked him.

Would you still be defending this buffoon had he destroyed Ghost?

And he does play favorites. He didn't bench Provorov at all despite a horrific first couple months before he started adjusting.

 

[NycFlyer2]

so when hak is overplaying players like flip on the 1st pp and MacDonald in a top 4 roles on d , will the excuse for him still be "but he didn't have any other options."

Go to any board of the bottom 25 teams in the league and you see the same comments by almost every fanbase. True some coaches deserve it but we haven't had a very strong team. We have a bottom 5 goalie tandem and three NHL D, two fringe NHL D and three guys who have never played against anyone as good/intense as they are going to face in the first 20 games. The forwards are playoff quality but need the new guys and G and V to really step it up. to A lot has to go really really well for us to just make the playoffs.

 

[BackToTheBrierePatch]

Haha it's the Italian in me.

I did try and tone it down the 2nd half of last season after several violations and privilege restrictions

I have a good friend up here who is Italian. I sometimes need to watch for flying objects when I watch games with him LOL