Confirmed with Link: Fire Pete DeBoer - just kidding - HIRED

[Kipper 17]

Positives

Overall style of play​

No turtle​

Made Benn assertive again, somehow​

Forced Wyatt into lineup and left him alone as 2C​

Got #1 PP right​

Didn't try to reinvent the wheel with the top line​

Negatives

Lundkvist/Suter situation, this will hold the team back from its max potential​

Oettinger's overall workload was excessive IMO​

3 on 3, how does it work?​

All in all easily a passing grade

Don’t beat around the bush. Just say Bennaissance.

 

[MBTendy]

I don’t see the argument on running Otter to the ground. If Wedge was healthy it wouldn’t have been the case, and even at that Otter played a normal amount for a top tier goalie.

 

[serp]

They played Otter a few too many games in a row for a bit but the alternative would've been more of Murray. Not exactly compelling either

 

[Zapp]

I had my ups and downs when it came to Pep DeBoer. Obviously his system is way better for our group given the resurgence of Benn in the regular season and now Seguin in the playoffs. After the Lundkvist situation and having trouble getting Marchy and Seguin going, I was down a bit on him, but it’s impossible to argue his results after that series. For him to be able to keep composed and keep the temperature down after the Pavelski incident, is elite coaching. He kept the team focused on the goal of winning the series and not playing into the Wild’s bullshit.


That’s not something new coaches can pull off. You have to have experience in that situation and know the right things to say in the locker room. Hats off to DeBoer for that, I couldn’t be happier to have him leading this charge.

 

[Elysian]

Thankful this will be the last year of Nill.

Lol

 

[eartotheground]

A carbon copy of the loss last season to the Blues where Dean's big do or die change in game 6 was to swap out Goligoski and put in Kulikov on the 3rd pair.

Way to try to change things up Deano!

This year? Swap Zucc and JoJo for each other on the 1st/2nd line for 2 whole periods. The guy is spineless with no idea how to actually change things from one game to the next.

He's a good regular season coach where you have time to let players fight through struggles. In the post season, you don't have that kind of time. You need to recognize when what you're doing is clearly not working, then try to make changes to get things working.

Dean doesn't even TRY.

Why? His mantra says it all... 'because that's what we've done all season"

reading this from a wild fan really made the benching of miller hit me as significant.

 

[piqued]

I don't really agree with the Miller benching even though Miller drives me insane and makes mind-numbing errors. The primary reason is that it ends up suppressing Harley's minutes.

It really is worth keeping in mind that the Wild suck. Venturing into the later rounds without multiple puckmovers will eventually lead to a reckoning.

That said, DeBoer easily coached circles around Evason who made a fool of himself.

 

[serp]

Deboer is now 7-1 in first round playoff rounds . When he gets you into the playoffs you normally also win at least a round.

 

[Azzuri]

Kinda weird Miller went from top pairing D partner to Miro in regular season.... to #7 Dman in playoffs. But i guess the playoffs exposes some guys more than others.

 

[LT]

Kinda weird Miller went from top pairing D partner to Miro in regular season.... to #7 Dman in playoffs. But i guess the playoffs exposes some guys more than others.

He wasn't paired with Miro because he was good, he was paired with Miro because Miro can hide his partner's deficiencies very well.

 

[serp]

Also Miller never actually played all that much despite beeing paired with Miro. Minutes wise he was usually in the 15 minutes range at most

 

[WhoahNow]

Miller was definitely bad, but I think Harley giving solid minutes helps so that they dont have to overexpose Hanley and can keep him out, will be curious to see if Miller hops back in for game 1 over Hanley

 

[piqued]

Alright, time to dust this one off.

Setting aside the fact that they made the WCF and the season was clearly a success

And that Benn is an idiot

The season ended because IMO

PDB never figured out the defense. 82 games, 19 playoff games, never put anything together that made sense from a tactical perspective, from an on-ice perspective, from a chemistry perspective, nothing. Nill needs to be more active here giving guidance on how to use the existing players and needs to bring in fresh blood. The hands-off, good-guy GM, traditional division of duties doesn't really do much good when you've churned through 8,000 coaches.

PDB was unable to find a goalie workload balance. This has been a persistent criticism throughout his entire career and I'm afraid we just have to accept that he's bad at it. He desperately scrambled to win the division which turned out to be meaningless and actively hurt the team's long-term playoff chances. Yes Wedgewood was injured, but at some point you have to look big picture and be willing to slip in the seedings for your ultimate prospects. Florida is an 8 seed. It doesn't matter. Some are turning on Oettinger but I believe this to be a coaching issue first and foremost.

 

[Kcb12345]

Alright, time to dust this one off.

Setting aside the fact that they made the WCF and the season was clearly a success

And that Benn is an idiot

The season ended because IMO

PDB never figured out the defense. 82 games, 19 playoff games, never put anything together that made sense from a tactical perspective, from an on-ice perspective, from a chemistry perspective, nothing. Nill needs to be more active here giving guidance on how to use the existing players and needs to bring in fresh blood. The hands-off, good-guy GM, traditional division of duties doesn't really do much good when you've churned through 8,000 coaches.

PDB was unable to find a goalie workload balance. This has been a persistent criticism throughout his entire career and I'm afraid we just have to accept that he's bad at it. He desperately scrambled to win the division which turned out to be meaningless and actively hurt the team's long-term playoff chances. Yes Wedgewood was injured, but at some point you have to look big picture and be willing to slip in the seedings for your ultimate prospects. Florida is an 8 seed. It doesn't matter. Some are turning on Oettinger but I believe this to be a coaching issue first and foremost.

I don't blame DeBoer at all for what happened. He brought our offense back from the dead. Defensively we were a good team too for the most part. Difference in this series came down to the individual players on each team's defense. Suter definitely did play too much though, but the other options were nearly just as bad.

The actual defensive core just isn't good enough to get the job done - puck movement wise. Nothing he can do about that. The goaltending thing is meh. Oettinger being tired isn't the reason he played the way he did imo. Wedgewood injury didn't help but him sitting maybe 10 more games wouldn't have had the effect we all think it would've had.

 

[Sports2]

Meh. I'll give him another season before I pass judgement. The defense sucked this year. The depth just wasn't there and we saw guys playing way more minutes than they should have. Miro got overworked and Lindell didn't look great either. Nill got left holding the bag this off-season, panic traded for Lundkvist, and here we are. He did an admirable job patching things up at the deadline, but the defense went as far as it could

 

[Troy McClure]

Alright, time to dust this one off.

Setting aside the fact that they made the WCF and the season was clearly a success

And that Benn is an idiot

The season ended because IMO

PDB never figured out the defense. 82 games, 19 playoff games, never put anything together that made sense from a tactical perspective, from an on-ice perspective, from a chemistry perspective, nothing. Nill needs to be more active here giving guidance on how to use the existing players and needs to bring in fresh blood. The hands-off, good-guy GM, traditional division of duties doesn't really do much good when you've churned through 8,000 coaches.

PDB was unable to find a goalie workload balance. This has been a persistent criticism throughout his entire career and I'm afraid we just have to accept that he's bad at it. He desperately scrambled to win the division which turned out to be meaningless and actively hurt the team's long-term playoff chances. Yes Wedgewood was injured, but at some point you have to look big picture and be willing to slip in the seedings for your ultimate prospects. Florida is an 8 seed. It doesn't matter. Some are turning on Oettinger but I believe this to be a coaching issue first and foremost.

Pete is so hard to judge. The end result says we should be happy. The team certainly exceeded anyone's predictions.

Regarding the defense, I'm not sure how much I blame him. He was handed a defensive group that was weak on day one. Nill traded for a guy who flopped and ended up calling up Harley who was good. What especially hurt the overall defensive performance was the slow forward group. When all but one of your forwards is average to slow, it makes defending even harder.
But the one place DeBoer deserves 100% blame is the way he rode Oettinger into the ground. Would a more rested Oettinger have enabled the Stars to beat Vegas? Can't say for sure, but this can't be the way forward.

 

[Azzuri]

Nill needs to save PDB from himself and get a capable backup who can get Otter down to 55 starts a year b

 

[LT]

Nill needs to save PDB from himself and get a capable backup who can get Otter down to 55 starts a year b

That is Wedgewood, we're not going to get much better than that.

It was Wedgewood dealing with a couple of relatively long-term injuries that made it difficult.

What we really needed was a more capable 3rd string goalie. It was clear that there wasn't trust in Murray to play at a consistently high enough level yet.

We had no one else who was even an option. I don't think we could ever call up Khudobin (and he seemed cooked anyway).

I'm in total agreement that Oettinger was overplayed. I'm not pinning 100% of that blame on PDB, though.

I think it's also prudent to realize that Oettinger has likely never had a workload like this in his career. This was uncharted waters for him.

I have little to no doubt that it is something he is well aware of, and that he'll work his ass off to the point where it may even become a strength.

 

[Game suspension]

He should have pulled Otter after the third goal. anything to shake up that ugly first period.

The team and coach failed last night.

 

[David Castillo]

One thing I didn't like about DeBoer is how he handled the defensive pairs. All regular season everyone knew the blueline needed help, but it never felt as catastrophic with Heiskanen-Miller, Lindell-Hakanpaa, and Suter-Lundkvist: the most common pairs. Thomas Harley figuring into the top six should have not disrupted the pairs as much as it did.