What he saw in the AHL for 3 years out of 4 was teams built with binding twine, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, spit, and bubble gum. There were exactly 0 top end prospects unlike every other team in the league was sporting.
2013-14
In the first season the closest to it were Grenier and Jensen. Both looked like deer in the headlights when the puck left their zone, when the other guys on the ice with them moved the puck up ice, and when the offense was taking place when they didn't have the puck on their own sticks. They never heard of what to do when they didn't have the puck and they never heard of what to do with the puck except shoot it. Thus they were floating all over when they didn't have personally have the puck. The word selfish would have been kind to call them. Reminds me of Virtanen when we first saw him.
Green took that mishmash of AHL pickups and journeymen AHLers and few "prospects" who started the season threatening to be the worst team ever to come out of the gates in the AHL and labored to still be nearly dead last in the AHL by Christmas, but turned them into the best team in the AHL from mid-January to the end of the season (record proved it), but their pitiful beginnings were too much to overcome as they just missed the playoffs.
He did this by getting every player on the same page. He got them to buy into a grueling 200 ft system that harassed the hell out of the opposition at every turn. Drive the offense whenever possible, be relentless on the puck, and shoot shoot shoot shoot. Make up for personal deficiencies with relentless work and effort. All of his teams did this from game 1 to the end of every season. Some teams took longer to get it than others, but they would all get it.
2014-15
Shinkaruk and Gaunce were in season 2. Shink was half a player due to his recovery time needed to get back to square one from major injury. Yet he played all but 2 games mostly on the second unit and put up most of his 31 points in the second half of the season. Gaunce was trying to learn to be a wing instead of the center he had always been. He was given more of a defensive role on the 3rd line. In the end he put up 29 pts and also played all but 2 games.
This team was built around a top notch goalie given a chance to recapture his fading career, Jacob Markstrom, a journeyman veteran NHL-AHL center in Cal O'Reilly, a likewise D-man in Bobby Sanguinetti, and former Stanley Cup winning D-man Kent Huskins, the on ice coach and locker room mentor. The first three would be 1st team AHL All-Stars. Vancouver prospects Grenier, Jensen, Shinkaruk, Gaunce, and Corrado would be teamed up with lower level prospects Biega, Friesen, Archibald, Andersson, and Eriksson and combined with young AHL pickups Hamilton, Bancks, and DeFazio along with AHL vet Dustin Jeffrey to form a very good hockey team. The team would later trade for Will Acton, Andrey Pedan, Sven Baertschi, Adam Clendening, and Cory Conacher. These in season deals would add the final pieces to a very good hockey team. This was done under the watchful eye of Lorne Henning. As anyone knows that team went on to the AHL Calder Cup Finals.Henning was fired during the off season and I still haven't been able to grasp any logical reason for that move.
2015-16
This being the 2nd season for Gaunce and Shinkaruk saw their promise come to fruition. Both ended up near PPG players. Shinkaruk was the team's lone All-star selection. No longer rehabbing a major injury on the fly, Shink led the team in points and goals after 45 games and was then traded. His numbers still ranked #3 at the end of the season, 31 games after he left! Gaunce put up 38 pts in 46 games while splitting time between Utica and Vancouver.
Oh, Subban and Cassels also arrived in season 3. Subban was flat out horrible as a D-man, but played 67 games as Green slowly ingrained a semblance of defensive responsibility in him and put up 36 big points. Cassels was a disaster putting up 7 points in 67 games. He couldn't even keep up with the play/speed of his 3rd line wingers and yet ended up centering the 2nd line as the season degenerated into the PTO show. Yet that rag tag, cobbled together lineup that at the end of the season contained maybe two NHL prospects, Subban and Gaunce, made the playoffs!
In season 4 the Comets finally got a one of those high end prospects every other team had brought to town for the past 3 seasons, Thatcher Demko. He was it as far as new prospects were concerned. Evan McEneny and Curtis Valk became the surprise newcomers of the season while Darren Archibald had a career season and became the Comets single season record goal scorer. Archi, Valk and Grenier finished 1, 2, and 3 in scoring. McEneny was paired with the team's lone AHL All-Star, Jordan Subban, who he learned to cover for while becoming a puck rusher in his own right and at times QB'd the first PP unit and at other times was paired with Subban as the dual points on the PP. Subban matched his 36 points of the previous season and McEneny put up 23, most in the 2nd half of the season. Cassels still sucked improving his point total from 7 the previous season to the amazing total of 11.
Jake also joined the fray and was personally tutored on a daily basis on how to actually play hockey instead of running up and down his wing, shooting the puck when he ran out of space, never realizing he had line mates, and took to the bench when the other team gained control and broke out so he didn't have to defend. He did not put up a lot of points, but his game became impressive and you are seeing the fruits of that labor this season.
This team was long on work ethics and short on talent and missed out on the playoffs in the last week of the season. Their two assets intended to lead the offense were in both in Vancouver by game 10 and never returned and the Canucks never acquired anyone to replace them. In fact after 2014-15 the Comets lost players in Vancouver trades, but never added any in spite of glaring, desperate needs.
WTG obsesses with Greens' dependence on his veteran grinders. He used Bancks, Hamilton, and Zalewski much in the same manner as he is employing Granlund, Sutter, and Dorsett so far this season. They are used to limit the opponent's best offensive line. They also kill penalties and as a result get lots of minutes. Chipping in a few goals along the way doesn't hurt either. He is not a youth hater as WTG seems to imply. Note that the Baertschi/Horvat/ Boeser line is showing up on a regular basis and is moving into becoming the first PP unit. They are scoring at even strength and on the PP. They will become the bona fide first line.
Virtanen is not the skilled player these 3 are and Green is working him into a spot where he can succeed and his ice will increase as he becomes more and more dependable in both ends. He is now with the Sedins. Can anyone argue with the mentorship they can provide him. Have you ever seen two happier guys in watching Jake's glee after scoring his goals thus far? The grins on the bench were ear to ear. Jake is working and the Sedins appreciate his efforts. He's playing what both Green and the Sedins would call "the right way".
Stecher and Hutton get lots of ice time and Hutton is getting PP time. Wiercioch is a vet that's sitting. THE VETS named Sedin are getting 3rd line time.
Will this team continue on this winning pace? Most likely the answer is no. Will that mean that Green sucks? No! It means the necessary talent to compete with the best teams in the NHL is not yet in Vancouver. The Canucks will compete the same way every night. Green will slot players into given roles as most every NHL coach does. The role players are ultra important to the success of every team right up to the Stanley cup champions. The goal of every coach is to win and green is no different, but his "kids" will be brought along in a very positive way given every chance to succeed but not put into continuous can't win situations. Breaking the confidence of developing players is not the way to get them to become everything you want them to be. Let a few veterans take that beating.
I will never agree with WTG and he will never agree with me. I've seen the day to day workings of this guy and his players for 4 years. His practices can be intense and they are fast paced. he is always teaching. In the end he gets the most out of every player.
If you think the players liked Willie, then the players will love Green as they have to a man in Utica. He is honest and open with them, he communicates exactly what he wants, and will help them get it down. He lives with the mistakes of growing pains, but he will reach a point where he will no longer tolerate the same mistakes over and over again. That starts with a simple one on one bench lecture, not a Torts screaming in their face and returning to yell several more times. If it persists, he will skip them a turn or two. Keep doing it, a period on the pine might wake the guy up. Still? Press box. It's a lengthy process before he pulls the rug our from under a guy.
If you aren't good to begin with you probably won't get ice until you are the last choice. In the NHL that's not a likely situation, although an Eriksson type season might earn a player some suit time. Pedan met that end last season and he's gone. Pouliot is getting the 3rd pairing indoctrination and the mistakes are being lived with. Let's see how far this goes. If he plain doesn't get it and can't play the way he should he will be on his way to Utica. That's what happened several times in Pittsburgh. Green has patience. Much more than Benning. That's how he got Jake back. It's how he got Marky on track. It's how he revived a dying on the Calgary vine Baertschi.It's how he got Grenier and Jensen to become complete hockey players. It's how he got Valk and Archibald to handle and prosper in first line roles that they were never meant to shoulder and how Archi literally put a team on his back and carried it through a season. He has turned some players into consummate leaders that had not been such before. Again Archi is prime example #1.
I'm sorry, WTG and MS that he didn't play Hutton in 2014-15. I watched him for a few weeks and 4 games and he was not better than the Comets top 6. Could he have helped? Maybe, but at the time that was a coaching decision and i can live with that. The guys he played got him the division title and the conference title and a finish second only to Mancheseter in the league. That's the same team they lost the Cup to and that team blew past it's opponents on the way to the finals. If I had a question it was with McCann, but Benning whisked him away. Maybe the "character" issues that got him traded were already present. The Comets could really have used a competent center. Friesen was centering Baertschi and Conacher and was probably the main reason for Conacher's lack of play off goal production.
I've already been proven right vs the poster telling you all how you would be watching a boring team playing Green's trap. I told you he doesn't trap. They also don't play any more dump and chase than any other AHL team with an offensive mindset. You dump it when you want a change and you dump it when you have no other alternatives. The D is encouraged to join the rush and can lead it if the opportunity is there. The last forward and off d-man are taught to cover when the other D-man takes off carrying the puck up the ice.
This is not a trap. Do they all have defensive responsibilities when they don't have the puck? Absolutely, but it isn't a trap. It's hound the puck and take away passing lanes allover the ice all the way to your own goal line until you get the puck back. It's not rocket science. It's not new age hockey. It's also not a trap.
