If Manny Viveiros and GG are added to the coaching staff what do they bring?

[backhandsauce]

GG likes to drop F bombs and throw sticks.

 

[BarDownBobo]

One big thing I've heard about both GG and Viveiros is that players love playing for those guys. They're players coaches, which should provide a nice balance against MacLellan who seems to be a bit more of a hardliner. If they add those two and Yawney I think that's a really solid staff personally, should be able to get a lot out of the players.

 

[Jean Ralphio]

Having watched Gulutzan coach for two years I guess I could tell you he

- Excels at structure, defensive details, and all other things related to shot suppression and penalty killing (5v5, PK). 2015 Canucks had a top PK under him and both years the Flames had a solid PK under him. Our PK could have been better but I'll touch on that later.

- Excels at macro-level tweaking on the defensive end within his structure. When there are tweaks to be made he has tried many different things and has had many different sub-systems. He's not stubbornly adherent to one way.

- Struggles with micro-level tweaking - he won't do anything in-game and probably won't change anything for five-seven games even when it's blatantly obvious it's just... a bad idea.

- Struggles with anything involving offensive creativity, whether that is 5v5, 4v4, 3v3, PP, 5v3. His offensive philosophy seems to be that "some players just have better finish but everyone should just keep shooting pucks on net", a strategy that worked for a few players (Sean Monahan, Dougie Hamilton) but generally crashed and burned with the majority of his team.

- Struggles with actual player usage (His systems clashed hard with the Bartkowski-Engelland pair in the 2017 playoffs and he stuck to them). This was the one issue with his penalty kill as well last year, as he insisted on this forward pair of Stajan-Brouwer that probably wouldn't even have been effective killing penalties together in the AHL, and yet rode them hard to failure. Further to that he struggles with objectivity. Nik Grossman, who was our second-worst player in 2016 preseason on a PTO, had a history with GG which got him an underserved contract and then GG played him with Dougie Hamilton on our second pair, got him out there against Draisaitl where his very first shift he basically gave Draisaitl a Gretzky level assist. It was baffling why he even played in that game considering just how much better Brett Kulak had been even then. But the worst part was when Grossman was finally contract-terminated, he publically blamed Grossmann's teammates for it. There are other countless examples - his usage of TJ Brodie, Sam Bennett, Troy Brouwer, Brett Kulak.

- Excels at building player relationships. While I don't know if he commanded "respect" he did command affection from his players.

- Struggles with not sounding extremely, embarrassingly corny when talking about hockey past X's and O's. I would cringe everytime he talked about "Building Emotional Bank Accounts" or team-building - things of that sort. While the personal and team aspects have their place, the way he speaks is just hilariously and obliviously patronizing.

That last point especially sounds like Eakins.

 

[EDMOILERS9729]

Yawney and Manny V I'd be very happy with. GG could provide a second big voice in the coaching staff and maybe convince Mclellan to run some proper lines for over 2 games and allow players to build chem.

 

[BarDownBobo]

Yawney and Manny V I'd be very happy with. GG could provide a second big voice in the coaching staff and maybe convince Mclellan to run some proper lines for over 2 games and allow players to build chem.

One thing GG did in Calgary was stick to line combinations. The Monahan and Backlund lines were both in the top 5 on the season for time spent together. Hopefully he could balance out the TMac Blender.

 

[redgrant]

I see the logic but to me GG is just an average to mediocre head coach. Sure he could be a bandaid fix if TM starts the year poorly, but it just seems pointless to replace him with a coach whos more or less the same if not worse.

I think the problem is that an established head coach wont be willing to start as an associate. GG might well have been told if Mclellan faulters the team is his. That being said would have preferred Paul Mclean as an assistant as well.