They have been a team with major flaws, and one whose best player is better suited for regular season, not to mention their goalie turned into a sieve every time playoffs rolled around.
So yeah, I've never seen them as a title contender under Trotz.
In the modern era, the Caps team which got Halak'd was the greatest roster we've seen. Which is hilarious that they decided to change the entire focus of the squad because of one goaler. Penguins got Halak'd too, so it's not like it was entirely a fluke.Who has one of the greatest rosters? Caps?
Q will go down as one of the most overrated coach's ever in history. He's good at keeping the players motivated, but those core players won the Cup much more than he ever did.Q is the one I'd cry about missing out on.
Is it true that the Avs don’t practice, like, at all anymore? I have to drive past Family Sports every day to get to work, and I never see the players’ parking lot full. There are only ever 4 or 5 cars back there. So either Bednar isn’t having them practice, or they all carpool. Which would be just adorable.
Oh they practice, though I imagine it hasn't been as rigorous so as to hopefully preserve some energy down the stretch.
I'm curious as to what happened to the move to eliminate morning skates. Roy was pretty much on board with that when he started, though I don't believe he ever followed through on it. You still hear rumblings about it but that's about it. They seem kinda pointless to me except maybe give a player coming back from injury some extra warmup time.
I'm not sure the lack of practices was that smart of a move with how sloppy they look, but that's a fine line argument no one is going to win. They're sloppy because they're tired too obviously.
I'm just wondering how much better would they look with a touch less jump, and better passing?
One thing I disagreed with in the season finale was the deployment of the Soda line and a pairing of Nemeth-Zadorov to hold the lead, but in the end I guess it worked out.
Now we get to see how Bednar and his staff do in the postseason against a pretty formidable opponent. If they play it safe they're doomed.
Hopefully the refs catch the Preds doing their knock-the-net-off-the-pegs-when-they-get-in-trouble schtick and assess a penalty whenever it happens. That drove me absolutely nuts during the season.
To be honest though, I think Bernier has made a few of those vet goalie moves too.
Has he? It can't be to the same extent. Rinne is almost Leggio-like in the frequency at which he does it.
The difference between last years PP and this year's PP is 40 year old 27 point Iginla vs 22 year old 97 point MacKinnon.
The difference between last years PK and this years PK is Beauchemin-EJ pairing vs Zadorov-EJ pairing.
Pretty sure he kicked it off against St. Louis the other night. You are right, he doesn't do it to the extent that Rinne does or abuse it....but he is capable of stopping the play from time to time when needed.
I disagree.That is a ridiculous amount of distillation. I don't believe EJ and Zads even played a majority of the PK minutes on the team. If you're gonna go that route you should state that the biggest difference in the PK is the fact that Varly managed to stay healthy this year. That would be more accurate.
And the earlier comparison took into account special teams performance from 2009-16, not just last season.
No, they changed both systems and it's obvious when you look at what they're doing this year as opposed to last year. The power play is mostly 4F/1D, I'm not sure if they did that last year but the majority of times Army was in charge of the power play he preferred 2 d-men to man the points. They also have a ton more movement as opposed to Army's style, which was more about passing. They stood still a lot more in previous seasons.
Also, on the PK, the forwards up front rotate in and out, the closest guy to the puckhandler goes out to try and force a pass/turnover, then rotates back in. A much more aggressive system than what Farrish/Army/whoever had, that was mostly just collapse-and-block-shots. They also swing wide when meeting the puck carrier to cover the passing lane.
Obviously the biggest factors involved are MacKinnon on one end and Varlamov/Bernier on the other. Can't have successful special teams if you don't have guys like that. But they've made pretty extensive changes that helped them get to that point.
I disagree.
Varly had his share of injuries again this year, if you gonna factor in goaltending for the improved PK, I'd mention Bernier who has been more than a capable back up something Avs did not have last year. Bernier was responsible for the 10 game win streak too.
For Bednar, it was simple. He couldn’t control what Sakic was going to do but he could control how he prepared the team through those final weeks of the 2016-17 season in preparation for the 2017-18 season.
“There comes a certain point where that season is out of reach and you’ve got to start making sure that you’re laying the foundation for the next year, especially with the players that you know are back and under contract, so you’re always, the wheels never stop turning when you’re a coach, you’re always trying to get better, and we took that approach even last year, we got to keep making our team better,” Bednar told The Athletic.
There's something to be said about how one faces adversity, and Bednar and the core of this team (minus one now) faced about as much adversity as you could ask for. I do love the fact that this team simply refuses to lay down. Yes, they're making some terrible mistakes, but those are correctable.