LieutenantDangle
Barry McKockner
To those that are blaming Roy for the last two seasons of not making the playoffs... are you also giving Roy "all" the credit for the first regular season behind the bench when the Avs won their division and beat out the Blackhawks, Blues, Stars, Wild, and others?
Roy is a contributing factor to the last two season's poor results but he is far from the only reason. Sakic shares some blame for not getting the right players; specially the defense. The core forwards that underperformed also share in some of the blame. So does Varlamov; he too owns some of the blame.
Making the playoffs and winning the Stanley Cup requires a lot of things to go well and lots of people all working together including ownership, the GM, the head coach, the assistant coaches, the core forwards and defense, the role playing forward and defense, the goaltending, etc.
The Avs are missing a lot of key components when it comes to making a Stanley Cup run right now and Roy wasn't the reason they couldn't and didn't.
I think a lot of the blame is assigned to Roy because he was horrible at adapting. He had a system that worked really well for a season, but then the rest of the NHL grew wise to it and schemed for it, exposing holes. Roy failed to respond. That is the head coaches job, to assess and respond. The onus shouldn't all fall on Roy, but there is little doubt in my mind that he failed as a head coach