So yesterday was the one year anniversary over the firing of Randy Carlyle, the worst coach the Leafs employed in decades.
I made a thread a few weeks before his firing and highlighted these key points
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Reasons Carlyle needs to go
- Randy Carlyle has coached the Leafs to two consecutive franchise worst shots for/against differential. Leafs were out shot by an average of 6 shots during the lockout year and 8 shots during last season. There have been far worse assembled NHL rosters than those 2 teams, yet those teams did not play nearly as putrid.
- Randy Carlyle has coached teams to terrible Fenwick and Corsi stats for the last half decade, for all the advanced stats geeks like myself, this is important. Once again, this is a sample of two teams. Players such as Nikolai Kulemin, Mikhail Grabovski and Clarke MacArthur that were good to excellent possession players became terrible under Carlyle. Once those players were jettisoned from the team(with some parting words from Grabovski and MacArthur), they once again regained their strong possession play.
- Randy Carlyle does not utilize his full roster. Look around at every single successful NHL team, they all have important minutes allocated to their 4th line. Playing players 5 minutes a game is not the way the contemporary game is being played. The season is a marathon, not a sprint and that is something Carlyle still does not understand. This trend has not changed during this current season either, despite General Manager Dave Nonis urging the team during the off-season to utilize a full roster.
That list should be enough to even make ECHL teams think twice about hiring Carlyle as a coach.
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Now looking back, can we finally all agree that he was horrendous?
Each one of these points has been corrected so far:
1)Leafs no longer own embarrassing shots for/against numbers. The Leafs are also not badly out chanced every game.
2)Leafs possession stat has increased nearly 5%, which is a pretty significant jump. Leafs sit at around 50% possession right now, which is a far cry from where it ever was under Carlyle. It still needs to improve to get into that elite group, but when you consider the majority of this teams future is not on this roster, it's impressive to see what Babcock has done with the line-up.
3)Gone are the days of the useless goons occupying a roster spot. We have a coach now that actually plays the entire roster, what a shocker. Carlyle's primitive 3 line hockey was one of the biggest reason this team was getting dominated and losing battles to fatigue so often. Actually playing your fourth line is huge, every modern team does...
NOW, you're going to have people come in here and say "Look at the Leafs record this year". I'm a fan that doesn't care about the record this year because I actually want to see a product that is setting things up for the future. Leafs can finish dead last and if they're playing the way they are, I'd say it was a great success(and that top 4 pick helps too!).
The reason for that is, Carlyle made this team un-watchable to me. How fun is it to watch your team get dominated year after year, the majority of the games and against all team levels. Even games where the Leafs won on the back of Reimer and Bernier weren't enjoyable.
This product is actually hockey, there is a strategy that involves plays in all 3 zones, when did you ever see that with Carlyle?
Under Carlyle you had NHL players say that the Leafs were by far the easiest team to play against. Now you have players and coaches saying they resemble the Red Wings in style.
A lot can happen and the Leafs can go down the drain from this day on, but this isn't a pump Babcock's tire thread, but more so a thank GOD Carlyle is gone thread.
May Carlyle bless a rival team with a hiring.
its alright Slot. You were just having a nightmare.
