Huge reason why we often lost despite outshooting teams 92-17
Agreed. So I often tuned out the rhetoric about how we don't have talent up front and/or needed better shooters. I honestly think our players have perfectly fine shots and a decent enough group up front, because it was ok under Hartley and the front had improved in talent since his departure. This wasn't a situation like Eakins where they lobbed muffins constantly at the goalie for advanced stats. Hell, I remember screaming often for the team to shoot rather than pass.
This was a situation IMO where the system failed to make the goalie's job harder. Instead, the opposition goalie was given a relatively perfect environment (little traffic, little pressure) to do his job well. Traffic wise, Hartley liked to do things that was frustrating to opposition goalies traffic wise like when you're trying to get to downtown from Airdrie in rush hour traffic. Gully's system was like Airdrie to downtown at 2 AM. Nothing but an easy going cruise.
Another issue was ozone pressure. Gully's zone entries were easy as we often entered the zone slowly with no momentum (as we had players standing around to accept passes). This was an easy poke back into the neutral zone and frustrating for our guys standing still to avoid going off side. Hartley's system though with its flaws had serious pressure against the opposition blue line due to the rush style. Even if opposition poked the puck away, that's a full momentum human smacking into them. If they missed the poke, that's a perfect break away. As such, the dmen often would back up and allow the zone entry, but also a situation that is not as risky as allowing break aways or being smacked into by a full speed player. The opposite was true in the ozone. We'd play like we were pressured in the ozone. When the opposition got the puck, our dmen back up out into the neutral zone to avoid opposition breakaways which was totally opposite of Hartley's crew doing everything to maintain pressure in the ozone and one dman monitoring the situation closely to see if he'd need to back check.
I didn't mind Gully in the sense that he was forcing certain good habits on the players. I remarked on occasion it'd be a damn interesting situation to see a Gully trained group given the freedom to play a rush style. I really hope this is what we see under Peters whom I mentioned previously sounds freaking close to the truth which was "something in between Hartley and Gully". Peters wasn't a name I expected and one I don't have a lot of understanding of, but if Treliving has stuck his neck out for him, I don't see why I shouldn't accept it. We live or die under Peters now, there's no need to do things that start making things an uphill battle for a guy who has been with the org less than a week.
