I actually do think coaches don’t know what they’re doing when they continuously play awful players who the team does significantly better without.
Coaches like Peter DeBoer (and Bob Boughner, who is DeBoer’s good friend) get every excuse made for them when they fail. And they get all the credit when their teams succeed. There are reasons that DeBoer’s team is successful and they’re not him.
As an outsider who admittedly doesn’t know all of the story, I reckon Bob Boughner deserves more blame for playing Haley 75 games last year. His team missed the playoffs by 1 point last year. I reckon by calling up your best AHLer and never playing Haley, he would have got you guys into the playoffs last year.