Your all over the place with this post. These guys have won cups and played in the NHL learning systems Etc. So yes they know more then the average Joe since this is their job.
I never said they knew more then other members of the NHL.
This. I can appreciate fans having an opinion (we all do), getting upset, and occasionally being right (often by ****ing accident), but when you can't acknowledge that coaches, even the "bad ones", who have normally coached at every level, implemented systems of play for elite athletes, and have a depth of experience in managing personalities and maximizing output from players, are more knowledgable than you, then you need to check your ego. It is easy to see when they are failing in their role, and fair enough to suggest that it's time for a change when this happens, but to suggest that you actually know more than a coach or GM who (in most cases) have spent years working their way to that position, is so ridiculous that it's a bad caricature of internet forum arrogance.
So you read some player usage charts, a scatter-dot of CF%, and you follow Rob Vollman on Twitter. Awesome. I do that stuff too, you're probably a really knowledgable fan. There are people out there who are on Web MD all day too and read peer-reviewed studies in medical journals. They know a ******** more than the average person. Still doesn't equate to six years of Med School and every day professional experience.
Without ever having that experience yourself, you are blind in one eye to many of the factors that go in to their decision making. Unless you see every practice, watch every video breakdown, have access to the exact same internal team data and are privy to all the conversations the coaches and GMs are, you can only ever evaluate them with the "best available public information", which frankly isn't much.
If you stepped into their world, you would 100% get your ass humbled right quick, just as you would any other profession that you have zero to minimal experience in, and have only evaluated as a spectator.
You are not more knowledgable than the coach. You have a better mind for the game than most fans, hopefully you played organized hockey at some level (otherwise PLEASE temper your idea about how much you think you know), and occasionally you are right and the coach is wrong. But I think as fans, even super knowledgable ones like the fans here, need to operate under the caveat that there is a lot to the game that we're just not able to see at a certain level, and a wealth of information, data and performance wise, that we are not and probably never will be privy to.