I agree...would be nice to see what he could actually do if he had something resembling a talented team to work with. I continue to fail to understand what people expect when you barely have an AHL defense core.
So what is your explanation for his poor performance last season? And his poor performance in his 2nd and 3rd seasons in Tampa bay?
I am not sure if this influenced you, but it does seem like his success in his first season in Ottawa and Tampa Bay have lead some people to potentially overvalue his abilities as a coach. They look at going to the Eastern Conference Final in his first season with both Ottawa and Tampa and potentially jump to the conclusion that he is a great coach and just needs a good roster. It is like the anchoring effect in cognitive biases where the first piece of information distorts the perspective of all subsequent information.
Tampa Bay finished near the bottom of the league under Boucher in his 2nd Ave 3rd season. Ottawa is on track to finish near the bottom of the league in its 2nd and 3rd season under Boucher. Therefore in six seasons as an NHL coach he has 2 ECF finishes and is on track for 4 bottom of the league finishes.
Certainly the small sample size can be misleading but so far under Boucher a team is twice as likely to finish in the bottom of the league than to make it to the ECF. We could also evaluate where the team finished in regular season for the ECF runs. Ottawa barely made it into the playoffs and I am not sure where Tampa finished.
Given the fact that the playoffs are difficult to predict we could take the performance and make a tentative conclusion that based on historical data that under Boucher a team is twice as likely to finish in the bottom of the league than to make the playoffs.
To make a different conclusion one would have to come up with compelling explanations as to the poor performance in his other 4 seasons. They would have to be so compelling that the majority would make the conclusion that any other reasonably competent NHL coach would have the same results given the same conditions and same challenges. Or in other words they would have to prove that the majority of coaches would be powerless to that outcome and should therefore be excused of any responsibility.