Wouldn't you just know it, I wrote an AV rant last night....
AV is known as a good coach, but this isn't the guy from 2011 that most of HF knows. He's really changed.
The first thing is, he's had two really tough losses in the SCF and I think he's just burnt out from it and really prone to panicking. He juggles the lines constantly and even worse, he juggles the system constantly. Frankly, I don't know what our team philosophy is anymore. Oh and BTW, here's a list of McDonagh's partners so far: Shatttenkirk, Smith, DeAngelo, Staal, Holden, and Kampfer. We've played six games. ****ing pick somebody. (Not that McDonagh has been bad with any of them, but it's an example of the constant flip-flopping)
Then there's the turtling. Again, I think this stems from blown leads in the SCF and the guy just panics now. We were great tonight for half the game. Shots were 14-2 Rangers. Then we scored to take a 1-0 lead. From the second we got the lead until the end of the game the Devils absolutely beat the **** out of us. Night and day. And you can't say it's a coincidence because it's happened time and time again. It happened twice in the Ottawa series. It's gotten to the point where we're already in prevent defense up 1-0 in 1st period because the guy is afraid to blow leads. Of course, when you turtle for extended periods, you tend to, you know, blow leads. The more leads we inevitably blow, the more he panics, and the earlier he starts turtling, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
Then there's the neglect of the neutral zone, which has always been a habit of his even when he was winning. I ranted about it earlier.
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The issues always reflected in the defensive zone and now they're creeping into the offensive zone, which is what everyone sees, but the issue is really the neutral zone.
AV thinks it doesn't exist. He doesn't coach it, and there's no system for it whatsoever. No zone entries allowed, no zone denials allowed, no disrupting allowed, no passing allowed. On offense, you skate to the line and dump it in (and our chase is often dead before it starts because teams are expecting this now). On defense, you do nothing and just back up until the other team has already gained the zone.
The neutral zone is not a thing. Don't coach it, don't play it, don't bother with it. AV hockey.
I like the roster, but it's hard for players to be efficient with all this going on. Look, it's not a perfect roster, but every team has holes. I don't see debilitating holes here that everyone else doesn't put up with. And besides, we won games last year with an inferior roster.
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Yeah don't do it. You need some fresh ideas. If there's one team that doesn't need an old, burnt out fool wallowing in his own past defeats, it's the Capitals. You're a team trying to get over the hump, you need somebody calm.