You made some good arguments and some good points...but re: the PP...I can't help but notice that you have not named who exactly our "best forward passing option" is?
Kane, Ladd, Wheeler, Setoguchi and Jokinen all handle the puck poorly...and the other teams pressure as soon as any of these guys touch it for that reason. Little is only marginally better.
Scheifele is probably the most natural skilled puck handler...but he is obviously still adjusting to the speed of this league.
My opinion is that we don't have anyone right now...and other teams know this as well...which is why you see all teams pressure the Jets PP...and it works!
Two years ago we had Stapleton and Wellwood...both of whom were comfortable with the puck. Last year it was only Wellwood. This year??
The players want to be magicians (when the other teams know they are not) to score pretty PP goals...while the coaches want them to direct the puck at the net along with bodies (when our players don't want to go there...or more precisely won't go there) for garbage goals...and what we end up with is a PP that does nothing.
Where does the fault lay?
I see a lot of teams come up with creative pp solutions when roster talent is an issue. I don't see that creativity amongst our coaching staff here, the best they seem to do is put a forward on the point.
For the record I was talking about Scheifele who was a wizard from the half boards in junior and while the NHL is a few levels up I would have still thought the logical thing to do would have been to give him shot in that role. I'm not sure how the coaching staff came up with using him as a pp screen as that really isn't his game.
I'm not trying to say everything on the Jets is poorly coached for instance the pk is very well coached.
My biggest issue with Noel is that he cookie cutter players based on position. I.e. Wingers all have the same assignments, centers etc.. I don't have an issue with him playing the way he wants if he's able to adapt parts of his system to the players he has.
I going to use Scheifele's game against Chicago as an example of what I mean. Noel utilizes his center im a specific way: Defensively they all play closs to the net and are tasked with supporting the dmen. In Scheifele' case this leads to him usually neing the last forward out of the zone and as a reault he sees little of the puck in the NZ. In the offesive zone the centers tend stay high where they can either get to the net for a screen, support the wingers on the wall etc.. The main point is the play a supporting offensive role im Noel's syatem. This works extremely well for a center like Little who doesnt need to see a lot of the puck, but doesnt fit a guy like Scheifele who needs to get a lot of touches down low to have success.
Well what happened in third then? A lot of people seem to think Scheifele all of the sudden came alive In the third, but the reason for that was largely due to a coaching adjustment by Noel. What Noel did was he switched Scheifele and Frolik's defensive responsibilities so that Mark was up high covering the points and Frolik was down low covering the front of the net. The end result of this was that Mark handled the puck and spearheaded the attack through the NZ far more regularly. In the:
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Mark predominantly plays In one of the number two slots but in the third he was placed In the 1 slot which pushed him forward offensively and allowed him to be more involved.
In the offensive zone he spent most of the team below the hash marks and behind the net which is where he needs to be as an offensive center and he generated a lot of chances against the best the in the league. So in essence nothing changed system wise but the utilization of the players within the system changed and the end result was positive.
That sums up my frustrations with Noel, he clearly is a smart guy that can come up with the right solutions within his system so that particular players can have success utilizing their skills, but he far too often pigeon holes his players into roles based on position and not skills. If he shows more of that creativity he may turn the team around but the clock is ticking.