You have a deal. And yes, I'm probably wrong. I'm not under any delusion that I have any influence on these things; that GMs read what I have to say and take heed. Even if my ego wants to believe it to just be a LITTLE bit true, I know better than that; it's simply not true at all. But it does seem like an incredibly obvious time to make a coaching change on a team that needs it. GMs look for good reasons to make big changes. Well, he was just given one tonight.
Obviously we'll see.
I agree and am hopeful. Hakstol survived literally dozens of atrocious losses, whether blown leads or absolute blowouts, under Hextal. He's now coached 4 games under Fletcher (and maybe 5 if you consider the notion that he was the presumptive pick a day or two before the announcement) and he's gone 1-1-2.
The win was a 6-2 game where they came out bad and then scored 6 straight.
The regulation loss was a 7-1 laugher against Winnipeg.
The first OT loss was a game where they played terrible and then got 2 beautiful goals in the last 8 minutes from a talented young defenseman to tie it.
Tonight they played badly (and were outshot basically 2:1) but got some trash goaltending help at the other end and some decent goaltending in their own, only to fall apart in the final period. That talented younge defenseman scored a very nice goal along the way.
In both OT losses, they got at least one goal from Sanheim. In both, he played less than 13 minutes and was the least-used defender they have. In both, they started Couturier/Provorov/Konecny in OT rather than the logical, and often successful, Giroux/Voracek/Gostisbehere trio. In the first one, they allowed the winning goal in 10 seconds. Tonight they lasted 35 seconds.
There's just a pattern of very glaring bad decisions here. Usually with coaching, particularly in a sport like hockey, it's hard to explain the nuanced differences between good and bad coaching to a person who isn't imbued in the game. With these decisions, most 10 year olds would get why they are bad.
It's just bad. It's so bad that you can choose any 5 game stretch this season and see the bad. It's consistently horrible, illogical, stubborn, I-know-I'm-doing-it-my-way-and-I-know-I'm-right-f***-you-and-if-it-fails-I-have-excuses decision making. It's horrible.
