This is an insult to Sam Gagner.
That's a player that was actually wrecked by years with a bad franchise. Spooner has no such excuse. Spooner has himself to blame for the hockey world passing him by.
That said both players have made some pretty good coin and are comfortable, nobody needs to feel sorry for either. heh.
I have turned the corner though from smallish players. I wasn't generally a fan of weak players anyway so it was odd I was on the Gagner bandwagon. Just like the kid and his try and enthusiasm and obvious talent.
Caggs though is what I need him to be right now. Small players have to outwork their size disadvantage. If they are prepared to do that they are useful. Neither Spooner or Gagner are doing that.
There isn't really a market for these players. They are inevitable waiver material. Spooner seemingly has a speed advantage over Gagner but lacks in hard work and tendency to even use it. I think Spooner is tentative. Which is also a death sentence for a small NHL player. You can't have size deficit, and compete deficit.
I was personally annoyed with McLellan in 15/16, and it never really went away, his constant whining about mistakes, throwing players under the bus which really came to a head around the trade deadline when he said Schultz needs to get the heck off the team. He still sucked in many ways in 16/17 too, and had our guys playing way too scared with leads which finally caught up to us in spectacular fashion in the playoffs. Overplayed Talbot as well IMO, which probably contributed to the playoff run ending, and Talbot struggling the next year.
The idea of players not wanting to try hard enough to win, that's another thing, McLellan was saying that before the season even started, like he was trying to pre-establish an excuse in the media for himself. What was the point of that? How about getting to work on the players and working with them, not sitting back and predicting they are gonna buckle under the pressure. Contrast that with Babcock after the Leafs made the playoffs, he started that year working as hard as he could to lower expectations and take the pressure off, not predicting that his guys might have forgotten how hard everything is.
Good coaches last more than 4 years IMO. But for sure, SJ would have been very smart to get rid of Todd after 3 or 4. They held onto him way too long and wasted the best years of a lot of good players.
Why bash Todd...well, because he wasted a lot of our time here. Why does anyone keep defending him is what I wonder
I think that Todds biggest issue was his stubbornness. I think he would get fixated on doing things a certain way (formations, lines, and roster decisions) to the point of it becoming detrimental.
That used to frustrate me more than anything. I also thought that maybe he wasnt communicating his message in a way that would resonate with the players over the long term. Its impossible for me to know but I think that he seemed to be getting frustrated with the players not executing what he was trying to implement and I often wondered if that was due to his inability to frame things in a way that was easy to understand.
All things that can be corrected if he is able to do a personal inventory and be honest with himself. Again...I have no way of knowing if these things are accurate but that's the impressions I got.
I also think it was time (past due) for him to leave so I welcomed the firing. Where I tend to lean in terms of Todd as a coach is that I think he was quite intelligent and that if he can become less rigid in his thinking then I think he will be a very successful coach moving forward.
When I learned that it was Hitch who was replacing TMac I was elated. I have always really respected Hitch as a coach so I couldn't be happier.
Hitch is a master communicator which is exactly what the team needed at this time. I also have to credit Chiaelli (as hard as that is to do) for making this decision at this time.
