I will blame the coaching 100% for everything wrong with this team.
Under Hartley we had a worse group of forwards yet we were finishing in the top 10 for goal scoring. We had Glencross, Jooris, Jones, Bouma, Granlund, Raymond and Colborne and still finished in the top 10 in the league for God sake. Wideman put up 56 points, Russel put up 34, Gio put up 48 and Brodie put up 41. We had a top 3 offensive defensive corps. Now Brodie is on track to finish with around 41 points, Hamilton is on pace for a lot less than his career high (which he achieved last year), Gio is on pace for like 31, no other defenseman is on pace for even like 10.
The defensive zone coverage is just as big of a mess under Gulutzan as it was under Hartley, yet we have an actual #4 and #5 d-men in Hamonic and Stone.
Our special teams under both coaches was terrible, but GG should have at least improved it, yet it has taken 130+ games to actually start making changes to it.
The only thing GG has done is improve our advanced stats from the bottom of the league to the top. I could really not give two shits about advanced stats though. Oh wow, our possession stats are so good, which makes for the driest most boring hockey. Flames have been outchanging teams almost every game and still only score 1 maybe 2 goals and still lose.
As for individual players, I have seen Brodie playing #1 d-man hockey away from Gio when he carried the corpse of Engelland around in 2014-2015 (no Engelland didn't step up, Brodie was just that good). Hamilton the last half of the year last year was one of the only d-men I trusted when he was on the ice, this year Gully is getting nothing from him. Tkachuk is being so underutilized playing with Backs and Frolik. I like Backs and Frolik, but Tkachuk is not a 2nd line player, which Backs is and Fro is more of a 2b/3a player, Tkachuk is a bonafide #1 player who has more skill than everyone on the team minus Gaudreau. It's a travesty that Ferland has the top line RW spot over Tkachuk. They all shoot left so who cares what side they play? Either put Gaudreau on RW or Tkachuk on RW for the top line. Put Bennett and Janko up to the 2nd (ie. more ice-time).
And forget this stupid system you have them playing, clearly you have the wrong personnel for it if we keep losing. Adapt, Hartley knew we had a good offensive d corps so he had them jump up in the rush. I rarely ever see the d-men jump up because we play so conservatively.
I'm going to the game tomorrow in Calgary (where we play sooooo good), and still hoping for a win, but if we lose we're pretty much out of the race and be fighting with Edmonton for 2nd last in the conference at that point.
Edit: I should point out that Treliving just needs to cut ties to some of his shit acquisitions as well. Send Lazar the f*** down, guy is absolutely useless. Who cares if he is claimed, you f***ed up trading a 2nd for him, man up and just let it go, he sucks. And get rid of Stajan. Brouwer is harder to dump because of the contract, but you can at least get rid of 2/3 of the trash 4th line.