I mean here's the thing with Tippet supporters.
Say he's a great coach. Let's grant that. But then somehow his supporters claim that he's somehow immune to shelf life. 5 years of no playoffs and you think Tippet is so good that he's immune to shelf life? If he's Scotty Bowman 2.0, why haven't we been making the playoffs.
I don't get it.
B/c you can coach players correctly, but if they fail to execute, you wind up in a poor situation.
The 09-12 teams executed far better than these iterations. It's too simple. How many times did we have an offside call or a broken up pass when we tried to pass the puck into the offensive zone? People complain about dump and chase, but we regularly fail to bring the puck in as a one-on-one, wide-open style as well.
But it is a process that takes time. At a time where everything is one click away, and things can be fixed in a moment's notice, sport is an area where you rarely get this immediate result.
BTW, Perlini looked very good last night. People question whether or not we can develop players - Perlini is a perfect example of how it can be done. We know of his offensive skill, but his defensive game may have been a little rough around the edges. So we put him in Tucson where he learns the defensive side of the game and won't be a liability if he had made the team right out of camp.
While the Tippett haters will say that Tippett hasn't had the chance to break Perlini, the reality is that he is just translating what he knows (similar system in Tucson) to the NHL. Not enough of our players are doing that, and as people said, it could be the aging of veterans where they simply don't have the skill to take the opposition on one-on-one.