I don't disagree with you, but it's unfair to leave off his gold medal for coaching Team USA in the world juniors.
At the time of his hire, there was a lot of hype surrounding Housley as a forward thinking fresh mind for the sport. Clearly his tactics seem to peter out at the NHL level...
I personally have zero regard for that tourney. Because as far as coaching goes in those types of tournament, so much of it is luck and team talent, all wrapped in a bow of a tiny sample size. It just provides little reflection on a coach’s ability to lead men through an entire season, with months of adjustments, system implementation and dealing with personalities.
Here’s the thing about his “innovation”, what evidence did you see of that? Besides what was said at a bs press conference? Because I think that illusion was all about words and that people could see Nashville and think, yes we need that kind of fluid defense. Which I agree with, we needed modern defensive movement.
But Nashville was doing all of that before Phil, and more importantly Phil had the best group of skating and puck moving defenders in the league, who were all grown ass men when he arrived.
No experience with a young team in a men’s league. So no experience helping a rebuild, just like Bylsma.
There was an interesting article, maybe the Athletic but I can’t remember, regarding star players turned coaches and how they almost always fail. And it mentioned the typical reasons given, star can’t teach his guys to see the game the way the star did, etc.
But the point that really made sense to me is that most was experience. Pretty much all former star players skyrocket to a head coach job. Phil is a perfect example. He had 3 years of assistant coaching experience in the nhl..., That’s it. No minor leagues. No juniors, no college. Just a 4 month long high school season, with almost no real talent. Now that info doesn’t say he can’t become a good coach, but it does mean he hasn’t put in the years of head coaching to know what he is doing, unless he is the most natural coach of all time.
Consider, in a head to head matchup, Phil Housley has less than 5 years of real professional coaching, Mike Babcock has over 20. Cooper has around a decade plus another 5 plus of major junior. Bob Hartley has a decade in Junior and the minors before getting a gig in the Show. The Stache, Quennville has like 30+.
It’s not even fair to Housley to think he would know his job.
The far scarier thing is that Botts either doesn’t think about it that much or Pegula pushed him into it. Either way is no bueno.
