I didn’t mind the promotion of Laise to head coach. His strength is offence including power play. For being as young as he is, his resume is impressive by having been in charge of the offence and PP in Erie and having coached guys like McDavid, D.Strome, DeBrincat, and Taylor Raddysh. Then within a year of coming to Hamilton, he had the same position and helped Hamilton win the OHL. Meanwhile, Gruden stronger asssst was defence. Even last season despite being 8th in the east, we had the 4th best power play in the league. Where he needs to improve is defence, and even Staios talked about that a year ago. Last season Matsos was named head coach, and Staios specifically made Laise in charge of D for a while to get some blue line coaching experience under in belt so that he could eventually become a well-rounded head coach in his career (could still happen). Fast forward through the season, Laise switched back to his usual role (offence), Matsos had some health problems, and Laise was named interim head coach. Over the summer Matsos decided to take a back to associate head coach like he was during the championship, and Laise was kept as head coach (hard to demote him when they were grooming him to be head coach eventually).
I think coaching defence is still where Laise needs more experience. But I don’t doubt his coaching skills for offence for a second. I’m sure he will do well in his coaching career.
Why Laise was fired is unknown. I’m not going to speculate, and we don’t even know if it was performance based or something else. I did find the timing surprising with 8 games remaining while sitting in 7th place. What I did like from my observations was how he handled players on the bench. He often communicated and give feedback to players between shifts, and motivated the team these are the very opposite to the George Burnett days in Hamilton). When timeouts were called, he had a plan. Sure, he loses his cool at times, but most people in sport do. Gruden was a rarer bread and there’s a bunch of reasons why he found a bigger gig quickly.
In terms of drafting, I find it hard to knock, and actually believe it’s one of the Bulldogs’ strong suits. They’re one of the youngest teams in the league and the comfort level and development with the young guys is very noticeable. Of the small guys, Diaco (5’7”) and Hayes (5’9”) are the smallest players, and they both show a lot of skill and upside. Another thing to remember is that by being one of the youngest teams, a lot of these guys will still grow with age.
