Do you have any particular stories or players in mind?
He only had two top twenty picks to work with, Boldy, whose development has been very successful, and Rossi, who was delayed because of health issues.
Boldy was dominant in Hocley-East at BC, and was outstanding in the AHL as well, I think he is the kind of player that was ready and was going to develop under any coach. Rossi's situation was unfortunate, and I am not faulting Evason for his struggles, I mean, they replaced Evason with Hynes, so it isn't like there was some huge philosophy change.
I will admit that my info of the development situation in Minnesota is somewhat second hand coming from Wild fans (a college teammate of mine that I talk hockey with pretty regularly is from Minny, and he's a die hard Wild fan, but even a ton of folks on the wild board here were pretty emphatic about Evason's miss-handling of some of the younger players. like Fiala, Shaw, Kunin and Duwar.
Rewarding guys with icetime with less talent that play safer dump and chase and bench guys that play more offensively that try to make plays was the biggest comlaint. With a strong blueline, you can't argue with the results, but as the defense became more suspect, you had a team that would give up goals in bunches. I know they had a good record last season, but whenever I watched them play, they were getting bailed out by their goaltending, Gustavsson was fantastic, I think they gave up 4 or more goals something like 30 times - for a team playing the style Evason asks of them, those are tough games to win.
Now mind you, I am not really of the mindset that Francis needs to find a coach to get this team to the third round of the playoffs. I feel that a coach that can communicate and get the most out of the prospects and help them develop should be priority 1.
