I don't have an issue with a coach not having pro hockey experience, a decent number of coaches successfully jumped directly from junior or college hockey to the NHL level and do fairly well. While Coffey has coached, he's coached at a lower level than the CHL or NCAA and I'm not comfortable having him in anything other than a niche role, like he presently has and in that niche role I think he can do well, he is an astute individual, just lacking the experience to be taking on a more prominent role.
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My thoughts on the moves as a whole-
- Todd McLellan staying - I'm ok with him staying, I believe he is a good coach, not a great coach and has some short-comings, but I do think he is good at developing players and his general 5 on 5 strategy tends to be successful. I'm not inclined to put a lot of blame on him for the special teams, coaching an NHL team is a big job with many 12-14 hour days, taking on all the assistant coaches duties on top of the head coaching duties isn't a realistic ask; though he had a big hand in bringing these assistants with him so he's obviously on thin ice.
- Jim Johnson departing- Happy to see him go, PK was awful and I'm not sure he was doing a great job managing the D either.
- Ian Herbers departing- Kinda ambivalent cause I don't know him well enough to know how he contributed to the group and you so rarely see him since he's always in the press box, but my gut says we can probably find someone better for his role.
- Jay Woodcroft demoted/promoted to AHL head coach- Seems like a very bad move to me, I'm not inclined to believe in his ability to handle the role and this is the second time in a row where we've put a head coaches side-kick into being the go to guy in the AHL (Gerry Fleming being Todd Nelson's sidekick). Many career coaches who I suspect could do the job better or a CHL head coach from a good program who wants to step into pro hockey. Just based on his demeanor he seems like the kind of coach a lot of players would be comfortable tuning out, I'm hoping it turns out well not for his sake, but the well being of the team and our prospects.
- Gerry Fleming being fired- Happy to let him go, wouldn't say he was truly awful, but definitely underwhelming and I don't think he was getting the best out of what he had there, despite not having the best roster to work with in the first place.
Now for the general assumptions-
I haven't head anything about Dustin Schwartz which makes me think he is staying, that's a bad move IMO he's every bit as deserving of being fired as any other assistant coach and even if you don't want to blame him for Cam's poor play, basically every back-up goalie comes here and gets progressively worse, and he didn't sound the alarm bells that Brossoit wasn't NHL ready leaving us without a capable back-up to start the season.
If we land Trent Yawney, that's a very solid pick-up, his resume seems strong and him and McLellan have a had a good working relationship in the past. Glen Gulutzan to me is just kind of meh, feel a bit odd that he's just been bouncing around the west coast Canadian teams, I have no reason to doubt him as an assistant, but I hope we overlook him as the next head coach if we decide to fire McLellan at a later date. Paul MacLean, I don't feel the fit is right and I don't think he's the right guy to get more out of young guys, but he's very experienced, I just realized how old he was, I thought he was still in his mid-50's, not 60 years old, given his age he might be willing to take on a role similar to Herbers.