News Article: Mclellan-set-to-become-kings-head-coach

[Chet Manley]

Fair to say he is a placeholder coach for a rebuild? Does that even make sense? Screw it I'm posting the thought anyway.

 

[Beerfish]

Fair to say he is a placeholder coach for a rebuild? Does that even make sense? Screw it I'm posting the thought anyway.

They gave him a 5 year deal. He's no placeholder.

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

Maroon was all McDavid. Letestu was all McDavid on the PP. Davidson played 30 good games. Klefbom had a career year and had steadily been worse since. RNH had by far the worst seasons of his career under McLellan.

No one on the NHL roster or in the pipeline actually developed(as in got better and stayed at that level) under McLellan other than the players who were good enough to do so on their own.

Same thing happened in San Jose. It was a graveyard for young players outside their top guys(Couture/Vlasic).

How about Pavelski, Ehrhoff, Greiss, Braun, T. Mitchell, Wingels, Burns, Irwin, Hertl, Demers, Nieto, Tierney, & M. Karlsson?

Letestu being on the PP in any capacity was a coaching decision, he could of easily been overlooked entirely as a 4th liner and no one would of said boo, he leaned on him heavily and it certainly paid dividends for a time, I won't disagree that he should of changed things up sooner when it wasn't working, but for a time it was the best possible decision we could make personnel wise and many despised him for making that decision (tied for 12rh in the league in Powerplay goals).

With regards to RNH I seen a player he worked with heavily and I seen the building blocks for prolonged success being laid, I know the general sentiment for people on these boards is solely judging players on point totals, but he was in the process of improving; I don't mind if a coach walks a player back a step to walk them 2-3 steps forward later. The nature of being a coach is you are planting seeds, to tweak players, or add elements to their game, or change their perspective on how the see or read/react to the game; fans always want to give sole credit to the individual who brings in the harvest with little to no credence for the steps that came before hand.

Klefbom had a career year under him and then an injury plagued season and now he's bounced back to a pretty good level probably a bit short of his breakout season, but still in the general range and a very solid addition to the team. Klefbom certainly moved from being a bottom pairing defender to being more like a 2/3 d-man under McLellan. In the past 16 years he's one of only 2 d-men that we both drafted and developed into a capable difference maker from the back end.

 

[McDNicks17]

How about Pavelski, Ehrhoff, Greiss, Braun, T. Mitchell, Wingels, Burns, Irwin, Hertl, Demers, Nieto, Tierney, & M. Karlsson?

Letestu being on the PP in any capacity was a coaching decision, he could of easily been overlooked entirely as a 4th liner and no one would of said boo, he leaned on him heavily and it certainly paid dividends for a time, I won't disagree that he should of changed things up sooner when it wasn't working, but for a time it was the best possible decision we could make personnel wise.

With regards to RNH I seen a player he worked with heavily and I seen the building blocks for prolonged success being laid, I know the general sentiment for people on these boards is solely judging players on point totals, but he was in the process of improving; I don't mind if a coach walks a player back a step to walk them 2-3 steps forward later. The nature of being a coach is you are planting seeds, to tweak players, or add elements to their game, or change their perspective on how the see or read/react to the game; fans always want to give sole credit to the individual who brings in the harvest with little to no credence for the steps that came before hand.

Klefbom had a career year under him and then an injury plagued season and now he's bounced back to a pretty good level probably a bit short of his breakout season, but still in the general range and a very solid addition to the team. Klefbom certainly moved from being a bottom pairing defender to being more like a 2/3 d-man under McLellan. In the past 16 years he's one of only 2 d-men that we both drafted and developed into a capable difference maker from the back end.

Pavelski, Ehrhoff, Mitchell and Burns were already established NHLers before McLellan. Hertl and Tierney significantly improved after he left.

Demers and Nieto are the best he managed in seven years there.


Those Sharks teams struggled because they had no depth. They had a terrible bottom six because they relied on awful veterans and snuffed out any prospect that had a chance to improve it. Same thing happened on the Oilers. Why would any GM think it will different for the next team?

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

Pavelski, Ehrhoff, Mitchell and Burns were already established NHLers before McLellan. Hertl and Tierney significantly improved after he left.

Demers and Nieto are the best he managed in seven years there.


Those Sharks teams struggled because they had no depth. They had a terrible bottom six because they relied on awful veterans and snuffed out any prospect that had a chance to improve it. Same thing happened on the Oilers. Why would any GM think it will different for the next team?

Burns said McLellan was the best coach he ever had, McLellan also coached Burns in the AHL prior to getting him as a Shark so it takes some pretty extraordinary mental gymnastics to argue he didn't have some hand in the player he is today. Pavelski improved significantly under McLellan he became a total swiss army knife player lining up wherever McLellan needed him, took on significantly more defensive zone assignments, became a regular penalty killer, and even started getting some Selke consideration; Pavelski attributed his turn from one dimensional to a complete player not to Todd specifically, but to that coaching group more generally. Ehrhoff reached that next offensive level under McLellan went from pretty mediocre top 4 d-man numbers to a top 4 d-man with a noted offensive edge. You also clearly left out other names I mentioned like Braun who was one half of what was a pretty great shut-down duo for multiple seasons.

Clearly some revisionist history taking place on your part, Todd's got ample history of developing players. The Sharks also were a pretty good team in general and traded away many picks/prospects so he had less good young players in general, opting for more veteran/established players. People like to look at a prime Chicago/LA or current day Tampa/Winnipeg as models of injecting quality young players that fill important depth roles, but that is born out of the trifecta of good drafting, good development, and the patience to wait till the prospects are truly NHL ready (if not overripe), proper coaching to indoctrinate them seamlessly is the last part, but if you didn't do the first 3 right even the best coaches (not saying Todd is) will have questionable success rates with young prospects.

In general I wouldn't categorize SJ's bottom six as being terrible I'd say in general it was 2/3rds of a good 3rd line and a sub-par 4th line with moderate variations from season to season. San Jose was a top heavy team in terms of talent and it is more often than not the case that it causes your bottom six to suffer in the modern cap era, they weren't able to source enough quality players out of their farm team to source a quality bottom six, but most teams can't, the norm is some veterans from other teams will comprise a good chunk of your bottom six e.g. the Penguins Stanley Cup winning rosters.

 

[BoldNewLettuce]

chiarellis bruins>yzermans lightning?

 

[McDNicks17]

Burns said McLellan was the best coach he ever had, McLellan also coached Burns in the AHL prior to getting him as a Shark so it takes some pretty extraordinary mental gymnastics to argue he didn't have some hand in the player he is today. Pavelski improved significantly under McLellan he became a total swiss army knife player lining up wherever McLellan needed him, took on significantly more defensive zone assignments, became a regular penalty killer, and even started getting some Selke consideration; Pavelski attributed his turn from one dimensional to a complete player not to Todd specifically, but to that coaching group more generally. Ehrhoff reached that next offensive level under McLellan went from pretty mediocre top 4 d-man numbers to a top 4 d-man with a noted offensive edge. You also clearly left out other names I mentioned like Braun who was one half of what was a pretty great shut-down duo for multiple seasons.

Clearly some revisionist history taking place on your part, Todd's got ample history of developing players. The Sharks also were a pretty good team in general and traded away many picks/prospects so he had less good young players in general, opting for more veteran/established players. People like to look at a prime Chicago/LA or current day Tampa/Winnipeg as models of injecting quality young players that fill important depth roles, but that is born out of the trifecta of good drafting, good development, and the patience to wait till the prospects are truly NHL ready (if not overripe), proper coaching to indoctrinate them seamlessly is the last part, but if you didn't do the first 3 right even the best coaches (not saying Todd is) will have questionable success rates with young prospects.

In general I wouldn't categorize SJ's bottom six as being terrible I'd say in general it was 2/3rds of a good 3rd line and a sub-par 4th line with moderate variations from season to season. San Jose was a top heavy team in terms of talent and it is more often than not the case that it causes your bottom six to suffer in the modern cap era, they weren't able to source enough quality players out of their farm team to source a quality bottom six, but most teams can't, the norm is some veterans from other teams will comprise a good chunk of your bottom six e.g. the Penguins Stanley Cup winning rosters.

Burns had played six seasons in the NHL before playing for McLellan in San Jose. Ehrhoff had a 10g/33p season two years before McLellan got there and immediately had better results after leaving him. Pavelski was already a top6 player for two seasons before McLellan got there. Braun was a decent #4 when stapled to Vlasic. They both had career years the first season after McLellan left.

He's a guy who can get the odd career year out of his already established players, but he has an absolute train wreck for a track record in developing players who aren't 1st line/1st pairing quality players.

LA has arguably the worst cap situation in the league. They have close to $50M tied up between Kopitar, Doughty, Kovalchuk, Brown, Phaneuf, Carter and Quick. They're going to be in dire need of cheap young players. Why hire a guy who has shown a long history of snuffing out that type of player?

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

Burns had played six seasons in the NHL before playing for McLellan in San Jose. Ehrhoff had a 10g/33p season two years before McLellan got there and immediately had better results after leaving him. Pavelski was already a top6 player for two seasons before McLellan got there. Braun was a decent #4 when stapled to Vlasic. They both had career years the first season after McLellan left.

He's a guy who can get the odd career year out of his already established players, but he has an absolute train wreck for a track record in developing players who aren't 1st line/1st pairing quality players.

LA has arguably the worst cap situation in the league. They have close to $50M tied up between Kopitar, Doughty, Kovalchuk, Brown, Phaneuf, Carter and Quick. They're going to be in dire need of cheap young players. Why hire a guy who has shown a long history of snuffing out that type of player?

When the player himself says he owes a large part of his success to a certain coach I don't know how you can argue the contrary, I'd also point out that in Burns six NHL season he did have 2 seasons in the AHL after his rookie season cause of issues he had and even after that he bounced back and forth between being a forward and d-man, not really cementing his place on the team or his role on the team, which is why he was traded for so little in comparison to his value after the trade.

All top 6 players are not equal, there are degrees of impact, like Mike Comrie and Sam Gagner were putting up top 6 points totals, but you couldn't play them into tough match-ups and they weren't good defensive players. Pavelski admits himself that he was putting up points and thought he was great, but Todd's coaching staff taught him what it meant to be a complete player and what good hockey actually was. We've had a lot of players who fit the description of being offensively gifted, but either didn't pick up on the defensive side the game or were slow to adjust which hurt our ability to compete significantly. Not only did Pavelski become that more complete player under McLellan he also increased on his previous point totals despite the tougher assignments.

A lot of players are likely to have career seasons after McLellan leaves, he doesn't line match (when you increase the offensive zone starts and lower the quality of competition offense tends to go up- Alain Vigneault is great at this) and he isn't the task master that squeezes every last drop out of his players like a Hartley/Torts. McLellan is more of the player friendly coach that focuses on improving players by largely teaching players why they should be doing this action instead of that action, essentially trying to improve the level which they think/process the game at, cerebral players do quite well with him and ones that don't process the game at a particularly high level (e.g. Yak, Pulju, & Lucic) don't tend to improve much if at all. The main thing that McLellan is trying to impart through his coaching is an increased ability to think/process the game and once you've unlocked that you don't tend to lose it, so anything the new coach brings is just an added layer on top of that.

With respect to Ehrhoff's point increase it amounted to approximately a 12 point increase pro-rata stretched to an 82 game season, in comparison the common opinion here is that Nurse broke out offensively this season, which I agree with an it was a 15 point increase on his previous best, if he had 3 less points would it of not been a break out? It seems like the foundations of your arguments are whomever had a player in their most productive offensive year is a good coach and anyone else who had them before or after sucks balls and taught them nothing, so in the case of Darryl Sutter he was clearly a terrible coach and didn't improve Kopitar at all, it wasn't till John Stevens last year did Kopitar reach his full potential.

I'm not familiar enough with the Kings prospects to get a general read on them as a group, but I suspect McLellan will do well with the young players who are cerebral and mentally mature and will do poorly with the immature or low hockey IQ prospects who think skill alone can carry them, much like has been the case for most of his career.

 

[Bangers]

To me, McLellan is a good coach for starting a rebuild - he has a pretty good track record for working with and developing younger players. He's just not a coach you win a cup with - he's inflexible and not that tactically astute (witness his unwillingness to use time outs - one thing that can't be blamed on personnel).

Still, it was time for him to go with the Oil. The players looked like they had turned him out, and he looked like he had mentally checked out his last year with the team. Can't believe LA gave him a 5 year contract - he'll be gone in 3.