I'm not saying Greening or Michalek or Legwand were good or bad choices.
I'm saying if you're giving me a choice between "the coach probably sees these guys practice this stuff", and these kinds of responses...
... then I'll take the former, instead of the latter.
It's one thing to question the motives of a coach for the decisions he makes, but it's another thing entirely to make some of the desperately sad & ****ing awful character statements some posters around here make.
Was Greening a bad choice? Probably, yeah. Is Maclean a "fool" or a "moron", or... wait, let me go check the GDT for some more ****ing GEMS of posts we had over there:
- "****ing idiot"
- "you were an idiot"
- "MacLean is a ****ing moron."
- "Your a ****ing incompetent fool"
- "MacLean is a moron."
- "Complete and utter incompetency."
... and so on, and so forth?
My entire point was: Maclean obviously made the choices for a reason. Maybe Greening was KILLING it in practice on shootout attempts for like weeks on end. Also: Legwand is historically actually pretty good in shootouts... did anyone ever care to look at his career numbers in Nashville? Spoiler alert: it's 33%. Know what the baseline average for shootout attempts for shooters in the NHL is? ~32%.
Michalek's average is about 28%... lower than average, which is maybe why he wasn't picked for the top 3?
Anyone know what MacArthur's shootout record is? Since 2006, it's 0%. He's gone 0/13, playing with 4 different teams in that span.
What I'm saying here... how many people who called Maclean "a moron" bothered to do even a tiny amount of fact checking. You know how long it took me to find those stats? 5 minutes. If that. How many people who called him "an idiot" knows Hoffman went 1/4 in shootouts last year in the AHL for Binghamton? And that he went 1/4 the year before that for Bingo? And 1/4 the year before that? And 2/6 in his rookie year. His career MINOR LEAGUE record is 5/18 - that's ~27%, which is below NHL standards... and that's against AHL caliber goaltending.
Like, c'mon. I hate the shootout as much as the next guy, but at least I can separate the Rob Schremp Memorial Skills Event from a player's talent in a 60-minute game. Players who are excellent 60-minute guys can be balls-awful at the shootout, and vice versa: guys who couldn't play a regular shift to save their lives can sometimes be irregularly excellent at it.
I'm not saying we can't criticize the coach, but I CERTAINLY AS HELL WILL NOT be throwing him under the bus by saying he's a moron. He has stats at his disposal that I guarantee 90% of posters here didn't bother to check. He sees guys in closed practices that I guarantee 99% of posters here can't see. He's privy to information that posters here both don't have access to, and don't bother to access. What I'm saying here is: if we're going to have this discussion, let's have it in earnest and be honest about the context, and not have the typical HFSens Pile On(TM). You want to say Maclean made bad decisions in choosing the shooters? I'M TOTALLY OK WITH THAT. You want to say that Maclean is a moron, or an idiot, because he made an educated guess based on some context that he had (whether it be historical stats - which actually somewhat justify his choices - , or something he saw in practice, or whether they had advanced scouting on Pavelec - for example "he's weak high blocker side, let's get our best high blocker side shooters", or some other info we may not be privy to), well, yeah. I have a problem with that.
I'm all for challenging the coaches decisions, but I guarantee that the pile on here is unwarranted. Like, I just gave you some raw numbers. Maybe we can't trust those numbers, because of some other reason? Great, let's discuss that. At least let's argue some facts, instead of "OMFG, COACH SUXEZ". Maclean clearly had reasons for choosing the guys he did tonight, he didn't just open a fortune cookie that said "MICHALEK GREENING LEGWAND" and decided that to hell with it, I'm doing what the cookie told me to. Maybe they were bad decisions, and I think with HINDSIGHT we can say that they were... but right there, I gave you SOME rationale for the decisions, and I don't even see these guys practice. Legwand is historically FAR better in the shootout than MacArthur. Hoffman has a lower shooting percentage against minor league goaltending than the NHL average against NHL goaltending. Bang. There you go: 2 possible reasons to have made the choices he did. Were they the right choices? Maybe. Maybe not. But at least the decision, in SOME CONTEXT, makes a bit of sense.
If all a poster is going to do is call the coach a moron, and fall back on the "MMWEEEHHH, HE'S SO BAD AND ANY IDIOT CAN SEE IT" argument, and not even care to know any of the background, or consider that these decisions are made with SOME context, then I don't know what to do other than interpret the claim of the coach being a moron to be nothing other than hot air.
Also, for the record: That was Greening's 1st ever NHL shootout attempt. Use that information as you will.