Curious as to what you base this opinion on?
Do you have any experience with it, either directly or through direct conversations with a large number of people who have competed at the high performance level?
I'm not a player (obvioiusly) and I have never played professionally (if it wasn't obvious, it is now) so it's just my opinion from watching hockey and sports the last 30yrs.
I can demonstrably see the differences coaches make in football, that's why there are so many coaches on a team if you include coordinators/assistants/etc.
In hockey, I have always thought that talent far outweighs any tactical advantage a coach provides because hockey is for the most part, unscripted.
In football for example, plays are draw up and players have to be in certain spots at a certain time...in hockey, you can draw up plans, but the game moves way to fast and things rarely happen as you draw them up.
Now don't take this to mean that I think coaches are useless...I've just always found their influence to be overstated as it relates to x's & o's and overall strategy.
I think in today's game, coaches are more valuable for how they handle different personalities, less how they handle x's & o's...pretty much every team is running similar systems or rather, subtle variances from each other.
Again, I think coaching in the NHL, is overstated...not useless, but overstated and that's what I think about head coaches.
When it comes to assistant coaches, I think they're even more overstated.
If that's shortsighted, so be it, I guess given i'm not a player nor have I ever been, only allows me to have a shortsighted opinion. I'm sure actual players/coaches would tell me differently.
as for the MT/Julien comment.... that's a pretty superficial observation. Focusing narrowly on a small sample of performance output is a very tenuous way to formulate, or worse, validate an opinion.
Which is exactly what I argued when certain folks suggested the mere presence of Julien would make this team exponentially better.
a dozen years ago Mike Sullivan was laughed out of Boston, everyone thought he was a terrible coach.
When he was re-hired by the Pens people wondered what the hell they were doing resurrecting him.
He's now won back to back Cups.
Is it because he's now become a genius coach?
or is it because he's coaching Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, etc.???