cptjeff
Reprehensible User
mo's first time coaching boychuk was training camp 2009
he was fired a little more than two years later
coached him in 54 regular season games total.
he didn't deal with dalpe until training camp 2010. fired a little more than a year later. coached him 23 games.
if these guys are going to be ruined over such a short period of time, i'd argue they probably weren't good enough to begin with.
who are the other young players we are talking about? did he fail skinner? mcbain? sutter? tlusty?
basically, mo didn't want to give lots of ice time to ahl waiver fodder. the hurricanes sucked at drafting and he took the blame for it because he didn't give boychuk/dalpe free reign. they consistently showed nothing, even in preseason when they got top six ice time. i looked up their numbers where they had something like 1 goal combined in three preseasons.
edit: "Stats over past three preseasons: Dalpe - 13 games, 1 goal/3 points. Bowman - 12 games, 0 goals/1 point. Boychuk - 7 games, 1 goal/1 point."
He largely put guys like Boychuck on the 4th line as checkers and punished them because they didn't produce with tiny minutes and no offensive support. And it's not just the number of games that matters- Boychuck was scratched a lot, but being with the NHL club and practicing in the wrong role affects development too. Maurice tried to put square pegs in round holes and was surprised when the pegs broke on him. Those guys weren't absolute crap- maybe not top talent, but they were top scorers in the AHL, and other teams develop those types into at least complementary scorers with pretty good regularity. But Maurice tried to change their games and put them in roles with no real chance to produce in the NHL, consistently giving offensive roles to veteran players who were playing horribly and not putting up any points either, out of that old boys club 'they've paid their dues' mentality. Guys like Chad LaRose were getting far more opportunities on the top line than the organization's top offensive prospects, who were forced to play a checking role that LaRose was actually good at, and they weren't. The mentality that you paid your time on the checking lines, learned that role, and then graduated to the scoring lines was the problem- offensive players make lousy checking lines, and gritty checking line guys don't usually make good offensive players after they've played there for a few years. The idea of forcing guys like Boychuck on the 4th line and putting guys like LaRose on the 1st line because they've paid their dues or whatever means that we often had ineffective scoring and we had a checking line that couldn't check and didn't contribute to the game in any way.
I get that everything looks better with the passage of time as we forget the bad memories and remember the good, but there was a reason he was heavily criticized for this stuff.