Empoleon8771
Registered User
From how I'm reading it yeah their records were about the same at 8-17-6-0 for Olczyk and 14-29-8-0 for Therrien. There is absolutely no doubt that Olczyk wasn't cut out for the job... it's like the Penguins figured since he said some clever things on the air he would naturally transition that to the ice and... no. Olczyk didn't seem to have much of a plan other than assuming he was basically coaching an all-star team and shit would work itself out.
I'm watching a classic 2005 game right now (Pens-Flyers game that ended like 6-5), and it's painfully obvious that system problems are what killed this team. Simon Gagne just scored 2 goals the same exact way, the entire Penguins team was focused on Forsberg with the puck and Gagne was completely uncovered for a 1-timer near the goal line. Those are completely system problems if those consistently happen.
I still think the best Penguins coach from Bowman up until Therrien was Constantine. He's the only coach that actually got the Penguins to buy into a defensive structure, and they ended up a fantastic team at both ends of the ice that year (7th in GF, 4th in GA). Then Jagr decided he didn't like the system, they became worse defensively and then Constantine got canned after less than 2.5 years.