There was a tendency to fall back into more of a shell with AV, but i think it was more so about the way his teams defended, combined with the opposing team making a strong late push.
AVs teams here were always more concerned with protecting high percentage scoring areas, than strictly protecting against
all shots and perimeter action. There were times the defensive play would become very passive, the opposition would just be content to own the puck around the perimeter later in games and fire a goodly number of low percentage pucks from the boundaries - kind of made the "sitting back" look worse than it was. We had the goaltending to fall back on for that, with Luongo and later Schneider
and Luongo. It worked well for the most part, reflected in the records of those teams.
No doubt it drove some people mad though.
Personally, i quite appreciated the systems work and "efficiency" of Vigneault coached teams here. Required a ton of discipline to execute well. Though admittedly, even with that appreciation, there were many times when that style of play with the lead could become very draining and a bit stressful to watch.
The year Vigneault was fired, the team was missing Kesler for most of the year (lockout shortened) and he wasn't at all 100% when he came back. The Center depth just wasn't there to execute perfectly and i think Vigneault did a pretty unheralded job of masking that by clamping things down a lot harder. We had like...Schroeder, Lapierre, some wingers, and eventually Derek Roy masquerading as our "#2C", and somehow came out of the season in a playoff spot. It wasn't pretty though. And i think that's where a lot of the "Vigneault hockey is boring" whining came from, in the lead-up and aftermath of his firing here.