I just don't understand what changed so fast. Everyone on here thought this team was made for next year. The progression of the players certainly haven't met expectations as of this moment. Obviously the ridiculous amounts of injuries we have had has slowed that down. One thing that cannot be over looked is the coaching, and I think we can all agree that it's been really bad the last 2 years. Look at Kitchener, bottom of the barrel at one point this season, had a few injuries, fired their coach and now they are playing unbeatable hockey it seems. Hatcher and company have lost the players. There is no way in hell that this team should be sitting 10th. Literally no excuse.
I agree this looks like a textbook case of the coach's losing the room. Clearly as the team demonstrated in November this team is capable of playing a lot better than they have in the last 5 weeks. There is way too much talent on this team to being doing so poorly.
To be fair the injuries (particularly on defence ) have been part of the problem but despite that the team just isn't playing hard enough. Lately the way they are playing it looks like they expect to lose out of the gate.
In junior hockey there is generally a total lack of poise among groups. Once there is some adversity things can start to come unglued really quickly. If there is a lack of communication or dissension in the group over pecking order it can get ugly .
(Having said that things can rapidly change the other way with just a few changes. )
I believe part of the issue is that they have had too many bodies circulating around for a lot of the year and this has possibly caused some division among the team. for example I can't imagine any of the goalies involved would be happy with the way things have played out. Next thing you know some of the goalie relatives could be suggesting that they would like to be moved
In regards to Rees unless there was some kind of super amazing package on the table I would definitely not trade him. The message you would send to the fans with that trade would be disastrous. Management has no choice to stick to the plan about going for it next year but I do expect that they will actively be looking to deal their OA's this week.