was coming here to post bobby mac's comments but
@Bure1096 beat me to it.
Huberdeau is responsible for the defensive breakdown. It’s 101 level coverage. Do you think Huberdeau needs a new coach? Or he’s playing sloppy Bc he’s missing the playoffs again.
Defensive breakdowns happen and that’s why you need your goalie to stop the saveable chances.
I keep hearing this from you. actually, most coaches work really hard to get their teams creating defensive layers. so when you have that one breakdown, there's a second layer. one breakdown should not mean your goalie is hung out to dry. watch the bruins to get a sense of what that looks like.
regarding huberdeau's play, most teams are using a strong-side overload strategy on the PK and sometimes 5v5. that's pretty much what you saw from huberdeau.i'm not sure that was what boog wanted but it'd be really lousy discipline for him to wander over to the wrong side of the ice on his own.
when you overload the strong side, you gotta have guys ready to rotate out if your opponent breaks the pressure. in that case last night, ek would've had to rotate out to the point and so on.
Every single team makes mistakes. Babcock the great has a team that before the last two games was giving up a similar number of chances as us iirc. It’s a bias towards this being your team and putting them under the microscope. Toronto gave up 5 goals last night and half the people here would cut their arm off for their coach. Sometimes it’s on the players more than the coaching staff. They have to execute. Hockey is not complicated
Do you really think the coach doesn’t tell Huberdeau to cover the d-man? Or tell Tro to backcheck with some effort? Or the d-men not to make cute plays? Matheson alone drags our d quality down significantly.
Coach gets some responsibility but players don’t get enough blame around here
That’s not my point. My point is we have roster issues. I don’t believe a coach will fix Matheson who is sinking our defense. And our goalies are not making basic saves. Until you upgrade those positions, a coach won’t make a big enough difference. Ya’ll act like we didn’t get 96 points last year and that’s almost always good enough to get In.
How about, would you upgrade the roster or the coaching staff?
like I said, look at the isles. the golden knights?
there's no question, in any real organization, boog's time is up. two years and no improvement in team play. this is nowhere near good enough from this roster. I think tallon is going to do the right thing. I'd take a chance with almost any retread over another year with this staff.
this team got 96 points last year in spite of coaching. they missed the playoffs because they lost key, winnable games down the stretch as a result of poor team play.
having said all that, I completely agree
@RainingRats - the players deserve a ton of blame.
I've already said I think this team has a major character issue with its core guys. trotchek, ek, huberdeau and so on. these guys want to play cute hockey. and Borg looks to be infected now as well. I think we're going to have to move one or more to change the posture in the room. it's a good thing they all have some value.
and yeah, Babcock is dealing with a bunch of prima donnas just like boughner is here. the leafs will be bounced hard by the bruins unless they get their crap together. thing is, you know Babcock knows what takes and knows how to get that message across. it's entirely possible that the leafs think they can flip a switch in April. we'll see.
and I like boog. he sounds like he gets it probably because he's spent time with deboer, who's a smart hockey person.
he simple has not been able to get this roster to play good hockey.
