I've seen a lot of Flames fans give Huska flack for the rough start, which I don't agree with as it was 10 whopping games, but I've liked what he's been doing so far. People were calling him soft and just being a pushover coach, well it didn't take him long in his NHL career to bench the highest paid player on the team for an entire period. Guy isn't a pushover.
He's also got Zary popping on the 2nd line giving him a ton of minutes which he's earned. Pospisil is getting decent minutes, when Solo was up he got minutes. He isn't giving these guys 5 minutes a night like Sutter would.
Though the start has sucked, there has been visible changes in how Conroy and Huska run the Flames. For better or worse things are different from last year (maybe the product on the ice still ain't the greatest).
Yeah, I mentioned previously that his coaching group has probably the least coaching experience than all other groups in the last decade. Even Gully's group had two guys with HC experience.
Ward was in his 50s was a dev coach for 1 NHL team and an AC for 3 NHL teams totaling 11 seasons and HC in Germany before being HC around Age 57-58?). He had Gelinas as AC (9th year as Flames AC by that point) which at least offered tenure and relationships with players, but honestly speaking I'm not sure what calibre of coach Gelinas was. He also had Ray Edwards, who was a newbie with only 1 AC season in Calgary prior to Ward as HC.
Gully was 45 when he was HC of the Flames. He had previous HC experience with the Stars (Age 40-41). Cameron was an AC for him who had 4 years AC experience with the Sens and 2 years HC just prior to joining the Flames. Jerrard (RIP) was a career AHL/NHL AC and had 2 years AC with the Stars from when Gully was coach and 1 year AC for Avs when Hartley was a coach plus a long decade plus resume in the AHL prior to joining us. When they were here, Cameron was mid to late 50s, Jerrard (RIP) was early 50s.
Peters was 53 when he was Flames HC and resume included 4 years in Carolina and 3 years AC under Babcock. He had NHL AC rookies Huska and Edwards as his AC plus 7th year AC Gelinas as his AC. His AC crew was probably most comparable to Huska's current crew for HC/AC AHL and NHL experience, but Peters was also older and not a rookie coach when he came here. To be fair, Peters isn't a terrible coach for the modern NHL. He's just an ass and I'm not purely pointing at the Akim Aliu thing. I dare speculate he was the one who basically cratered Eddie Lack's career with some behind the scenes stuff. "Make a f***ing save" is a public video available to be looked up.
Current crew:
Huska, current age 48 was AC in Calgary for 5 seasons under Peters, Ward and Sutter and 4 seasons HC for Flames AHL. Lambert, Age 53 was the coach after Huska for the Rockets and was actually his AC in Kelowna for 4 seasons so there's a lot of history there. He spent 4 seasons as AC for the Preds under Lavi and Hynes prior to joining Huska's crew. Savard was straight from the OHL as HC for 2 seasons. (Age 46)
After digging in a little more detail, this current group is a really young group of guys. By my ballpark estimates have a combined less AC/HC AHL and NHL total experience by a significant margin to previous groups and other groups in the NHL. I dare say that even the least experienced coaches we had in Gully and Ward had at least double the total AC/HC experience at the AHL/NHL levels.
Thus, they deserve more runway to prove themselves IMO and I also believe that based on what we've seen so far, it ain't bad for a group that started further back vs other team. There's long term positives to look forward to even though there's been some concern so far with the on ice product.
Quoting myself, but I still think this is valid:
Huska to savard be like...
Their faces when they start to see their system take form as the players internalize and things start clicking.
