What was the biggest issue this season? Lack of talent, luck, or gana?

[azcanuck]

THis team rallied around the chaos of the ownership situation for years. It was a lunch pail type team with great goaltending.

They added Ribeiro who was a terrible fit for the team. Smith was mediocre most of the year.
The most obvious problem is the lack of overall talent on the forward lines. Too many minor leaguers getting minutes. Chumpura, Swartz, Klinghammer they simply dont belong in the NHL.
We really dont have any top end talent. Doan is aging. We have some decent young players but no Toews, crosby types or anything close.

 

[Plub]

I don't think we can put our failure this year on talent simply because we've had a lot less in years past and done more. The fact that we don't have another shooter on the wing definitely is an issue and something GMDM has failed to fix for years now. However, it isn't why we sucked so bad this year.

We didn't get much puck-luck at all this year. It seemed like whenever we needed a bounce it never came or when it did it ended up helping the other team. But again, I don't think you can put this failure all on puck-luck.

This year's failure -- in my opinion -- falls on passive play, poor goaltending, and coaching (yes coaching).

Smith was horrible for parts of the season and average for another part and good for a very small time. We need him to be no less than good most of the time and great some of the time. Any less and it will hurt this team.

Early in the year we played a more open style and we were actually one of the highest scoring teams in the league and racking up points. Then we started to play a bit more conservative until we found ourselves back to playing a "try not to lose" style of play. Also, some key injuries while we were really rolling seemed to trip us up for the entire season -- Doan's illness and Hanzal's first injury come to mind.

Tippet just doesn't seem to be getting to the players this year. He had excuses for everything and he never really showed the kind of emotion a team needs sometimes to have a fire lit under their ass. He himself was passive. The team lacked heart all season. Our physical play was piss poor. And when we needed leadership the most it wasn't there. Doan use to be able to get the whole team going just by playing his game. Doan didn't play his usual physical style at any point this year (including the time before the illness, although he was playing great offensively).

Lastly, our defense wasn't what we all had hoped. I think OEL and Z played fine. They shutdown other teams' top players most nights and OEL dominated some of the best forwards in the NHL, but then we had a massive drop off. Morris was ****. Yandle looked like EK out there. All in all, this was a ****** season for a lot of reasons, but the fact that they were "new" reasons (coaching, defense, and heart) is what worries me. Those things use to be what won us games.

I wash my hands of this season.

With stress relieved with ownership situation resolved the players lost the focus required to play in a Dave Tippett system and tried to move towards a skill game that they didn't have the top-end talent or depth to play.

Except that when we played a more open style we were at our best this season. We may not have the most skill, but we have enough to win. What we do have a lot of is speed. Our team is very fast and I think playing a more open game allowed use to make things happen. When we started to become more conservative is when we started a downward trend.

 

[Vinny Boombatz]

Good stuff

 

[Phoenician]

Great insight all. Was only my third season really watching hockey and second as a sth. I did think they seemed to not play hard when it mattered most. I look forward to next year and really hope to see domi play. Bummed tonight and tomorrow are meaningless games but I will be there.

 

[CC96]

I fully agree the team had a down year, and given the expectations many of us had, it was the most disappointing season in a while.

My contention is that things like "they didn't have enough heart this year" are worthless statements from anybody outside of the organization.

I'm with you there. A lot of what went on this year was rather confusing, and we have A LOT more questions than answers at this point. One thing I'm wondering about, is that a few months ago, Maloney mentioned that "there was a problem with leadership in the dressing room, and it's not Shane Doan." I'm not going to point fingers, but I wonder who he was referring to.

 

[hbk]

I don't think we can put our failure this year on talent simply because we've had a lot less in years past and done more. The fact that we don't have another shooter on the wing definitely is an issue and something GMDM has failed to fix for years now. However, it isn't why we sucked so bad this year.

We didn't get much puck-luck at all this year. It seemed like whenever we needed a bounce it never came or when it did it ended up helping the other team. But again, I don't think you can put this failure all on puck-luck.

This year's failure -- in my opinion -- falls on passive play, poor goaltending, and coaching (yes coaching).

Smith was horrible for parts of the season and average for another part and good for a very small time. We need him to be no less than good most of the time and great some of the time. Any less and it will hurt this team.

Early in the year we played a more open style and we were actually one of the highest scoring teams in the league and racking up points. Then we started to play a bit more conservative until we found ourselves back to playing a "try not to lose" style of play. Also, some key injuries while we were really rolling seemed to trip us up for the entire season -- Doan's illness and Hanzal's first injury come to mind.

Tippet just doesn't seem to be getting to the players this year. He had excuses for everything and he never really showed the kind of emotion a team needs sometimes to have a fire lit under their ass. He himself was passive. The team lacked heart all season. Our physical play was piss poor. And when we needed leadership the most it wasn't there. Doan use to be able to get the whole team going just by playing his game. Doan didn't play his usual physical style at any point this year (including the time before the illness, although he was playing great offensively).

Lastly, our defense wasn't what we all had hoped. I think OEL and Z played fine. They shutdown other teams' top players most nights and OEL dominated some of the best forwards in the NHL, but then we had a massive drop off. Morris was ****. Yandle looked like EK out there. All in all, this was a ****** season for a lot of reasons, but the fact that they were "new" reasons (coaching, defense, and heart) is what worries me. Those things use to be what won us games.

I wash my hands of this season.



Except that when we played a more open style we were at our best this season. We may not have the most skill, but we have enough to win. What we do have a lot of is speed. Our team is very fast and I think playing a more open game allowed use to make things happen. When we started to become more conservative is when we started a downward trend.

We were winning early on but were a disaster in our own zone. The goals covered up the problems. When the goals stopped because of injuries, players coming back to earth, etc. the system we tried to revert back to had no foundation. We were Swiss cheese on the PK.