Burnt Biscuits
Registered User
- May 2, 2010
- 9,167
- 3,189
You put in some decent work there, but the relative strength of the team they had and what he was able to get out of said team should play a big role in who the best coach actually is.Leaves:
Bylsma
Crawford
Keenan
MacTavish
Obvious 1st choice for me would be Bylsma... 2nd would be Keenan... 3rd would be Crawford.
Honestly I'd like to see what Keenan would/could/should do with this roster so I'd actually lean towards him having a crack at this team. Could he make it worse... probably.. still wouldn't mind seeing him take a shot at it.
I don't think Keenan tactics work on modern NHL players, also I don't think many players would want to play for Keenan and we already have enough trouble getting players to sign here.
Dan Bylsma's entire coaching career was with the post Crosby/Malkin Penguins, if you aren't a complete tool you should be able to easily post an impressive winning record considering the group he had to work with.
Crawford wasn't as lucky (as Bylsma), but he did catch both the Nordiques/Avalanche and Vancouver Canucks teams when they were on the upswing and had a lot of young skill and while I'm sure people might want to draw a tangent to our young team, those teams were far deeper in terms of talent and had some quality players at every position. His stint in L.A. was not impressive and his stint in Dallas was about on par with the relative strength of the team. I'm some what biased against Crawford I've always disliked him a bit and was further magnified when I listened to him commentate and realized how stupid he actually is and what little insight he had in the play as it unraveled before him.
I've always had a bit of soft spot for Andy Murray I always felt he got a lot out of the teams he had and he seemingly always had issues with not having quality goaltending on the teams he coached which can make any coach look a lot better or worse then they actually are. His teams were an L.A. Kings that were not particularly strong on paper and were typically plagued with injury issues and then a post Pronger St. Louis where they were going through a transitionary phase.
Terry Murray is a very interesting one, I never had a really strong impression of him with a pretty long hiatus from NHL coaching at one point, but his last 3 teams all had very substantial drops in their goals against with him coming onboard.
Brent Sutter was the coach of two teams who seemed to be naturally on there way down, but got reasonable results out of them. Both teams had notably strong goaltending, but they were both pretty weak up the middle.
I'm comfortable with hiring any of the 3 above or Tom Renney. Renney has the added benefit of being a comfort pick with less of a transition phase incase we are still worried about the coaching turnover being too high, since he is still familiar with a number of our key players.
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