He hasn't been a very good coach lately. He's not adapting to the way the game is changing. His methods worked 05-09 but after that you could tell Anaheim was only winning games with the talent in the locker room, not by the game plan of the man behind the bench.
He hasn't been a very good coach lately. He's not adapting to the way the game is changing. His methods worked 05-09 but after that you could tell Anaheim was only winning games with the talent in the locker room, not by the game plan of the man behind the bench.
That's funny, in 10-11 he took one of the worst teams on paper (who almost everybody predicted to miss the playoffs) to an incredible run and coached Getzlaf, Perry & Visnovsky (among others) to career best seasons. He only missed the playoffs once while he was here and the defense he was given that year was atrocious. He's certainly not a top 5 coach but he got way too much flak for the Ducks struggles when he was given subpar rosters every year from '08-09 onwards.
Almost anybody else. Joe Sacco was a scrappy gritty player and he does a good job getting those types of players to play hard for him, but the man knows nothing about how to score goals and holds this team back offensively.
Do you think any of those deals actually upgrade St. Louis behind the bench, or is this just a thought experiment?
And Ruff for literally anybody. He hasn't developed a player beyond expectations since Briere/Campbell, doesn't play his best players like his best players, heavily plays favorites, (a too injured to produce Derek Roy totally deserves to lead the team at ES and total TOI) and has had absolutely no idea how to advance Myers' development.
Not sure any of them, except possibly Tippetts would be an upgrade, but I think that their coaching style would be most compatible with the roster currently in place in St. Louis. I don't know that St. Louis has enough players with the right kind of skills to play a puck possession style like Babcock's. I don't know too much about all of the Eastern coaches, so there might be a better fit from there than Julien.
But Tippett with the Blues roster for next season would be fantastic.
Tortorella for Laviolette. My favorite head coach, who is American (most wins as an American head coach), for my second-favorite head coach, who is also American (second-most wins as an American head coach), and both have one Stanley Cup from a SE Division team. They also both like to get into arguments with the opposing team's head coach.
