Skookum Jim wrote on Sun, 16 March 2025 14:24

From McCurdy .. Whatta off-season we had.. Pro-scouting.. same as it ever was.. Quote: Even strength (NOT: 5v5 but surely close) scoring this season: Draisaitl 34-36-70 McDavid 15-41-56 —- Holloway 16-22-38 Foegele 19-18-37 McLeod 14-20-34 — Hyman 16-10-26 RNH 10-12-22 Brown 7-15-22 Podkolzin 6-15-21 Perry 13-6-19 Skinner 11-8-19 Arvidsson 8-10-18 Henrique 7-8-15 Janmark 2-12-14 Kapanen 5-5-10

There's a few things to unpack here:

- First, we were the oldest team in the league last year and we decided to get older still. Everyone we parted ways last year was on the younger side, everyone we replaced them with were older.

Nuge and Hyman - I think there's been some injuries and other challenges there, but still...they've had pretty dreadful years. I think there would be a reasonable expectation that they would normally do better.

For the rest, at what point do you have to look at coaching? I mean, Adam Henrique was their big acquisition before the playoffs last year. We re-upped him, coming off a 50+ point season. He's still yet to break 20 points and is looking at his worst productivity since his rookie year.

Skinner is coming off what seemed like a low season with 46 points (a year after he scored 82. He's actually one of our highest scorers given how little time he's played and how he's been deployed, but he's still got just 22 points on the season.

Arvidsson's been just under a point per game over the last several years in LA. Here he's under half a point per game.

At what point do we have to look at the group and wonder if there's something in the way they're being coached? Again, the team seems to have found that same default we saw so much under Tippett and McLellan where when McDavid and Draisaitl are on the bench, the goal is just to survive until they're back out.

The coach singles out depth forwards over single turnovers, and is quick to pull icetime from them for any mistakes. I think the (flawed) strategy is that they are thinking that if we can just have NO events when the big guys are off the ice, then we can count on them to just always outscore the opposition and then we win. Thus there's zero risk tolerance from the coach other than for the top players.

I also think that some of that is a lack of faith in the goaltending. When you feel that any shot could go in, then you might focus the whole plan around shot suppression, rather than outscoring.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
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