Yeah, I also don’t see him as the long-term coaching answer. He is our version of Andy Murray at the moment. That may be ok. I think we will be onto another coach once we are ready to really compete. Given the shelf life of coaches and their messages, it seems a safe assumption.
I hope they keep him, but I also expect a different head coach to take over when the team is a real threat again.
Bednar was a career minor league coach that was hired only because Patrick Roy quit on the team a month before training camp. He had a good resume and was well respected around the league, but I don't think there is much out there to support the idea that the Avs hired him as the long-term 'get you over the hump when the roster is ready to do that' coach as opposed to a good fit for a middling young team.
Ok so I was kinda with you until the end. Peru is doing fine. He's not a rockstar defensively, but he's still putting up reasonable numbers, and again, he is the only one (Along with Scandella) who has a positive GF/GA ratio at 5v5 of any D-man that's played at least 50 minutes. We sheltered the shit out of Krug and Faulk last year and they were horrible, easily the number one reason we went from a 109 point team to a 80-whatever point team, so please don't pretend like being sheltered means you immediately have success.
My point isn't that Bannister will be a Bednar, or that he was Colorado's first choice or they expected him to do what he did, but he wasn't an Andy Murray type that they only wanted to hire to whip the young guys into shape, and then ship out once they got good.
Because forcing the kids into the NHL too early can easily be more of a detriment to their growth as a hockey player than them playing more in the Juniors or AHL.
I'm going to point you to my past comments on Perunovich and leave it at that. Maybe someone else will indulge you on a discussion of Peru's [lack of] defensive prowess, but I prefer even my minimum-salary guys to be somewhat competent and not have f***ing gaping holes in their game that their alleged strengths don't make up for.
I'm sorry you haven't noticed the style of play that makes the Blues successful. It's not playing bandwagon hockey, end-to-end rushes, swapping goals and outscoring the opposition along the way. It's sound defense first, the offense rolls from there. If you can't see that, and if you didn't notice that in 2019, 2020 and much of the 2021-22 season when this team had outstanding results vs. 2021 and the last 2 seasons where the defense was suspect and this season looks passable only because Binnington is putting on a Vezina-worthy performance, I don't know what else to tell you.
I've been beating this drum for a while now, but Thomas deserves legitimate consideration for the Selke. He won't, but he has been so good all over the ice this season.
Strawman much? I never said we should play bandwagon hockey. Your recent post was talking about the present, not historical success. Historically I agree with you, we had a ton of success thanks to playing structured, defensive hockey (And yet we still figured out how to incorporate offensive minded D who struggled defensively like Shattenkirk and Dunn). Helps that we had a #1 D man that was in the conversation for a Norris every year, something we don't have anymore. Since he's left, we haven't had that structured game to rely on and I agree it's been a struggle. I'm not advocating against playing a solid, structured defensive game, I was merely pointing out that we currently (Underlining since that seems to be the only way to grab your attention, unless I also need to Bold) don't play that way. Even if we did go back to that style, which I think is probably wise, a guy like Peru would still have a place on this team.
The fact that he is turning into such a dominant 2-way player makes things interesting regarding who (gets/has to) play with him. Especially while we're stuck in limbo with the 2nd line. Neighbors/Buch make a lot of sense, but you eventually have to get a legitimate (defensively responsible) shooter on his wing. Lots of "if this, then that" type scenarios depending on what's done with Buch, and how Snuggerud/Bolduc/Dvorsky/Stenberg develop.
I am glad others see how freaking terrible our D, other than Krug and Peru, are running the point on the PP
Please learn what a 'straw man argument' really is before lobbing it as an accusation.
You picked out one piece of my argument and generated an entire line of BS off it. Nowhere did I say we should look to play bandwagon hockey. I said that we don't have sound defensive gameplay RIGHT NOW, and it's sure as hell not winning us games. You took that to all of a sudden mean that I said ever.
Screw that, Buffalo's model of talent development is clearly the way to go.
