2023-24 Bill LaForge Trophy (Worst Coach)

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

How has nobody's mentioned Pascal Vincent yet?

 

[Three On Zero]

Woodcroft, tries to reinvent an entirely new system and made Edmonton a lottery team in the process

 

[PredsV82]

How on earth is Woodcroft a close second?

Are you suggesting he was supposed to hypnotize Skinner to not have .780 goaltending, or what?

Or are you only looking at the results without considering what parts of the game a coach can actually influence?

Yes the age old argument that every team has when a goalie struggles, is it the goalie or the team in front of him.

Fair or not, it is a coachs job to figure out what changes to make the team win. The teams record under him was abysmal, and the same group of players had much better results almost immediately following the coaching change.

res ipse loquitur

 

[dgibb10]

Travis Green

 

[DisgruntledHawkFan]

Gotta be Babs. Dude got hired and fired without even coaching a game.

 

[Based Anime Fan]

Travis Green

Dude was an interim for like 20 games, likely the best the Devils looked last season, too.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Mike “sticktoitiveness” Sullivan

 

[The Winter Soldier]

Lane Lambert.

 

[weastern bias]

It's insane no one has said David Quinn yet, people REALLY don't pay attention to the Sharks, lol

Their roster was shockingly bad, but they needed help getting to the historic levels of futility we saw this year, Quinn was a generational talent as a tank commander

 

[dgibb10]

Dude was an interim for like 20 games, likely the best the Devils looked last season, too.

It was absolutely not the best NJD looked.

Before travis green took over, NJD generated 52% of expected goals, 10th in the league
After Travis Green took over, that number dropped to 44.71%, 27th in the league

 

[cptjeff]

How has nobody's mentioned Pascal Vincent yet?

Because he coached a team that wasn't good to a record that wasn't good. Sure, he didn't knock anyone's socks off, but it wasn't like he was working with a roster capable of making it to game 7 of the final.

 

[Goptor]

Travis Green took over a decent team with terrible goaltending. He managed to get 2 new goaltenders during the trade deadline. Then proceeded to coach a god awful team with decent goaltending.

The only positive he has for him in this thread is that he only ruined 20 or so games last season while his competitors have a much larger showcase.

 

[K1984]

I'd still give it to Woodcroft. Babcock may have had a spectacular implosion, but Woodcroft had a Stanley Cup Finalist roster in the basement of the league over a sustained period. That is incredibly difficult to do.

A lot of the problems can be traced back to him too. He ran a weak training camp in 22/23 which led to a rocky, but not cataclysmic start. Then he chose to follow it up with the same thing this year, but he didn’t get away with it this time.

Another Woodcroft feature is he runs basically the worst penalty kills imaginable. The PK that was near record setting in the playoffs was getting badly torched to start the year, a lot of it to do with a random rotating cast of forwards through it (he played almost everyone on the PK in random order) and a refusal to change anything. PK turned around almost instantly when he was gone.

Woodcroft is highly, highly overrated. Part of me wonders if the league knows this and is why you really aren’t hearing him rumored around the periphery of any of the coaching vacancies.

 

[TheGoldenJet]

Mike Sullivan.

Tried to “work with and teach” a 100 point Karlsson and an 83 point Malkin how to “get to their game” this season.

Useless.

 

[LevelingSolo]

Don Granato

 

[sabremike]

Don Granato

People really don't understand just how awful he was. Most of the guys mentioned at least had the excuse that their goaltending was shit, Granato did not have that excuse. From October to late December our goaltending was decent to good. From then until the end of the season UPL played at close to Vezina level. Not to mention they may have been the single least prepared/in shape team I have ever seen in my life, I have no idea what they were doing during preseason.

 

[Bust]

I thought Keefe had a decent year, but then he had his team push for the Milestone Cup at the end of the season.

Leafs are so damn set on running everything back. Same team, same coach, same system - just change out bottom 6 players and assistant coaches.

Keefe has to be in the running for this, how do you run the same powerplay formation for this long? Boston basically was like, “lol, they’re drop passing still?”, waited at half for it to happen and denied what felt like 80% of zone entries.

Never mind the odd deployment of developing players like Robertson, Woll and Lilj. Keefe was trash this and last season.

I expect him to do much better for the NJD.

 

[Ianturnedbull]

Leafs are so damn set on running everything back. Same team, same coach, same system - just change out bottom 6 players and assistant coaches.

Keefe has to be in the running for this, how do you run the same powerplay formation for this long? Boston basically was like, “lol, they’re drop passing still?”, waited at half for it to happen and denied what felt like 80% of zone entries.

Never mind the odd deployment of developing players like Robertson, Woll and Lilj. Keefe was trash this and last season.

I expect him to do much better for the NJD.

What? Why do you expect him to do better?

 

[Riseonfire]

Lame Lambert

 

[The Winter Soldier]

In all due respect to Bill Laforge(who has actually won a championship), think this award needs to be renamed the Peter Horachek award. Best coach you can hire if you want to tank for the #1 pick in the draft.

 

[MessierII]

In all due respect to Bill Laforge(who has actually won a championship), think this award needs to be renamed the Peter Horachek award. Best coach you can hire if you want to tank for the #1 pick in the draft.

Laforge got a raw deal

 

[Ace Card Bedard]

It's insane no one has said David Quinn yet, people REALLY don't pay attention to the Sharks, lol

Their roster was shockingly bad, but they needed help getting to the historic levels of futility we saw this year, Quinn was a generational talent as a tank commander

Quinn and LuRich (Chicago) are most likely just placeholders during the rebuilds.

 

[Voight]

Travis Green took over a decent team with terrible goaltending. He managed to get 2 new goaltenders during the trade deadline. Then proceeded to coach a god awful team with decent goaltending.

The only positive he has for him in this thread is that he only ruined 20 or so games last season while his competitors have a much larger showcase.

Yet the Sens said "hes the guy"

 

[mlzy]

Dude was an interim for like 20 games, likely the best the Devils looked last season, too.

Actually the Devils looked exactly the same with Greene.

 

[Smirnov2Chistov]

Greg Cronin from Anaheim

The guy is tactically clueless and couldn’t put me to sleep more in his post game pressers. Can’t wait until this shit experiment is over