Hockey Duckie
Registered User
I'll repost what I read because you apparently didn't read my post completely:
This year, Cronin has more talent and talent depth given to him. We're only 3 point better than Eakins' team last year who had a far worse PP, far worse PK, and far worse defense due to Verbeek's roster construction.
Is Cronin a better coach or does he have a better set of defensemen and balance at his disposal? Fowler's essentially the only returning player in the lineup. Drysdale was lost after 8 games last year. Vaak was constantly injured and didn't have a long enough burn. We had a plethora of fringe NHL/AHL journeymen defensemen last year. White and Harrington, last year's d-men, were sent to the AHL before the season started. Hagg, a FA signee before the season started, was also sent down to the AHL. Beaulieu is in Europe. Klingberg and Kulikov are offensive d-men. Benoit started off in the AHL for the Leafs.
Offensively, the team added Killorn and Carlsson to the lineup along with Mac going into his sophomore year in the league. Z and Terry aren't producing under Cronin. Vatrano and Strome can't generate any offense unless Mac is on the ice. We have more top-6 talent this year than last year. Yet the only times we look good offensively is when Mac's on the ice and our 4th line, b/c they play the North-South game. Z and Terry play it differently.
I see you're trying to save face here, but I don't think you're looking at this objectively. I know Cronin's not going anywhere this year or next b/c he's Verbeek's guy. Yet, Cronin was gifted a far better roster than Eakins along with an improved PP and PK unit, which is also probably due to an improved roster. Cronin's ES scoring isn't there. Why?
As for Eakins trying things differently, maybe you didn't pay close enough attn last year. Eakins change how the Ducks played and went with the run-n-gun, allowing for our SOG against to go consistently around 40 shots per game. Here's evidence.
| Ducks | 2022-23 | Eakins | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Game Set | Games | W | L | OTL | Pts | Pts Pct |
| Total | 82 | 23 | 47 | 12 | 58 | 35.4% |
| 1 to 25 | 25 | 6 | 16 | 3 | 15 | 30.0% |
| 26 to 49 | 24 | 9 | 13 | 2 | 20 | 41.7% |
| 50 to 61 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 12 | 50.0% |
| 62 to 82 (TDL) | 21 | 3 | 13 | 5 | 11 | 26.2% |
Around the TDL, we lost Rico for a long spell. Then traded away OFD's in Klingberg and Kulikov. With even fewer talent on D, the team was a littler engine that barely could.
| Ducks | 2023-24 | Cronin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Game set | Games | W | L | OTL | Pts | Pts % |
| Total | 38 | 13 | 24 | 1 | 27 | 0.355 |
| 1 to 25 | 25 | 10 | 15 | 0 | 20 | 0.400 |
| 26 to 38 | 13 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 7 | 0.269 |
We're not improving from game 26 onward. But it's still a small sample when comparing it to last year's splits.
