Jared Bednar took over a pretty young Avalanche team in 2016 with no previous NHL head coaching experience (MacKinnon - 21, Rantanen - 20, Landeskog - 24, Compher - 21, Zadorov - 21). Bruce Boudreau, at 53, took over a young Capitals team (Ovechkin - 22, Backstrom - 20, Semin - 23, Green - 22). Those turned out ok.
I don't think it's a bad thing for a new head coach to be given a young team as long as it's a good coach. There's something to the "growing together" thing. But Cronin is running out of time to convince me he's a good coach. He's got a couple months.
But they're not growing. That's the problem. The sole material improvement we've seen from Eakins to Cronin is the team no longer gets blasted with 50+ shots on goal but they still lead the league in shots allowed per game.
This is a team that is heavily dependent on its youth to perform so it's okay if we're not a high powered offense and have some struggles defensively and it's okay if they don't make the playoffs since so much of the roster is still learning NHL level play. It's not okay that the team is this inept at zone exits and entries, so poor at pass execution under pressure, so lacking in structure beyond their very predictable and very stoppable playbook. Guys like Zegras and McTavish who should be farther along by now are actively regressing offensively. Last night they managed to have a positive shot differential but it only happened after the game was more or less out of reach.
Through two periods, Chicago and Anaheim were about even in terms of possession, shots, and chances generated. Things got lopsided in the third when the Hawks ran out of steam. That's not evidence of improvement. And considering that Cronin did what no development coach should ever do: stop coaching for 20 games and just observe what happens when the players coach themselves...I mean there's just no excuse for pissing away such a massive chunk of this team's development. But you would hope, if a coach was going to do something that f***ing stupid, that he'd f***ing learn something from it and use his "observations" to learn something about his players and what they need from him as a coach.
Instead he keeps trying to fit square pegs in round holes, particularly with this completely ineffective dump and chase system, and the team is still in the bottom 5 in many important statistical categories because there aren't any material improvements to be seen here. Be it with any updates to Cronin's ineffective systems or with the players' game prep on practice. Last year you could make the injuries excuse and point to a lack of consistent chemistry but that's not an excuse this year. Everyone is healthy and the only guy who missed significant time in camp is one of the few who is consistently solid (Mintyukov). Teams like Chicago, Columbus, and San Jose are still unlikely to make the playoffs but if you actually watch them, time permitting, they're playing somewhat better than last season. They've made improvements. This team is not growing with the coach. They are stagnating at best but I would argue that they're regressing.
