The Ducks record shouldn't matter. None of the kids, outside of Dostal and Lacombe, have shown any growth under him. In fact most have regressed. THAT should be the barometer used for Cronin.
I know I’m asking you to make a couple leap of faiths but……. Advanced stats be damned….
I gotta assume Verbeek hired a coach, who’s system is one similar to how Verbeek wants his team to play like.
He’s on record saying he envisions a competitive, hard working team.
Greg Cronin was lauded by the Colorado fan base as a developmental coach. One of the flagship organizations in this league, who with better top end talent pulled themselves from out of the bottom 3 and into cup contenders status for their stars prime years.
We literally stole their AHL coach, and then instead of having all our young talented players level up under him in the AHL, he is doing it at the NHL level with our young talent.
We just expedited the process, I am quite the fan of efficiency in the workplace. Streamlining processes to create a more Harmonious workplace environment = the key to long term stability and happiness.
We can argue the ladders and chutes of treating the NHL as our development league as there are many pros and cons.
But what we can’t deny is that this is the route Verbeek has chosen. Hired an AHL coach, who helped get AHL players ready at the Avalanche for a seamless transition to the pros. I believe while Cronin was there his last season an inordinate amount of call ups happened and both teams made the playoffs still.
That shows what organizational depth and paired with top end talent and a good system can generate.
I gotta assume that the Golden Eagles and the Avalanche ran the same system to create synergy between the AHL affiliate and the NHL parent team. That means Cronin ran Bednar’s
Offensive and Defensive systems.
So I think we can all agree that the plan was to have an AHL head coach kinda do the same thing at the NHL level with our young talent. Hired a bunch of solid room guys, overpaying for over the hill character guys that command the type of respect that can only be earned by winning and sacrificing your body at the highest level in the best league in the world.
If people want to have a conversation on the perilous pitfalls that can happen by using the NHL as a developmental league I’m all ears. But it doesn’t change the fact that this is our plan as an organization.
Then our GM was on record saying last year that wins and losses don’t matter, development and easing the young players into the league was the goal. This year he said the goal was to play competitive games for playoff position in March.
It seems since a lot of guys took steps forwards last season except for Zegras maybe they did a good job developing ? Like how my players had career highs last year, in PPG %. McT / Leo / Zelly / Minty / Cutter. Every young play set a career high last season in PPG%, see we wanted to develop and it worked.
(Please know that point about PPG % is all true it is a joke about how stats without context can be meaningless). Like Leo’s total assist per 82 is down 32% from last year, could Zegras’ injury and him being saddled with McGinn / Isac / Leason have had an effect on that 32% dip ? Mayhaps ? Unsure but it’s worth pointing out as a possible cause. Does this mean we can’t criticize Cronin for deployment / Leo for his play. Of course not, but could that have been a test for Leo to gauge how much his play can lift up those around him and honestly it’s been so long but I don’t think McGinn looked to bad on his wing.)
But I’m just one weird guy who enjoys trying to piece together the puzzle from interviews with Cronin / Verbeek / McIlvane…. And lean more towards the I really hope our organization isn’t super inept at putting together a MGMT team that isn’t qualified and doomed to fail that task at hand. Which is developing young talent in the NHL and AHL for long term organizational depth + assets to bring in bonafide NHL talent.
I’m sitting here trying to convince myself this is the year Jo Addell figures it all out and everything clicks for him, and that Emerson Etem’s sudden sharp decline came because of a cheap dirty knee to knee open ice hit from the rat Raffi Torres in a preseason game after his Winnipeg playoff series heroics…..
To quote my favorite author…..
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
- David Foster Wallace
Just swap freedom with player development at the NHL level or some shit hahaha.
