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Injury Report: 2024-25 Injury Report thread : Zegras (Out 6 weeks with torn meniscus)

Hockey Duckie

Hockey Duckie

Registered User
Jul 25, 2003
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14,571
southern cal
TheDarkWingThatDucks said:
I know you hate Cronin and are just obtuse sometimes to be obtuse…..we all want Zegras to not be a 30-40 pt grinder, but for development into a legit hockey player, puck battles along the wall do matter.

“Trevor is a very offensively gifted player…….and winning puck battles along the wall, which again is a compliment to his game….”

Like very clearly he is saying he’s offensively amazing, but he is even doing the small things better to compliment is overall game. Hopefully when things click he gets back to the near PPG pace with all the extra little things added to his game.

If he does that, he would become a top 30-40 ish player in the league, and not just a walking highlight reel on bad NHL teams losing 7-3.

You aren’t the only one, but people go player development waaaah, we suck at developing forwards. Then complain because we are trying to make Zegras more of a Pavel Datsyuk than a Mike Hoffman. The theory being that, once you add to your bag of tricks and stop having to “focus” on playing an overall better brand of winning hockey, the offensive output will come with it. Doesn’t always work, some people can not adjust, some people can’t get out of their own heads, some people just don’t care about winning.

Like we understand a lot of development is one step forward two steps back. You are focusing so hard on fixing the weaknesses in your game, that sometimes the things you do well take a backseat, the key is to get comfortable enough doing the weaknesses well, that it becomes second nature. This is where players take that “next step”. Sometimes it’s as simple as maturing physically. I played sports and I wasn’t some super tall athletic specimen, but I worked my ass off every game and practice whether it was I didn’t want to lose my starting job / or I wanted to take their starting job. But I didn’t have coaches going hey buddy, here are some of your weaknesses I think you should work on these / do these drills this offseason to take the next steps in your development as a complete “whatever sport” player.

All in all, you can be frustrated in the coach and want him gone because his system is stifling the offense output of this team. That’s fine. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, HCGC is here to instill a day in day out work ethic and change the culture to one of accountability and hard work. Hopefully our next head coach will be some offense genius that can have our team take the next step. Like maybe we get someone so smart…..like the first coach to be “hey maybe we should watch game film to scout our opponents”

And truly as far as Cronin is concerned, as long as he hasn’t lost the locker room (which none of us have any REAL insight too) then let him finish out the year and do his job. Which like I’ve said is to instil a work ethic and accountability into one’s self for the team. Then when the happy go lucky players coach who is an offensive genius comes in, the foundation is already laid for how players in this organization prepare on and off the ice.

And that’s my biggest problem with the fire Cronin chatter, advanced stats say this team is f***ing terrible / the eye test doesn’t say it’s much better. But Cronin wasn’t brought in to be some 10 year coach for us, he was brought in to (and I don’t know how many times I can say it) instil a work ethic and change the culture of an entire organization. You don’t fire that guy 1-2 months into his 2nd developmental year season (no matter what Verbeek said about playoffs), to try and win an extra 5 games and be an 80 pt team instead of 70 pts.

Yes it’s frustrating to watch, yes not enough young ducklings took major enough steps to push this team forward, yes we are probably missing the playoffs for the 8th straight year. But we are going to get some more Cutter and Leo time on the same line at some point, maybe Minty and Zelly some time together. We are doing small not so insignificant things that should have us better prepared for the future.
Click to expand...

Cronin has an idea of how players should be, but is obtuse about how to best to maximize their actual talents. Case in point, Cronin said Mac should play like Tkachuk b/c Mac is big (weight and strength, not height nor length). The problem is that Mac's game is different form Tkachuk. Why can't Cronin just build Mac as Mac than some other player who's skills are different from Mac? Similarly with Zegras, why convert him into a defensive stalwart in all at one-time as the expense of his offense?

When Colangelo was called up, Colangelo was the Gulls' second leading scorer and leading goal scorer. After a few games in the NHL, the puck seems to follow Colangelo (or he knows where to go to anticipate where the puck will be) and has looked dangerous when he has an opportunity to score. The Ducks needed more offense, but Cronin kept Colangelo as a fourth liner than test him in a top-6 role. Cronin said to be up in the NHL, Colangelo's role is to be a 4th liner. I thought Colangelo had some chemistry with Mac on the ice, but was never given a true audition. Why is that?

Cronin has odd preferences. Z gets picked on a lot for mistakes other youths and vets make. Mac gets shifted from first to fourth lines. Colangelo gets buried on the 4th line. LaCombe was pressed on too much last year to where LaCombe had to do some psyche development over the summer to withstand Cronin's pressuring.

Hockey is in a different age and going with an old school coach does not mix well with today's youths. That was the reason why former GM Murray went with Eakins as his head coach for the NHL rebuild. Eakins already has shown he can help youths in the AHL level. Eakins helped Terry finally figure out the NHL level to become a 37-goal scorer, helped Z score 23 goals and over 60 points since his official rookie season for two seasons, and helped Drysdale score 32 points in his rookie season.

Eakins was indiscriminate who he benched or needed waived from rookies to youths to vets. He was given the green light to waive Rico and that woke Rico to play at a high level again.

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The coaching and roster makeup matters for outcomes. We can use Eakins to compare to Cronin. Eakins had a healthy roster with several rookies in 2021-22 to start the season. Murray resigned in early Nov and Verbeek was hired at all-star break, knowing Manson was put on IR. The Ducks blueline had to rely on three rookies in Drysdale (Rd 1), Mahura (rd 3), and Benoit (UDFA). After the Verbeekening at the TDL, Eakins changed how the team played. The defense did improve, but the offense continued to suffer. Eakins' offense is dependent on good defense.

Now it's established that we can have a coach that can improve defensive play while not hurting its offense. We just have to find an offensive-minded head coach, but support him with a very good defensive assistant coach.

Then compared 2022-23 Eakins to 2023-24 Cronin. The defensive improvement happened because of a massive roster turnover on the blueline with physicality in RD Gudas, RD Lyubushkin, LD Minty, LD/RD LaCombe, and a healthy Vaak. Cronin had an amazing defensive improvement with respect to GA/GP, but Cronin didn't know how to win games. Cronin earned only one more point with a far better roster than Eakins' 2022-23 roster. That was a huge failure. Except many on here still didn't believe anyone could be worse than Eakins that they dismissed how bad Cronin's offense was until this season started.

Cronin is one-dimensional who rarely deviates from his form. That is a problem. On the ice, our compete level looked better under Eakins than Cronin on a daily basis. It could be that Cronin is overworking the team and fatigue is reflected on the ice.


In conclusion, I think Cronin is a better defensive assistant coach than a head coach. That's why our young blueliners are progressing better than our young forwards. He lacks the big picture and our youth forwards are the ones who are suffering from it.

We won't get rid of Cronin this year b/c he is the embodiment of Verbeek. Verbeek is the problem and Cronin is the symptom.
 
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