You also need to be consistent, if the offense didn’t produce as well even though it had more talent and you’re going to blame that on Cronin, then be consistent and give him credit for the defense being better. Either he has no effect either way, or he does, but you’re picking and choosing. You say you don’t know whether we did better on Defense was due to the fact there was more talent on defense or because of Cronin, but won’t admit that our forwards could have been affected by factors other than Cronin as well.
Of the forwards that were here under Eakins and Cronin, Vatrano did better, Mac did better, Henrique did better, Strome did the same, Carrick did better. I’ll leave out Lundestrom even though he had better pace, and Jones was on a similar pace but who knows whether he does better or worse.
The players who did worse were Terry, Silf and Zegras. 2 of those had pretty significant injuries, the other became a new dad. So if all these major players produced better under Cronin, perhaps there were other factors (injuries) at play.
For shits and giggles, what was our record with all 8 of those top players you keep referring to in the lineup at the same time?
We added two more top-6 players in Carlsson and Killorn to last year's group. Our forward group this year had injuries in our top-6 (which we had 8 of), but they scored more than last year's top-6 and played more games. You could actually read the tables provided to you to prevent you from asking questions already answered. It's essentially a 1 to 1 top-6 offensive comparison.
Our defensive group also had a lot of injuries, but we had a lot more talent depth. I don't know if that's on Cronin or just the roster. Again, it's hard to tell when everyone got replaced from last year except for Fowler. We got lucky with waiver wire pickup Lindstrom (+12) as well as had Zell come up from the AHL.
GA
2021-22, Eakins = 271
2022-23, Eakins = 338
2023-24, Cronin = 294
Holy shit, Batman, Eakins' 2021-22 season must know how to teach the defense because he's a +23 GA from Cronin's. Or does does mean YOU ARE GIVING EAKINS CREDIT FOR BEING A GOOD COACH?!
Hyping up our forward group when we scored less than last year's group isn't a great argument. Cronin running the team hard probably caused a lot of unnecessary injuries to Z, Mac, and Lundy.
We still comeback to this...
GF and GA
Last year: GF = 209, GA = 338
This year: GF = 200, GA = 294
Record
Last year: 23-47-12 (58 pts)
This year: 26-50-5 (59 pts)
I can't hype the coaching when the coaching doesn't know how to improve our overall record with a better roster. Eakins would have earned more points with this year's roster.