To be clear, I’m not a fan of a lot of things Cronin is doing. Favoring vets over young players in a rebuild, doing nothing to address the sorry PP, playing Johnston. But the reduction in shots against and penalties taken are positives. When Ducks play well and the explanation is always “the goaltending,” the critics lose me. I hope Cronin isn’t the coach moving forward because his style doesn’t fit our young talent, but he is doing what I think he was hired to do. Instill a disciplined, defense oriented system.
I’d argue favoring vets over young players is kinda the point of rebuilding. Like Dumo and Trouba were out there closing the game yesterday, should it have been Minty and helleson just for the experience, or is part of rebuilding, watching vets perform while you gain the strength, confidence, experience to be the one closing out games ?
There is definitely a balance, but I think Cronin is doing fine, and if he wasn’t doing a good job developing the players he would be fired and someone brought in to match verbeeks vision of how to develop players properly.
And clearly he is a coach, who has years of experience at multiple levels, I am sure this is not the first time the PP has struggled. But I am 100% sure If what you said true, it’s the first time him and his staff have tried ZERO things to improve it.
