I think they can! For example, Hakstol here had a forward thinking hockey mind. He expressed ideas about Dmen and creating offense from the blueline that were a solid 4-5 years head of everyone else at the time and which would eventually be embraced by a lot of really good teams. The cutting edge stuff. His actual coaching was f***ing horrible though. Whatever the hell his ideas were, he had no methods or systems to make them be realized, despite having a bunch of dmen capable. He even actively preferred the guys who made his vision most impossible.
Rocky Thompson is similar. He expressed all the right ideas once. Valid, good takes. Knowing the theory isn't the same as using it, though. Like how having an exquisite grasp of music theory doesn't make you Bach on its own.
This isn't the same wording that Sombastate used, but as a coach I think Tortorella is proving to be quite adept at getting guys to play and do things the way he wants. He's always done that. It's just that the things he wants are damned stupid. They at least perfectly coincide with his ideas, though. Hakstol had ideas. His methods of achieving those ideas were completely contrary to those ideas. He was also actually good at getting guys to follow those methods, so there's that I guess.
Then there's AV. He was stupid at ideas. He was stupid about his pursuit of the ideas. He was stupid at getting guys to play in any consistent way.
