I've been watching a bunch of games of the 18's, and I'm going to restate what I said earlier in the season that I don't like the coaching for this team. I think it's really poor, and if the WJC18 is played this year, they'll be at a big coaching disadvantage.
There are a few things I wanted to point to that I don't like.
Tactically, I don't think the coach is good. I'll give an example. He had a defensemen in the box for around another 10 seconds when a player took a penalty to make it a 5 on 3. Instead of using two forwards and one defensemen for the ensuing face-off, he uses two defensemen and one forward. The defensemen who took the first penalty comes out of the box, and he has no clue where to be trying to kill the penalty as the second forward. It led to a long possession in the zone on the PP for the opposing team, and hurt the team's ability to clear the puck.
His player deployment also makes absolutely no sense to me. I know these coaches are tasked with developing all players, but I can't remember a team where the waters were so muddied by the coaching decisions of who was actually good at what part of the game. Players such as St. Louis, Brown, Devine play the most or close to it among the forwards, even though they are the worst forwards. These guys also tend to play with skill players and their lines often are the first line out there or close to it. He gives Janicke so little ice time, even though he does a lot with his ice time. He'll use about 8-9 forwards on the PP with any regularity (Hughes, Devine, Gasseau, Duke, Pastujov, Boucher, Wilmer, St. Louis, Brown), but Janicke whose better offensively than at least half of these players doesn't play the PP. I'd also argue Savage is a better offensive player than a number of those players.
He refuses to use Ty Gallagher on the PP, a defensemen with a great shot and the best offensive skills of all the RH defensemen. Instead, he uses Schmidt, if he wants a right shot, even though Schmidt is not much of an offensive player. With the forwards, his PP/PK decisions almost seem like he pick the best PK'ers first, and then lets the guys who aren't among the regular PK'ers on the PP as his way of giving out equal roles. And usually the few guys who get to play both end up being the worst forwards on the team. It makes no sense to me. The guys who are actually the best offensively and defensively only play PP or PK.
And he's created uneven RH/LH pairs for the defense by using this Behrens-Hughes pairing. I don't even think Hughes is good on his off-side, so it makes no sense. Those are probably his two best defensemen, so thats likely the reason, but I don't think they pair that well together. And then it leaves an uneven 4th pair using two right shots.