Our system right now is pretty much man-to-man, with a mix of zone defense, and we're running the 1-2-2 that most teams similarly do, sprinkled-in with some amount of neutral zone pressure and whatnot. It's not rocket science.
But the way we set defensive attributions, and the lack of clarity when it comes to it all since what St. Louis advocates for (or at least did before this year) is basically a type of "position-less" hockey most prevalent in the NCAA, with some limitations suited to the NHL games (a focus on center responsibility).
All of which means that players need to make reads on the fly a lot of the times instead of having more specific roles to play on the ice.
All teams play positionless hockey to varying degrees, yes some teams will try to switch back to the natural positions as early as they feel they can safely do it while others including us are less strict about when to make the switch.
Like you say it's not rocket science and while different systems might ask players to make more/better reads and therefore be impacted more by hockey iq or lack thereof, I feel like the whole thing is getting overstated. If you lack hockey iq you are going to struggle no matter the system in place.
The trade-off here is that if everybody is up to speed, then we have more flexibility both offensively and defensively since our F1s, F2s, and F3s can change on the fly and our D can permutate as well. This frees-up a lot of ice to produce offense and many variations that lead to increasing scoring.
Inversely, since adapting requires reading the play at all times, it also adds a time variable to the processing of the game for our players. Meaning that if they aren't able to react very quickly (aforementioned high requirement on hockey sense) then they actually lose tempo vs. a simpler, slightly more rigid and less flexible gameplan.
So yeah, St. Louis' system actually definitely requires more out of our players when it comes to hockey sense vs. what is most common in the NHL right now.
That system works in the NCAA, and might eventually make it to the NHL as more than the "side concept" that it is now, but that time hasn't come yet given how structured of a game eventual Stanley-Cup winners have been playing basically since the end of the 1980s.
Sure but like I said the requirements are getting overstated, if you can't process the game and make reads you're going to struggle, no system will change that.
Then comes the second part of your post.
And frankly I kind of agree in a sense. Since we're shooting for an effective gameplan once our personnel turnover is done there's no need to "cater" to our existing players per se and we should instead try to institute the gameplan that will be most conducive to wins when our roster is eventually deep and strong enough to actually contend.
But then again, the mark of a good coach is to be able to win no matter the circumstances and get the best out of his team. You don't need to adapt the system that much to the roster if you can just do some small tweaks and be "good to go".
That very inflexibility (or unwillingness to change) in strategy is one of the factors that actually characterize bad coaches from good ones.
And also, ask the Oilers, the Sabres, and other such teams' fans how much losing their focus on winning has cost them in the long term, and how much longer their rebuilds have had to be because of it.
At the end of the day you need to eventually right the ship and start going, or you get stuck in the mud, lose traction, and have to do it all over again. And that requires winning some hockey games, which requires both better personnel, but also at least competent coaching.
The mark of a good coach isn't to win no matter the circumstances because sometimes like the past few years the goal/direction of management wasn't to get the most wins but to teach and develop the players for long term success. And in such situations sacrificing long term development for a few extra points is the sign of a bad coach.
Now it's true that most of the time coaches are hired to be fired so they focus on short term goals like winning the most games possible because they are expecting in a few years to be let go no matter what and will be more likely to be hired if they can point to those extra wins they squeezed out. But that doesn't seem to be the relationship Hughes has with MSL which is a good thing.
Now at some point yes we will want/expect the coach to focus more on the short term where wins matter more and it's certainly a question mark whether or not MSL will be able to make that adjustment, but until the mandate from management changes to be win no matter what we can't say one way or another. I would point out that this year there has been some change in terms of team expectations (In the mix), and we have seen MSL make adjustments so it's not like we can say that MSL is inflexible, but the jury will be out for what is likely to be quite some time.
