I have no doubt he is under a lot of stress. But lets be honest, he's a coach who has zero expectations to do anything other than find ice time for some young players and keep the team from imploding.
I'm pretty sure a coach who knows every decision can mean the difference between a handful of points and keeping or losing his job has more on his plate than a guy who can say "I think I will play Hajek on the top pair for 25 games... that should be funny to watch!" and not even remotely be on the hot seat.
I don't doubt the numbers, but they are driven by a stretch around the end of the year and have since ticked back up.
5v5 Corsi numbers
Date | | Range | | CF | CA | CF% |
1-Oct | 25-Oct | Games | 1 to 8 | 301 | 406 | 42.57 |
25-Oct | 13-Nov | Games | 9 to 16 | 313 | 410 | 43.29 |
13-Nov | 29-Nov | Games | 17 to 24 | 309 | 384 | 44.59 |
29-Nov | 15-Dec | Games | 25 to 32 | 315 | 392 | 44.55 |
15-Dec | 3-Jan | Games | 33 to 40 | 338 | 361 | 48.35 |
3-Jan | 22-Jan | Games | 41 to 48 | 388 | 371 | 51.12 |
22-Jan | 13-Feb | Games | 49 to 56 | 404 | 398 | 50.37 |
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(Just as a reference the best CF teams 8 game averages are 410, 405, and 403 and the worst CF teams are 331, 326 and 303. The median is 351.
The best CA teams 8 game averages are 320, 327 and 329 and the worst CF teams are 389, 391 and 403. The median is 357. Not at all useful for a direct comparison but just a general idea of bad vs good)
Basically the shots for were awful, eventually went up to a bit to below average and then went bananas and then even more bananas while the shots against were awful before dropping nicely to a bit below average and is lately back near awful again.
So in terms of CA against, we've essentially gone from being atrocious, to very bad, to slightly below average and back to very bad and have labeled that growth.
The good news is that over the same 8 game blocks their xGA has dropped (from the high 17's-low 18's) to the low 15s and has stayed pretty steady with only a tiny recent jump. So that's an improvement. An improvement from almost indescribably bad to just bad, but an improvement nonetheless.
Anyway I don't doubt there is truth to the narrative that the team is "coming together" or whatever, I just think the improvements have more to do with making obvious roster moves (like Hajek) and the offense just being on fire than it does with anything else.