Hall had one great year after a stern talking to about what he wanted for his future and then went back to himself after losing. He is still a great player, nobody debates that, but he works from home a lot as well.
Also Eberle didn't just get traded and become way better, he started taking off when they started winning.... weird.
But yea, coaches and players saying these things over and over means nothing, they don't know the game like we do.
Coaches and players say this stuff over and over in part because they cannot say, in public, 'we lost because our team was not good enough, we did not have enough talent to win'. When a player or coach says that, or even implies that, the next thing they receive is ticket out of town. So there has to be another way to talk about winning and losing without acknowledging that the team tried as hard as they could and simply were not good enough, and that is this nebulous thing called 'culture' which winning teams have and losing teams do not have. I'm not saying culture doesn't exist. I'm saying that it is more of a maximization issue - you worry about culture when your team is good and you want it to be great. When your team is bad, you probably just have bad players, and should not be concerned about making cultural moves unless they also make the team on the ice better.
But beyond that, coaches and players say this sort of stuff about 'wanting it more' because they have NO CONTROL over their team - it is ultimately up to the general manager to provide coaches with the tools to win, and teammates with effective compatriots. I think pretty much any coach knows when he has the tools to win and when he is simply left without that, but I don't think he spends much time worrying about that because it is NOT HIS JOB. His job is to maximize the number of wins he does get out of a given group, or with Ruff this year, to let the group grow and learn.
Regarding Hall, he had a major knee injury that cost him half a season - to overlook this injury in favor of castigating him for having a 'bad attitude' is exactly the sort of stuff I am talking about. Hall was leading the league in breakaways - do you think Hall was trying to miss all those breakways? Was he just trying hard to get them and then just not giving max effort on the shot? I'm not going to lie and say I don't think Hall is capable of having a bad attitude - he certainly is. Get the guy on a winning team and I don't think that's a problem anymore.
Eberle didn't get better at all, the point is that he wasn't a broken player when he was traded from Edmonton - he had a bad playoff run and they assumed he just couldn't win in the playoffs, and he goes to the Island and they win several playoff rounds and he scores plenty of goals in those games.
