If I had fallen asleep and went into hibernation during the Green hiring, but was somehow awakened by the Ullmark trade, I would have thought ''Man, the Sens may actually be a dark horse to be pretty good this year'' until someone told me ''Yeah, but they hired Travis Green to be head coach''.
I hated when the Devils hired him to be associate coach last year. The difference from the Green Canucks to the Boudreau Canucks that same season was insane. They got better in every metric, other than goaltending, which was fine before Green was fired. That's just how bad they were under Green that they somehow went 8-15 (or whatever) with better than average goaltending under Green that year. Then the Devils had their best goaltending of the season when Green was interim head coach thanks to the two deadline acquisitions, yet still finished several games below NHL 500 under him because they got worse at everything else and the good goaltending was negated by the suck that is Travis Green.
I'm surprised the guy lasted as long as he did in Vancouver. The bubble playoffs bought him some time. I remember when the covid shortened season was coming to a close (Which was a playoff miss yet again for the Green coached Canucks) and there were reports that Ron Francis and Seattle were very interested in hiring Travis Green as the first head coach for the Kraken if the Canucks didn't hurry up and extend Travis Green, who was a lame duck coach. They extended Green before he could become a free agent, only to fire him and the guy who hired and re-signed him about 2 months into the next season.
Not defending TG but the nucks had already turned a corner before TG was fired. We had won 3 straight and had been playing better prior to that.
The whole Bruce thing was a facade that was on Demko 100% nothing changed defensively and the only real difference was we played the shit out of the vets, screwing up Podz and Hogz and we had absolutely not defensive system, it was pond hockey.
You do remember his 2nd season right? He was completely unable to adapt when Demko went down.
We saw what an elite coach did when he lost his vezina level goalie, the team played low event smart hockey.
Bruce was a fun story but someone already did a video showing just how little things actually changed.
TG's biggest issue in Van was he played a complicated system that was high risk which led to a lot of odd man rushes. Hopefully for the sens sake he's changed but the fact that he brought in the two jack ass assistant coaches, doesn't bode well.
I don't blame him for NJ, they had shit goaltending, decimated with injuries and nothing to play for.