I hear this narrative about MSL, but I don't see where it is coming from?
Coaches are only as effective as their Leadership..
From there it is their job to ensure the team develops correctly..
He's done that every single year. What more could he possibly be doing with the players he has? The deadweight that cannot be cut.. the injuries, over and over again..
This is the final year of the tank 4.0. Starting next year he'll be under-pressure to make the playoffs..
Fans always have a tendency to overvalue the players and undervalue the coach. This bias serves them better when the roster is actually good, but often leads them to err when the roster is mediocre. The latter is even worst when it's a team like ours, with all of its history, both recent and distant.
The team was -78 overall the season before last. -39 at even strenght. They've managed to cut that down to -49 overall and -9 at even strenght, which is pretty significant, but all we hear about from MSL's critics is how they don't see progress with the team. How the defense is disorganized all the same from the season before and yet, our EV going from -39 to -9 was all because of better defending, not from offense, as we were 170-179 last season versus 169-208 the season before, which shows they allowed 29 less goals at EV and only scored 1 more goal.
One component that got a bit worst since we had many more games with a close score in 23-24 versus 22-23, is we did worst at 5v6 (empty net for opponent). We were 7v3 in 22-23 and 6v12 last season. On the other hand, we did better when our net was empty (6v5), going from 6v18 in 22-23, to 5v12 last season. Count the two together, and it's a -5 from the season before, while playing a lot more end games with a tight score.
On the PK, we got a bit of a boost. We scored 7 shorties and allowed 74 goals in 22-23, for a -67, while in 23-24, we scored 8 shorties and allowed 64 goals for a total of -56. An upgrade of +11.
The only place we stagnated or got worst was the powerplay, which is all we hear about from the many captain obvious of the board. I haven't seen a single post praising the better defense at EV, nor the slightly better PK, and how if they keep improving on that, we'll see our +/- rise again. Naaaah, the narrative is now that they won't get better unless special teams get better, especially the powerplay. We in fact scored more on the powerplay, going from 37 (22-23) to 43 GF (23-24). The one place that actually got worst is we allowed a bunch of shorties. We allowed 12 versus 5 the season before, which puts our overall PP +/- from 22-23 at +32 versus +31 for last season.
If you count PP and PK together, we were -35 in 22-23, versus -25 in 23-24. Special teams were actually better overall last season versus the previous season.
So in reality, we got slightly better to much better in most categories except for two. Allowing shorties and empty net time for the opponent.
The lack of perspective based on actual facts is astounding and made me lose respect for many poster's hockey knowledge.
It was MSL's second full season (!) as a rookie coach ffs and it was much better than his first.
