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Confirmed with Link: Hartford Wolfpack fire HC Keith McCambridge

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The Rangers should offer the job to Rikard Gronborg. He wants to coach in the NHL someday. He has dual US-Swedish citizenship. His wife is an American girl. He went to school here. Someone isn't hiring him without NHL or AHL experience. If Gronborg plays his cards right and is patient, he eventually replaces Quinn. The average NHL coach lasts 3-4 years before the players get sick of him and stop listening.
 
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SingnBluesOnBroadway said:
I'm not going to pretend I'm expert in the Wolfpack, but can anyone further elaborate about what made this such as mess there this year?
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There are plenty of factors, but the central one was that there just wasn’t enough talent there. As has been pointed out, most of the Rangers best prospects played elsewhere for most of the season. And there weren’t enough quality AHL vets to fill the gaps.

But besides that, the team’s level of play was lackluster the times that I saw them. You could just see the lack of engagement. That’s on the coach.
 
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I still think they had enough talent to at least push for a playoff spot. Schneider, Holland, Butler (who was admittedly awful), Beleskey, Bigras, O'Gara, Gilmour, Tokarski, and Mazanec is absolutely a competitive core of veteran AHL players. Lettieri then produced at a PPG and established himself as a real 4A star and Fogarty took a massive step forward. Right there you have a top six and half of a decent defense. And what should have been good goalies.

Halfway through, they were barely mediocre, but then it all fell apart. Not just from guys moving up. Gettinger got hurt and disappeared for a long time. Same for Meskanen. Fontaine started off well but then his offense went dormant. When Andersson came back he didn't look like he could be bothered to try. On defense I was impressed with Lindgren from day one, but he of course still made rookie mistakes. To a lesser extent, Hajek as well. Bigras was pretty good. O'Gara was surprisingly not very good. I think Crawley sucks and while Gilmour is a great threat and contributor offensively, I think he's abhorrent defensively.

The bad defense looked systemic to me. Disorganized, guys making the wrong play not because they're bad but because they didn't seem to know where to go with it. And the overall effort level never seemed great. Some guys, Lettieri, Lindgren, Fontaine, O'Donnell, etc., they always played hard. Otherwise, I didn't see much team-wide intensity.

IDK. I think there was enough there that they should have been way better.

Note: I watched probably about 15 full games, more in the first half than the second, and parts of maybe 10 others.
 
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Not sure what to think here. Obviously Hartford was a dumpster fire and lacked talent. But I thought when they hired mccambride that it was a good hire and he’d be a huge upgrade over Kenny g. But don’t follow the team close enough to know what went wrong...but seemed like enough lack of talent to not blame the coaches

Could the fact that he was brought in under av and not Quinn be a factor in wanting a change?
 
Playing the same system, proper support, conditioning & nutrition for the players.
Increase the number of coaches & improve the standards expected.
It requires an investment in the program which starts at the top. Will that be done or not ?
Otherwise its just a revolving door

Lets hope for the best as a proper system feeding players onto the pro roster will really help improve the team over the long term.

It would be great to see the AHL team make the playoffs
 
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my guess is Lindy Ruff becomes Hartford head coach assembling his pack of assistants like James Patrick, Curt Fraser. While Rangers hire an upgrade over Ruff. I really want Paul MacLean.
 
Wasn’t over the moon when he was given the position, that I remember for sure. Seemed like an unspiring hire.

Hopefully we can get someone qualified who can bring a fresh approach.
 
WeNeverGetaGoodCoach said:
my guess is Lindy Ruff becomes Hartford head coach assembling his pack of assistants like James Patrick, Curt Fraser. While Rangers hire an upgrade over Ruff. I really want Paul MacLean.
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I would be pretty upset if this became reality.

Almost all of our significant prospects that are in Hartford are defenseman. This will likely continue to be the case for the near future. Chytil/Howden have established themselves as NHLers. Lias is less cemented, but I doubt he'll see much (if any) AHL time next year. Kakko will not play in the AHL, and Kravtsov likely wont play in the AHL. Unless we draft/acquire a forward prospect this offseason that ends up playing for Hartford, we wont have a single legitimate forward prospect in Hartford next season.

On the other hand, some combination of Lindgren, Hajek, and Rykov will likely be in the A next year. We then have guys like Keane and Reunanen who may make the jump. I think the year after next, Miller will be there. Maybe a guy like Lundkvist as well. And, we still have guys like Day playing there now. All of those guys (except maybe Day, but some are higher on him than I am) are legitimate prospects that can become NHLers.

Given what we've seen over the past two years, I certainly don't want Lindy Ruff being the man responsible for shaping and developing our young defenders. Especially since its the area that is the biggest question-mark of our rebuild thus far.
 
Matt4776 said:
I would be pretty upset if this became reality.

Almost all of our significant prospects that are in Hartford are defenseman. This will likely continue to be the case for the near future. Chytil/Howden have established themselves as NHLers. Lias is less cemented, but I doubt he'll see much (if any) AHL time next year. Kakko will not play in the AHL, and Kravtsov likely wont play in the AHL. Unless we draft/acquire a forward prospect this offseason that ends up playing for Hartford, we wont have a single legitimate forward prospect in Hartford next season.

On the other hand, some combination of Lindgren, Hajek, and Rykov will likely be in the A next year. We then have guys like Keane and Reunanen who may make the jump. I think the year after next, Miller will be there. Maybe a guy like Lundkvist as well. And, we still have guys like Day playing there now. All of those guys (except maybe Day, but some are higher on him than I am) are legitimate prospects that can become NHLers.

Given what we've seen over the past two years, I certainly don't want Lindy Ruff being the man responsible for shaping and developing our young defenders. Especially since its the area that is the biggest question-mark of our rebuild thus far.
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James Patrick over 1200 NHL games on defense and Ruff almost 700 NHL games on defense (not to mention over 1500 NHL games as a head coach) is not the worst option for our Defensive prospects. As opposed to the guy they fired who never played or coached in NHL.
 
WeNeverGetaGoodCoach said:
James Patrick over 1200 NHL games on defense and Ruff almost 700 NHL games on defense (not to mention over 1500 NHL games as a head coach) is not the worst option for our Defensive prospects. As opposed to the guy they fired who never played or coached in NHL.
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I don't care how many games he played at defense. I care that when he coached our defense, they all looked like shit.

Good players can be bad coaches and vice versa.

I don't know enough about James Patrick as a coach to formulate an educated opinion. Maybe Patrick is great for young d-men... I have no clue. Maybe Ruff as the HC is more hands-off and allows Patrick to successfully develop our kids. Because of my lack of knowledge re: Patrick, I couldn't tell you in good faith that you're incorrect or that I disagree.

But I would be very anxious going into next year with the head coach of our development team consisting of primarily defenders being the guy that made our NHL defense look like the leagues' worst.
 
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Matt4776 said:
I don't care how many games he played at defense. I care that when he coached our defense, they all looked like ****.

Good players can be bad coaches and vice versa.

I don't know enough about James Patrick as a coach to formulate an educated opinion. Maybe Patrick is great for young d-men... I have no clue. Maybe Ruff as the HC is more hands-off and allows Patrick to successfully develop our kids. Because of my lack of knowledge re: Patrick, I couldn't tell you in good faith that you're incorrect or that I disagree.

But I would be very anxious going into next year with the head coach of our development team consisting of primarily defenders being the guy that made our NHL defense look like the leagues' worst.
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Ruff is more of a headcoach than an assistant coach responsible for defense. Last time he was assistant handling defense was 1997.

Rangers D on paper looked pretty much like one of the worst in NHL, that is why it performed that way.
 
What kind of coach was this guy? Was he a demanding type like Quinn? It seems a lot of people feel that HWP underperformed this year, some of it due to seeming effort issues. That's pretty concerning.

I hope we hire someone like Quinn who teaches these guys they can't take a shift off. Right now, it's quite clear that it's better for players to develop on NYR than in Hartford. That's quite concerning as well.
 
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