It's fascinating to see how a guy like Bednar approaches the game vs. a guy like Cooper, or Julien. All very different from one another, all successful bench bosses.
I guess one question to ask is, does one need to be an elite coach to win a Stanley Cup? Obviously it helps but the answer is also very obvious: No. The next question to ask is whether or not Jared Bednar is a good enough coach for the Avs to win it all. I guess that remains to be seen but I think so.
Not all coaches are good at all the things. Even a super-elite coach like Quenneville seems to struggle with icing a competent power play, even when he's handed gobs of talent, whereas that's about the one thing IMO that Tony Granato is pretty good at. Bednar remains a favorite of mine because he's anti-old school and utilizes a system that takes perfect advantage of the speed and talent at his disposal. That said, I would like to see him make wholesale changes to the power play (and that may require a change in assistants), adjustments to the penalty kill, and more emphasis on net-front play.
Interesting to note that in last night's presser, Bednar said that both JTC and Nuke have had numerous individual meetings with the coaches where they went over what they've been doing wrong and were shown video of past play where they were more effective. Also, TMV asked if there was a limit as to how much the team will tolerate bad play from the rookies (the question included Byram but was clearly about Timmins) and Bednar acknowledged there is indeed a limit. I am glad he's a guy who tries to let players play through their extended slumps, frustrating as it is to see sometimes.
Couldn't agree more with this. I tend to think coaches get undue blame and credit for a team's success/failure in most cases. There are some situations where it's obvious they should credit credit or blame, but in most cases I think the credit/blame lies mostly with the players.
And just like championship teams can be good power play teams, but awful penalty kill teams, and vice versa, there are things that coaches are good at, and other things they're not as good at. There shouldn't be an expectation that every team/coach is perfect.
All I know is, I don't think I've ever seen an Avalanche team play "hockey" as good as this Bednar team. Those championship teams under Crawford and Hartley may or may not have been better teams, but I don't think they played better hockey.
I think the roster under Roy was the biggest problem, not his coaching, but one of the things his critics said was that the Avs needed a good systems coach to drill it into their heads, until everything was second nature.
That's what Bednar has done to a tee with this team. Most of the team is relatively solid two way players compared to past teams. Every year they've gotten better, and they're finally starting to become a Cup contender.
Last year was the first team the Avs had in forever that was a legit Cup contender, and we're already talking about firing Bednar less than a third into this year, just because the team lost two games in a row for the first time this season. It's way too soon IMO.