The thing that has always made me curious about Woodcroft was his trajectory.
I thought he did pretty well when he first came up. Felt like he distributed ice time and had roles for guys.
Felt like Bednar outclassed him and he kinda crumbled. To be fair to him, I don’t think the Oilers were winning that series regardless.
Then training camp happened (last year) and the Oilers were pretty dreadful. Luckily our PP allowed us to win games till we finally got rolling in the new year. But he had a pretty lousy playoffs and Cassidy made him look like a chump.
Skip forward to this year. Started again poorly but because of the McDavid injury, we couldn’t get on track due to our poor to average power play.
Long story short. I think Woodcroft had a tendency of over analyzing the playoff losses. I don’t think he was able to get his messages through early on. I think he was over complicated things where the players were spending more time thinking than actually playing. I think he thought he was some kind of genius. He was so arrogant and secretive about his systems. He wasn’t able or couldn’t answer simple questions.
I don’t really know how he got so far away to what he started as. Which is crazy because it was only 2 years. But by the end it felt like he was just propped up by a crazy good powerplay.
This is a pretty good analysis I think. Almost everything he did slowly got worse, not better. When you go down the list everything started ok, then started to slip as you said.
Lineup distribution and personnel decisions - started balanced; didn't move McDrai together until injury forced it; all 4 lines had a role - fast forward and it's McDrai together as a default, a random patchwork 2nd line that changes daily, and two bottom 6 lines that play like shit, also change daily and have no role.
Penalty Kill - started with Tippett's box and a consistent, defined group of personnel - fast forward and he switches to a hybrid diamond for pretty much no reason and decided to run almost every player in the roster through the PK. Results cratered and no changes seemed to be on the horizon.
Break out/in - started with everyone playing more connected. Forwards coming back deeper to break out as a unit, controlled break ins with support up ice - fast forward and forwards are blowing the zone, d men are looking to hit stretch passes that aren't there, break ins die at their blue line and the team is too spread out creating seams for teams to abuse us on all over the ice
Overall Team Management - this one may have always been poor because he didn't have a camp in his first season. Last year's camp sucked, this year's camp sucked and surprise, surprise both starts of the season sucked. As you touched on, this year's start isn't actually a whole lot different from last year's on the whole, we just didn't have the luxury of McDavid and Drai keeping everything afloat and a 40%+ PP.
If the 8-1 score didn't make it obvious enough, I knew we were in deep trouble after the first game of the year. No team, good or bad ever no shows on opening night. Some teams might get their ass kicked because they aren't good or are overmatched, but nobody lays an egg. Just doesn't happen. To no show to that degree is a pretty clear indicator the group isn't ready, and if you're not ready to start the year it quickly becomes an uphill battle to catch up. It's also no coincidence that the starts to games have instantaneously gone from a big problem to a big advantage pretty much the moment he was gone.
Woodcroft had some sort of problem getting this team ready for, well, anything really. Starts of games? Sucked. Starts to seasons? Sucked. Starts to playoff series? Sucked. Play after time off? Sucked. This is what did him in above all.
