I like Trotz. More than that, i love the fact that Caps finally have a coach with experience. It not hard to see that Trotz has made some positive changes. There are however a few things that drive me absolutely nuts, his decisions on certain things baffle me:
His love for Backstrom. Every scoresheet i checked at least in this series Backstrom has played more minutes than Ovechkin. I understand that Backs plays on the Pk and Ovi is not getting as much PP time as we would like due to less power plays but still, a few games i saw Backstrokes ice time be a couple of minutes higher than Ovis. Trotz lights up when he talks about Ovechkin, but actions speak louder than words. To me its clear who his favorite player is on this team. Its just prostrating considering Backy has been MIA most of this series.
He seems to trust Mojo more than Kuzya. Last game Mojo had more ice time and more PP time even though Kuzya has more than outperformed him in this and last series too i believe. I just don't understand the logic behind giving the inferior player more ice time in the most important games of the season. Again he seems to have this man love for certain players than i believe is hurting this team.
Not putting Ovechkin out when the teams pulls their goalie. Again, actions speak louder than words. He can talk about how much he loves Ovi all he wants but he sits him the last few minutes of the game when they are up. I don't understand that either. I thought Ovi was one of the better defensive forwards on this team this year, i recall Trotz himself saying that earlier in the season. But more importantly, why would you embarrass your captain and the best player this franchise has ever seen by making it painfully obvious that you do not trust him in certain situations. Ovi will never come out and say anything about it but i truly believe that this has to bother him on some level. In the end of the day, he is one of the top players, for better or for worse i believe you need to have you best players out when the game matters most.
Another thing i wanted to add. Did anybody else hear Trotz say that they have yet to play their best hockey? After 6 freaking games they still did not give everything they got. So where is their best hockey, still in Nashville.....so when will we see their best game, Wednesday, next year...maybe its a 5 year plan??? To me this is the most ridiculous comments made by a Caps coach since BB said he would bet his house Caps would not loose game 7 to Montreal.