Should Cronin be fired? Yay or Nay?

[eaterfan]

Myron Rolle was a safety who was a Rhodes scholar and became a neurosurgeon.

 

[Zegs2sendhelp]

lol the percentage of this poll is wild

So naturally he’s not fired

 

[TheGoodShepard1]

To answer the overarching question, yes, if for the simple reason that although this team admittedly has been better in transition over the past month or so, despite employing 2 or 3 different systems at this point, through 125 games, this team has no concept of how to work the puck into the middle of the ice in the offensive zone (short of Terry trying to dangle through 3 guys trying to get it there); if the perimeter is Pride Rock, the slot may as well be the Elephant Graveyard. The basic premise of what we do is try to win puck battles down low or below the goal line (apparently not enough because all of our best players are not fit to retrieve pucks or are not physically developed enough to outmuscle the opposition over a full 60 minutes), send the puck around the perimeter from one point to the other point, and blast away hoping for a tip or the occasional rebound if anyone even works their way to the front of the goal. Net result: we're usually one-and-done in the offensive zone and what we run is completely antithetical to Cronin's entire ethos as a head coach.

There's nothing even remotely close to some of the basic principles I see watching any other team play: no weave concepts up high, no subtle picks to create space, very little interchanging up high between forwards and defensemen to cause confusion (our guys essentially function as a 4th-man rover with no forward committing to cover the point; and this goes double for the PP). We may not have the horses that the other teams have, but it is inexcusable with the pedigree we've got up front to generate as little offense as we do night in and night out.

 

[ScarTroy]

I’m just tired of watching this system. The defense is better but still bleeds chances against. On offense once we pass the blue line it looks like a team that’s never played together once. While the team has technically improved, I just don’t think it’s enough to warrant keeping Cronin around during these critical years where we either leave the rebuild, or we continuously rebuild like Buffalo.

 

[Hey234]

The stats are clear:

GF - 32nd overall
GA - 13th overall
PP - 31st overall
PK - 28th overall
SA - 2nd overall
Shots - 21st overall

Offensively, they don't shoot enough and their power play is awful so they don't score enough goals. Defensively, 5v5 has given up less goals this season. However, they are hemorrhaging shots, awful on PK, and being buoyed by solid goaltending. It's a recipe for failure.

The improvement this season seems almost exclusively on the shoulders of a refocused Terry, matured LaCombe, additions of Dumoulin & Trouba, and incredible goaltending. They have slightly improved in one are in spite of Cronin. There is no way to justify how they are playing. The coach has not created a structure that is effective after 3 tries in 1.5 years. It's time, fire Cronin.

Edit: added Dumoulin and Trouba

 

[eaterfan]

The stats are clear:

GF - 32nd overall
GA - 13th overall
PP - 31st overall
PK - 28th overall
SA - 2nd overall
Shots - 21st overall

Offensively, they don't shoot enough and their power play is awful so they don't score enough goals. Defensively, 5v5 has given up less goals this season. However, they are hemorrhaging shots, awful on PK, and being buoyed by solid goaltending. It's a recipe for failure.

The improvement this season seems almost exclusively on the shoulders of a refocused Terry, matured LaCombe, additions of Dumoulin & Trouba, and incredible goaltending. They have slightly improved in one are in spite of Cronin. There is no way to justify how they are playing. The coach has not created a structure that is effective after 3 tries in 1.5 years. It's time, fire Cronin.

Edit: added Dumoulin and Trouba

The team has been just as bad since the Trouba trade. I didn't think it's fair to say he's part of the improvement. The team looks worse with them on the ice now. And it's taking away playing time from young guys who need it.

All that is another strike against Cronin.

 

[KelVarnsen]

Sticky this thread up! Nice.

And deserved. He gotta go.

 

[HanSolo]

The team has been just as bad since the Trouba trade. I didn't think it's fair to say he's part of the improvement. The team looks worse with them on the ice now. And it's taking away playing time from young guys who need it.

All that is another strike against Cronin.

Well no I can't agree with this entirely and I have a first class seat on the fire Cronin train. After the Fowler trade we did have that run of games where the team genuinely and legitimately played better hockey between both the offense and defense. I don't know if it was a product of Trouba stepping up as a leader in the room, or fear of a trade in the room, or Cronin actually breaking through and motivating the team or some combo of the three, but the team played much better hockey than we've seen since the Calgary game. Whatever the source, the effect seems to have worn off and we're just left with memories of how well this team can, but usually, doesn't play and most of those performances were against really good teams.

I think what should've been fireable after this stretch was how the Duck put up a horror show of a performance against St. Louis Thursday and with a day off between games, time to make adjustments and work on problem areas in practice, the Ducks showed up to the game against Philly, a game where they knew their opponent would be fired up by the crowd over off ice drama, and they played an even worse game. Arguably their worst of the entire season and got shut out by one of the worst goalies in the NHL. After all that Cronin tells Derek Lee that there's no alternative formulas to produce offense and increase scoring other than shooting the puck more and winning more battles.

I mean to me, I've said it a number of times he should have been fired after admitting to the public that for the last 20 games of the season last year he stopped coaching to watch and learn from what would happen if the players were left to coach themselves. That's basically a quarter of a season with young prospects still developing and needing training and guidance that they were just left to figure it out on their own. That to me is a fireable offense on any team, but especially a developing team like ours. But maybe my standard for coaching in this league and what I expect from men with the job is too high. We're at the quarter mark and our coach is saying there's nothing he can do as coach to improve the offensive anemia this team has shown halfway through a season, it's on the players to just shoot the puck more.

I mean that is so incandescently stupid. They're struggling to shoot the puck because the offensive systems in place or "the formula" is not conducive to offensive success in this league and/or the team is not adequately prepared to execute at a high level though game prep in practice and you have the players still telling the media that the players feel disconnected with each other and we're 44 GAMES IN. That's squarely in the purview of the coaching staff.

There aren't many people still defending Cronin but it is baffling to me that there's anyone still doing it. He has to go. He's already done enough damage to this team's culture and the development of its youth.

 

[Firequacker]

Cronin talks like he's a fan analyzing problems that are wholly outside of his control, not the literal head coach. But he's supposedly there to teach the team work ethic and accountability. I know I harp on that point a lot, but it gets more infuriating with every press conference. Shouldn't accountability start at the top?

How is the team supposed to respect this guy? Genuinely, how? Are we assuming they're just unaware that he goes out after every game and admits he doesn't know how to do his job? And sure, you can say that's just media stuff and doesn't matter, it's not like he's only telling them "I don't know, skate harder and figure it out" in practice. (Though apparently he did that for a quarter of last season so who knows.) But it does matter. You don't have to give the press a behind the scenes documentary, but are we meant to believe the coach is demonstrating a healthy culture of accountability in private while actively refusing to take any responsibility in public?

If one of the players came out and told a reporter "I don't know, the system just isn't working, it doesn't produce shots, it's not like we can just skate harder," how many nanoseconds would it take for his ass to be nailed to the bench?

 

[Hockey Duckie]

Well no I can't agree with this entirely and I have a first class seat on the fire Cronin train. After the Fowler trade we did have that run of games where the team genuinely and legitimately played better hockey between both the offense and defense. I don't know if it was a product of Trouba stepping up as a leader in the room, or fear of a trade in the room, or Cronin actually breaking through and motivating the team or some combo of the three, but the team played much better hockey than we've seen since the Calgary game. Whatever the source, the effect seems to have worn off and we're just left with memories of how well this team can, but usually, doesn't play and most of those performances were against really good teams.

I think what should've been fireable after this stretch was how the Duck put up a horror show of a performance against St. Louis Thursday and with a day off between games, time to make adjustments and work on problem areas in practice, the Ducks showed up to the game against Philly, a game where they knew their opponent would be fired up by the crowd over off ice drama, and they played an even worse game. Arguably their worst of the entire season and got shut out by one of the worst goalies in the NHL. After all that Cronin tells Derek Lee that there's no alternative formulas to produce offense and increase scoring other than shooting the puck more and winning more battles.

I mean to me, I've said it a number of times he should have been fired after admitting to the public that for the last 20 games of the season last year he stopped coaching to watch and learn from what would happen if the players were left to coach themselves. That's basically a quarter of a season with young prospects still developing and needing training and guidance that they were just left to figure it out on their own. That to me is a fireable offense on any team, but especially a developing team like ours. But maybe my standard for coaching in this league and what I expect from men with the job is too high. We're at the quarter mark and our coach is saying there's nothing he can do as coach to improve the offensive anemia this team has shown halfway through a season, it's on the players to just shoot the puck more.

I mean that is so incandescently stupid. They're struggling to shoot the puck because the offensive systems in place or "the formula" is not conducive to offensive success in this league and/or the team is not adequately prepared to execute at a high level though game prep in practice and you have the players still telling the media that the players feel disconnected with each other and we're 44 GAMES IN. That's squarely in the purview of the coaching staff.

There aren't many people still defending Cronin but it is baffling to me that there's anyone still doing it. He has to go. He's already done enough damage to this team's culture and the development of its youth.

You need to go one step further. Verbeek wanted the culture Cronin was bringing. It is within that culture is how the youths would develop in the eyes of Verbeek. That old school mentality of playing through injury culture. Cronin is Verbeek's avatar instead of going after some like Carberry, who knew something about improving the PP at the NHL level.

Cronin's success at the AHL was mostly due to having far more older players carrying the load for his teams. That is what I discovered when looking into his coaching. Which means Cronin's success at the AHL level was being parlayed into knowing how to develop youths. We see at the NHL level that it's our older players/vets that get what Cronin is spitting out, but our youths are meandering. LaCombe and Helleson are older youths who have been taught how to play defense at the NCAA level for several years.

As for Cronin being hands off for about the last 20 games of the season to see how the kids developed on their own was when LaCombe's game, both offensively and defensively, took off. LaCombe was a polished 2-way D in junior and senior year in college and his college team's PP1 QB.

LaCombe's last 20 games of 2023-24: 1g + 7a = 8 pts (0.40 ppg), a +3 rating, and 19:06 ATOI (as per Hockey-Reference).

 

[MMC]

Still no

 

[Yemeth]

Still no

Somehow this reminds me of Bill Hicks being for the war but against the troops .

Would you change your mind if a specific coach would be interested in coaching the Ducks (of course, doubt that the Ducks have too many suitors)?

 

[MMC]

Somehow this reminds me of Bill Hicks being for the war but against the troops .

Would you change your mind if a specific coach would be interested in coaching the Ducks (of course, doubt that the Ducks have too many suitors)?

Sure, I mean I wouldn’t even be upset if they announced Cronin was fired today, I just really don’t think it’s going to have the affect most people here seem to think it will as the roster is incredibly flawed so I’d prefer to just keep him around until at least the offseason. Having some interim guy coach this team for a few months isn’t going to do anything for anybody. I’m not a fan of making changes simply for the sake of them.

 

[CrazyDuck4u]

Someone show this poll to PV.. ASAP lol

 

[Hockey Duckie]

Sure, I mean I wouldn’t even be upset if they announced Cronin was fired today, I just really don’t think it’s going to have the affect most people here seem to think it will as the roster is incredibly flawed so I’d prefer to just keep him around until at least the offseason. Having some interim guy coach this team for a few months isn’t going to do anything for anybody. I’m not a fan of making changes simply for the sake of them.

I don't see Cronin getting canned during the season, especially after missing out on two other coaches who were picked up in-season with Montgomery and McLellan. Verbeek is on this Cronin castaway to the end of the season.

Several teams have many flaws that they can overcome some of them or more. Cronin is lacking in creativity to cover flaws, but our goalies have been covering up many flaws. When Cronin could only muster one extra point last year with a superior roster upgrade, especially on the blue line, is when I doubted Cronin's abilities. Zegras' offense being reduced to ashes was just adding salt to an open wound. Eakins did more with far less talent while still improving talent.

 

[ScarTroy]

Eakins did more with far less talent while still improving talent.

Dead last. And it’s been shown multiple times not to be the case, Cronin didn’t have access to the top 6 last year despite you repeatedly using 9 players as top 6 to “prove” it. Both are terrible coaches who don’t deserve to be in the NHL, and go figure one of them is somewhere in Europe.

 

[MCB]

Maybe this is all a part of verbeeks master plan, bring in an awful head coach, make the team miserable, then when the real coach comes in they all take to him and follow him blindly because he's not Cronin. Like in highschool I had a really bad geometry teacher and when the school fired him (for a lot, not just being bad) we all loved the replacement and put in the work.

Or maybe I'm giving Verbeek too much credit.