This was also the start of an interesting trend that really became clear with AV. Homer was asking Lavi to run a defensive system at the time. He tried to reconcile what he preferred with what his boss wanted, and confusion reigned. They hire Berube. Berube coached
way more conservatively here than he did in St Louis. I always described them as "deliberate." Heavy emphasis on defensive safety and minimizing risk, and with the way this team chases particular examples I have no doubt they were trying to copy Tortorella in large part. Hakstol? His Kraken teams so far are way more open than the pure perimeter hockey slog he provided here. The real kicker was when AV, who doesn't have any idea that defense even exists, suddenly tried for the first time in his career to have his team play risk-free defensively minded hockey and it was a debacle.
Finally, they just hired someone native to the preferred style. I think it is very, very likely that The Common Denominators have demanded their coaches play their rosters in a style that heavily favors defense. Which in turn seems to have begun when they were panicking and trying to figure out how to make Bryzgalov workable. Which in turn happened because they panicked over Bob after ridiculously committing to Leighton as starter while he was hiding an injury.
Everything goes back to Leighton.
View attachment 845931
