Speculation: The search for a new Head Coach - Rumors and Speculation

What type of offensive system should we run if we are fairly slow, and lack physicality. I would think rush, but being slow doesn’t seem like rush would be good either then.

The Detroit system from the Datsyuk/Zetterberg heyday. They had some physical guys (Franzen, Draper, McCarty), but their offense was built on puck possession above all - never give away the puck. They relied on passing, movement, deception, controlled zone entries. I don't know how viable it is in today's game with our players, but that's the sort of system that I think would work with the offensive talent we have. I guess Mike Babcock is available...

Yes, I'm kidding about Babcock.
 
But it also is the players, Leo is about 30 pounds below is ideal playing weight, Cutter has some strength to add. I agree system is big, but so is getting our young players reps trying to dig pucks out of the corners and winning battles. They aren’t strong enough to win them consistently right now, and with a bad system in place it’s going to be real rough.

Not every player has to be a big physical speedster to make DnC work. Speed can be made up for with positioning and skating ability. And I dont know why our "current" system even matters. New coach, new system.
 
Not every player has to be a big physical speedster to make DnC work. Speed can be made up for with positioning and skating ability. And I dont know why our "current" system even matters. New coach, new system.
Would you say on general, a 20 year old player would have better positioning / the same level of positioning / or worse positioning than a 28 year old player. On average of course ?

Edit: I was responding to someone who said we didn’t have the horses? And I asked why we didn’t have the horses. He ended up saying we have the horses, but the man on man defense left us unable to be an effective offensive team. And since DnC doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite offensive system, I am curious what others want a new coach to bring in as his vision for generating offense with our current group of players.
 
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I think it’s absolutely the players. Our big guys are either old and slow or young and need to put on muscle for their frame or don’t play as big as they are.

Our team is going to lose every game trying to out-physical a team like Vegas or St. Louis.
 
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Would you say on general, a 20 year old player would have better positioning / the same level of positioning / or worse positioning than a 28 year old player. On average of course ?

Edit: I was responding to someone who said we didn’t have the horses? And I asked why we didn’t have the horses. He ended up saying we have the horses, but the man on man defense left us unable to be an effective offensive team. And since DnC doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite offensive system, I am curious what others want a new coach to bring in as his vision for generating offense with our current group of players.

Rookies/prospects arent going to be at the same level with their positioning in general.

I dont have a problem with DnC, some of the best teams in the league use it and execute it well. Im of the opinion we didnt have the best offensive coaches to make it work, but they would have struggled with any offensive system.
 
Why do you think we don’t have the horses ?

Like our team is not built for dump and chase and never will be ? We are too old of a team and can’t get possession back ? What’s our main flaw in why we don’t have the horses ?

Who on this team gives you the impression that they are work horses?

Look at these teams that are in the playoffs; Florida, TB, Dallas, etc. all play with intensity. We play lathargic

Unfortunately, I don't believe the way the team is built right now has that.
 
Who on this team gives you the impression that they are work horses?

Look at these teams that are in the playoffs; Florida, TB, Dallas, etc. all play with intensity. We play lathargic

Unfortunately, I don't believe the way the team is built right now has that.
I think the team has a bunch of ponies. And that’s why we are struggling, even with a good system…… I don’t think our team is old enough with our studs to have any work horses.

But some combo of Leo / Cutter / McT / Sennecke / LaCombe / Minty should all be our workhorses of the future.
 
I would agree. We spent so much time chasing the puck in our own Dzone that by the time we got the puck and dumped it in, no one had energy to go after it and either went for a change or simply let the opponent easily carry the dump in back out. Rinse and repeat.
Which is funny considering Cronin was regarded as a defense first coach
 
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Who on this team gives you the impression that they are work horses?

Look at these teams that are in the playoffs; Florida, TB, Dallas, etc. all play with intensity. We play lathargic

Unfortunately, I don't believe the way the team is built right now has that.
Lacombe gives me that impression already. The rest have some growing to do.
 
Key component of dump and chase being successful is winning board battles (both in D and O zones). Something the current roster is terrible at. Maybe the next coach can help them improve, but from my perspective, current roster construction does not point to DnC as ideal zone entry system for the current roster.
 
Key component of dump and chase being successful is winning board battles (both in D and O zones). Something the current roster is terrible at. Maybe the next coach can help them improve, but from my perspective, current roster construction does not point to DnC as ideal zone entry system for the current roster.
My question is, could it be our young ducks are strong enough to win board battles consistently and getting the reps as they get stronger is the best way to teach them ?
 
My question is, could it be our young ducks are strong enough to win board battles consistently and getting the reps as they get stronger is the best way to teach them ?

Could be. There's a reason why you don't see these teams chock full of talented 19-21 year olds taking the league by storm.

I suspect it's part of the faceoff problem too.

If I were the Ducks I'd be hiring Lacombe's MMA trainer full time to work with the young players. Winning more puck battles was a big part of his improvement.
 
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Which is funny considering Cronin was regarded as a defense first coach
Oh I mean. That was the biggest farce of his tenure. The defensive metrics were worse than last year...a year he stopped coaching 20 games as an experiment to see what would happen if the players coached themselves. They were healthier and killed fewer penalties this season too.
 
So I'll try to put an end to it since I know how the board hates people who repeat themselves to beat dead horses and the mods are probably sick to death about pages of arguments on the issue. But let's see if I can recap this so far; the players in the "Q to Ducks movement" are:

  • Buccigross, who tweeted out a picture of his old ass mustachioed mug next to a flock of ducklings, and then simply didn't elaborate and left (effectively performed the gigachad meme)
  • Jimmy Murphy, the Boston-based podcaster and self-published blogger who ran with that tweet and extrapolated it out to "the job is Quenneville's if he wants it and they're 99.999% gonna hire him", who in some very coincidental timing had the Ducks' ex-coach on his podcast about 96 hours after that tweet and based on my readings of his replies to tweeters of his OP openly thinks Cronin got screwed (narrator: no matter who the Ducks hire, Q or not, Greg Cronin did not get screwed)
  • Frank Seravalli, who has really not said anything beyond the fact that the Ducks interviewed him and that he was a serious candidate and didn't mention it at all during his daily rundown show yesterday
  • Elliotte Friedman, who has basically said nothing beyond the Ducks have interviewed him and that he is a candidate, but that it's early.
I don't know man, call me a sucker or tell me I have naivete or that I'm reading the situation with rose-colored glasses. But the Samuelis are very image-conscious; I find it very hard to believe that they're gonna pour all this money into the building and the surrounding arena and amp up the fanbase like this when the team is finally ascending again with the most plum coaching vacancy in the league and puncture the balloon and deflate a not-insignificant portion of it with a controversial hire like this. I'm willing to stake my reputation (because boy am I going to get flamed if I am wrong) on this being nothing more than an exploratory due diligence interview performed by an ex-teammate GM. Please lord, let me be right.
 
So I'll try to put an end to it since I know how the board hates people who repeat themselves to beat dead horses and the mods are probably sick to death about pages of arguments on the issue. But let's see if I can recap this so far; the players in the "Q to Ducks movement" are:

  • Buccigross, who tweeted out a picture of his old ass mustachioed mug next to a flock of ducklings, and then simply didn't elaborate and left (effectively performed the gigachad meme)
  • Jimmy Murphy, the Boston-based podcaster and self-published blogger who ran with that tweet and extrapolated it out to "the job is Quenneville's if he wants it and they're 99.999% gonna hire him", who in some very coincidental timing had the Ducks' ex-coach on his podcast about 96 hours after that tweet and based on my readings of his replies to tweeters of his OP openly thinks Cronin got screwed (narrator: no matter who the Ducks hire, Q or not, Greg Cronin did not get screwed)
  • Frank Seravalli, who has really not said anything beyond the fact that the Ducks interviewed him and that he was a serious candidate and didn't mention it at all during his daily rundown show yesterday
  • Elliotte Friedman, who has basically said nothing beyond the Ducks have interviewed him and that he is a candidate, but that it's early.
I don't know man, call me a sucker or tell me I have naivete or that I'm reading the situation with rose-colored glasses. But the Samuelis are very image-conscious; I find it very hard to believe that they're gonna pour all this money into the building and the surrounding arena and amp up the fanbase like this when the team is finally ascending again with the most plum coaching vacancy in the league and puncture the balloon and deflate a not-insignificant portion of it with a controversial hire like this. I'm willing to stake my reputation (because boy am I going to get flamed if I am wrong) on this being nothing more than an exploratory due diligence interview performed by an ex-teammate GM. Please lord, let me be right.
In other words... most likely a nothingburger.
 

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