Bourne Endeavor
Registered User
System and regular system buy in has been great.
Line matching pretty good.
Timeouts not good, we could have used one tonight to stem the bleeding.
Lineup and lines changing mediocre, he did a good job changing it up for game 5 and it sparked the team but it wasn't enough in game 6.
General reading of who is going and adjusting ice time accordingly has been bad. E.g., not laying off millers ice time in that one game where he sucked. Letting Mik boat anchor a whole line for 1.75 playoff series.
PK great, PP started off promising with movement base but ended up terrible.
In-game tactical adjustments like adjusting to Nashville and now Oilers heavy forecheck, non-existent.
Overall, a good coach with some noticeable warts. I'm certainly not going to read him the riot act after how terrific our season turned out to be, win or lose tomorrow night, but if these mistakes continue into next season without meaningful improvement, I'm going to be far more concerned.
The big thing Tocchet needs to learn is recognizing live when his systems aren't working. I don't know whether it's overly cautious conservativism where he doesn't want to make adjustments too quickly in case it's simply a poor shift or lapse in judgement from the player or if he's too rigid and just assumes everything will correct itself.
Either way, that can't happen next year if we want to remain consistent.
And for the love of god, hire a powerplay coach. Start a damn intervention if that's what it takes. There is absolutely zero excuse for how inept our powerplay became. Unfortunately, this goes back to the above criticism. We're locked into specific set plays that teams have long figured out and Tocchet won't move away from them.
What frustrates me is they, seemingly, did adjust entirely on accident and it worked. That dynamic movement of Boeser skating up to the point and Petey switching into the bumper line threw Edmonton off completely since they probably expected the typical one timer. No idea why they didn't stick with it.