I'm also under the impression that you feel Babcock is messing up, I would just add that he's a part of the team so if with another coach we'd be the 2nd best team and with him we're the 5th best or whatever, then we're the 5th best, period.
Babcock is a good coach. But he's extreme in how he deploys his players compared to the rest of the caoches in the league. And he seems to be getting more stubborn with age.
Agreed. IMO our biggest problem right now is our defence pairings. Hainsey had the most ice time of any player last night and Muzzin on the 3rd pair ... if this is going to be our plan against Boston I'd consider firing the coach now TBH. I appreciate what Babcock has done for us but I'm not sure how much I trust him going forward TBH.
It's quite crazy that it seems our coach is going to once again use Hainsey against the bergeron line despite what happened last year, even though his GM got a quality upgrade on him, that's for sure.
Are 1 goal games really that dependant on luck? When/how was this established?
It's not completely luck, but when you look across any sport, the good teams can be seen clearly by winning by big margins often and not losing by big margins very often. Whenever you compare teams just based on their records in 1-goal games, you see a whole lotta noise and weird results.
I do think goal differential is significant, not sure how significant though. WSH wasn't great in that category last season so there is that.
WSH is a weird case. They don't play the right way at all. Not last year, not this year. There is a decent chance that the cup run was just a fluke, with kuznetsov performing like an mvp caliber player.
I just had a quick peek and at a glance it looks like you're right, the West really is weak. Not sure how much that detracts from Calgary's record, no idea at all in fact how to do that calculation but yeah, the West seems to suck.
yeah it's terrible.
I don't know if you can calculate it exactly, but I can't not hold it against the surprising Flames somewhat. Even just a handful more games against bottom feeders can explain the difference in the standings.