Quote:Originally posted by ByrdeMan@May 8 2014, 03:30 PM
Carlyle is the best coach for Toronto tbh. Team just gotta learn to listen, not his fault they are selfish thats just a characteristic that they need to learn how to get rid of.

I hope you're joking.

We're talking about a guy who burned out Kessel/JVR/Bozak because he refused to ice a proper third or fourth line. A guy who cost the Leafs a second rounder because he played Holland 5 minutes a game a dozen times, and 11 minutes per game 39 times.

A guy who continued to screw up the PP despite having an abundance of offensively geared defencemen.

A guy who thought that his 1A goalie, a guy who has never started this many games before, should let his INJURED PLAYER decide if he should go into a game - and then watched as Bernier only hurt himself more, ending his season. You've got a 1B in Reimer who was struggling, certainly, but is coming off a 924 sv% season. Going with the small sample size is the reason why everybody was on board the Grabovski deal, and what do you know, he had another good season which everybody who can look beyond SSS could see coming.

Someone who is responsible for breaking up the MacArthur/Grabovski/Kulemin line, by ignoring the value of MacArthur as a scoring winger and pissing off Grabovski who was arguably the team's only quality two way center. If he doesn't alienate both of them, they're still on the team, instead of let go for nothing in return. Not to mention the Clarkson signing wouldn't happen either.

Then we've got the trying to fit the square into the circle mentality, where he has a club geared for offence and restricts the forwards by playing his insane defensive style, which got outshot like never before.

Had it not been for Carlyle, you could have a top 9 that includes:

JVR/Grabovski/Kessel
Lupul/Kadri/MacArthur
Kulemin/Bozak/Raymond


I think you get the idea. You can flip the forwards around, but the point remains this team would have been far more dangerous had Carlyle not decided to piss off several of his underrated players.

Part of the blame goes on Nonis as well, don't get me wrong. But Carlyle is a fucking awful coach and his defensive schemes and lack of understanding of the value of possession or playing a third or fourth line should have been a damn obvious sign that he needs to go.