I've been following this thread for awhile, but have not posted much. However, with the regular season being over I thought I'd offer up my 2 cents on the team and TG.
The Good:
- Give credit where credit is due - at the time Barry bringing in TG, OZ, and DG was incredible. I'm not a college hockey insider or anything, but I would have been happy with any one of those three as head coaches. He did blow my socks off. No shame in losing DG to the NHL.
- The coaches seem like genuinely good people; neither they nor their players have embarrassed the university with scandals (maybe that should be a given, but I'm trying to find some positives).
- Solid recruiting (after last season I would have said great recruiting, now I'm not so sure). The skill on last year's team was fun to watch and bringing in players like Cole, Dylan, Alex, Corson, TPB, Ty E, K'Andre over the past few years is a credit to the coaches even if a few of these players didn't do much once in a Badgers uniform.
The Bad (I admit there's a lot of overlap on my list, but it's my list and this is how I'm doing it ;-)
- TG appears to have no ability to consistently motivate college hockey players. After six seasons I think TG's most consistent coaching characteristic is his "ability" to make sure a good period or game or, very rarely, series is followed by a frustratingly poor performance. How many times in six years have you thought to yourself - "we might not be the more talented team tonight, but our hustle/tenacity is going to give us a chance" or "if we can keep it close to the third period, then we'll wear them down and pull out the victory." Never. I've never thought that of a TG coached team. Which, as some of you have already posted, seems strange since TG, as a player, was known for his effort and tenacity.
- TG's teams are soft. I get this isn't the 80's or 90's and the powers-that-be are trying to take the aggression out of the sport (nearly every time there is a big hit that knocks someone to the ice or gets an excited reaction from the crowd a penalty is called; they should just add a penalty called "checking too hard"... but that's a rant for a different day), but these Badgers teams offer nearly no physicality. The current roster seems to have only a handful of players who even know checking is still allowed - Baker, Romaniac, Tyler, Dominic, and that's about it. I vaguely recall shortly after TG was hired hearing that his coaching staff actually discouraged checking. I suspect the lack of effort and lack of physicality are related and feed off of each other, but that's just speculation.
- TG can't fix problems during the course of a game/series/season. I'm struggling to think of any major issue this team has faced that TG was able to coach them out of. If the Badgers struggle with an issue during the first month of the season you can be certain that same issue will be there at the end of the season - d-zone coverage, terrible goaltending, inability to win a faceoff, awful special teams, or lack of offensive productivity).
- TG's team underperform. Someone posted here a few weeks ago that they thought Mike Eaves could coach this current team to a better record. I was having that same thought. Eaves won 8 games in his final season coaching a team that was mostly D-III talent, TG won just 9 with actual D-I talent. It's almost like TG cannot teach players to play an effective system of hockey. Prior to this year I would have said he's an okay coach of offensive hockey, but this year he's somehow managed to get his ENTIRE team to be in a scoring funk for nearly the entire season. I get one or two players being snake bit, but it takes a special kind of coach to undermine an entire team's offensive mojo (I know they lost a ton of offensive talent, and I was expecting a drop in scoring, but this has been ridiculous). TG's failure to coach d-zone coverage and special teams is well documented here, so I won't belabor it.
- Goalies get worse the longer they are on a TG coached hockey team. This is debatable, but it has been my impression that goalies actually get worse the longer they are on this team.
Jack Berry (as a Freshman he's 2.66 GAA and .882 Save%, Senior 3.52 and .882)
Kyle Hayton comes to WI as an all pro and leaves as a goalie who you can score on 9-times-out-of-10 if your just able to lift the puck off the ice.
Matt Jurusik leaves the Badgers with a 3.7 GAA and .882 Save%; a few years later he leaves Mich Tech with a 2.06 GAA and .924 Save%.
Daniel Lebedeff. It was a difficult few years watching Daniel flail about in the net. I wonder if anyone keeps a statistic on the number of times a goalie ends up lying on their back, with no part of their body still in the crease, and the puck in the net? To his credit he didn't get that much worse in his second year statistically (3.42 vs 3.56; .893 vs. .892).
Cameron Rowe. Does anyone think Cameron looks better this year?
I know this group has long debated bad goalie vs bad d-zone play. Fortunately, with TG as the coach, we don't have to choose. We can have both!!
Remember when UW was Goaltender U?
I could go on, but I think I'll wrap this up. TG is a great guy. I desperately wanted him to be successful at Wisconsin. I thought he would be successful. I was wrong.
