Nik the Trik said:
Carlyle's coaching tenure was marked by stubbornness. The team's record after he left isn't a testament to his wisdom, it's to the fact that he had a hand in many of the frankly baffling personnel decisions made while he was around. Grabo, Kulemin and MacArthur would have been good players under Horacheck but they were sacrifices on the altar of their coach's obstinacy. When he got fired and someone else got brought in and the team that was shaped to his way of doing things didn't do well under another way of doing things? The idea that it vindicates him in any way is insane.
Dysfunction runs top down. Quite honestly it's amazing it took as long to get into the locker room as it did.
I can't agree with this snippet of your statement.
Carlyle may have been stubborn, I don't know. What I do know is that buying out players, and not re-signing players is a GM responsibility, not a coach's one. I didn't see too many sad posters when Kulemin walked for $4mil in NYI.
The management, which included Dubas, Shanahan, and Nonis, put together a team this year that just wasn't talented enough. I think the added pieces of Santorelli and Winnik worked out pretty well. I don't think they tried to put together a Carlyle team, I think they tried to put together a playoff team. They failed, and Carlyle couldn't maintain any momentum that would track the kind of necessary point production to be playoff bound. He lost his job, and many had been calling for his head around here for a couple of years. And let me be clear, I don't think firing Carlyle was a bad decision.
Horachek takes over in early January, and things got worse.
I don't buy the argument that Horachek was toast from the start because the Leafs "gutted the roster." The only notable pieces moved were Franson, Winnik, and Santorelli...none of them were core players. And they only moved those pieces after Horachek's Leafs went backwards in terms of results in the 2 months or so worth of games between his takeover of the bench and the trade deadline.
When Horachek took over, I was optimistic that a more responsible style of play would net them more points, even given the same roster. I think they played reasonably well the first couple of weeks, but the results were a 5-19 (if my math is close) between then and the trade deadline. Things had already fallen apart before they "gutted the roster" at the trade deadline.
I think there is a certain amount of vindication for Carlyle in that. I wouldn't argue that Carlyle was a great coach, but I think it's fair to say that the team's record over the past couple of seasons may not have been because of his coaching style. Maybe his coaching style helped them tread water when they should have sunk. I think this spring shows that the group just isn't talented enough, no matter what style of play they wanted to implement.