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Greg Cronin - New Head Coach


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7 minutes ago, Sexlaf15 said:

im really disappointed by this hire. I hate how Colorado’s AHL team plays, it’s basically New York Islanders hockey. Hopefully I can be proven wrong 

Disappointed because his teams win too much?

I am very happy with this.  I wanted someone from outside the organization with no ties to our recent miserable history. 

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hmm.  not as big a splash as i thought Beek was aiming for.  to me, this feels a lot like an interim coach, and it falls within the theme of having this guy and our new AHL coach competing in parallel for the HC job in... 2-5 years.

and, unfortunately, i could be convinced that Gibby heard about this hire last week and then decided there are greener pastures for his services.  suffice to say, there's new creedence to last week's report of wanting to be shipped.  the caveat is that i don't quite understand why the Gibby rumor would come out by itself, without the coaching hire news.  that's a bit weird.

anyway, this hire doesn't really speak to the optimism and excitement of a team coming out of a rebuild with a roster full of young superstars.  it does, however, mirror what what you all have mentioned was done with coaching in Detroit.

 

edit--> just read through the posts above.  glad you guys are seeing signs for optimism.  i'll keep the above but otherwise refrain from being the proverbial poop in the punch bowl... for now.

Edited by Fisix
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6 minutes ago, Fisix said:

to me, this feels a lot like an interim coach,

yeah i kinda get that too... especially with PV's comments of

"as a young team blah blah blah teach finer points something something something"

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The guy's not a re-tread like we all feared a new hire might be, so that's a positive. He's a bit on the older side (Happy Birthday Gift on June 2nd, mr. Cronin!) and doesn't have a deep NHL pedigree is a negative, kind of an Eakins or Mike Green situation, he may pan out, he may not. He coaches his teams to play boring Islanders-style hockey, this is a toss up between negative and positive, on the one side this style is better suited for the playoffs and you generally have to play the game hard-working and defense-first, things Verbeek likes, but such a style is also boring as hell. Carlyle-light?

Hope the team can learn to give up less than 33 shots every game under this guy. And his involvement with USNTDP...the friggin' Rick DiPietro mention in the article...ugh...er...um. Yeah (🤮).

I admit this a point for Gibson over which to pursue a trade. That's no Cassidy or Maurice or even a Sheldon Keefe.

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Watching videos of some postgame interviews that Cronin has given, he sure likes to talk a lot and answer questions, and he also says a lot of substantive things about the games and his own team rather than just doing the "coach speak" thing. He's like the antithesis of Randy Carlyle. If he stays true to that form, we'll likely get to learn a lot more about the WHY than we have in the past. Like, why did he put certain guys out in certain situations? Or why did he shuffle lines and pairings a certain way? I don't know if he'll give us a better product to watch on the ice, he seems like he could definitely make the fan experience more interesting.

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1 hour ago, DT2008 said:

Disappointed because his teams win too much?

I am very happy with this.  I wanted someone from outside the organization with no ties to our recent miserable history. 

No, I’m disappointed because I don’t like the way his team played, which is exactly what my post said?

I’m not a fan of boring, low event hockey, and I also don’t know that it’s really conducive to the roster that the team has or will have. I’ll try and be optimistic that his team has had success and that he can get the team to play a better defensive game, but I don’t want to see the best assets of the best players on this team be coached out of their game in the name of “playing the game the right way”

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56 minutes ago, Aksun said:

The guy's not a re-tread like we all feared a new hire might be, so that's a positive. He's a bit on the older side (Happy Birthday Gift on June 2nd, mr. Cronin!) and doesn't have a deep NHL pedigree is a negative, kind of an Eakins or Mike Green situation, he may pan out, he may not. He coaches his teams to play boring Islanders-style hockey, this is a toss up between negative and positive, on the one side this style is better suited for the playoffs and you generally have to play the game hard-working and defense-first, things Verbeek likes, but such a style is also boring as hell. Carlyle-light?

Hope the team can learn to give up less than 33 shots every game under this guy. And his involvement with USNTDP...the friggin' Rick DiPietro mention in the article...ugh...er...um. Yeah (🤮).

I admit this a point for Gibson over which to pursue a trade. That's no Cassidy or Maurice or even a Sheldon Keefe.

My worry is that the Islanders are constant proof that you need to be able to score goals. And historically that’s an issue with teams that play like them. 

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5 minutes ago, Sexlaf15 said:

My worry is that the Islanders are constant proof that you need to be able to score goals. And historically that’s an issue with teams that play like them. 

Indeed, the whole Islanders connection vibe with this guy is a big turn off for me too. The NHL.com article on the matter had the raw team numbers and we were 31st in goals for while being 32nd in goals against:

https://www.nhl.com/news/greg-cronin-hired-as-coach-of-anaheim-ducks/c-344736812

So hopefully, the latter will improve, but I can't say I'm optimistic about the former. But people on Twitter, mostly Colorado fans, keep saying that he's great at developing defensive forwards and offensive defensemen...for what it's worth. I wonder how much time he spent face to face with Makar? And for that matter, people on Twitter also keep mentioning Cronin was an assistant in Maine 93-95 right about when Kariya was there...so I'm starting to wonder with how much Kariya, Scotty and Selanne were involved in the GM search, and now this connection to Kariya again.. is Paul gearing up to be the next VP of hockey operations or something? Just a thought.

And another juicy storyline: people kept saying for months upon months that 'PV has to nail the coaching hire'.

Well, did he nail it? (I understand full well it's Day 1, but still).

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4 minutes ago, Aksun said:

Indeed, the whole Islanders connection vibe with this guy is a big turn off for me too. The NHL.com article on the matter had the raw team numbers and we were 31st in goals for while being 32nd in goals against:

https://www.nhl.com/news/greg-cronin-hired-as-coach-of-anaheim-ducks/c-344736812

So hopefully, the latter will improve, but I can't say I'm optimistic about the former. But people on Twitter, mostly Colorado fans, keep saying that he's great at developing defensive forwards and offensive defensemen...for what it's worth. I wonder how much time he spent face to face with Makar? And for that matter, people on Twitter also keep mentioning Cronin was an assistant in Maine 93-95 right about when Kariya was there...so I'm starting to wonder with how much Kariya, Scotty and Selanne were involved in the GM search, and now this connection to Kariya again.. is Paul gearing up to be the next VP of hockey operations or something? Just a thought.

And another juicy storyline: people kept saying for months upon months that 'PV has to nail the coaching hire'.

Well, did he nail it? (I understand full well it's Day 1, but still).

I looked at the roster’s for his teams in Colorado, he’s not really turned out any real notable NHLers since being there. Newhook and Graves are the only guys that really stand out to me.  As far as I can tell he never coached Makar. 

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The more I look into the teams he coached the more disappointed I am.  No real notable NHLers developed in his tenure in the AHLers. He was an assistant on the worst Leafs teams in recent memory, no real playoff success. Teams struggle to score goals. 

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16 minutes ago, Sexlaf15 said:

The more I look into the teams he coached the more disappointed I am.  No real notable NHLers developed in his tenure in the AHLers. He was an assistant on the worst Leafs teams in recent memory, no real playoff success. Teams struggle to score goals. 

yeah...do we know the length of contract? i feel like that could be telling for what PV is seeing

Also did anyone watch the press conference? I was busy watching applevisionpro...

is it online somewhere?

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3 hours ago, Fisix said:

hmm.  not as big a splash as i thought Beek was aiming for....

I feel the same. Oh, Verbeek, Verbeek.....I though you'll go after some marquee name, someone like Patrick Roy, who would draw respect from his players, and you chose some career minor-league coach nobody heard of.  "Heling young kids to develop into successful NHL players...."   Dude, it's not a development league, don't you understand it, dummy?

Oh, Verbeek, Verbeek.....when are you going to do something to make me really exited?

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1 minute ago, FanSince1993 said:

I feel the same. Oh, Verbeek, Verbeek.....I though you'll go after some marquee name, someone like Patrick Roy, who would draw respect from his players, and you chose some career minor-league coach nobody heard of.  "Heling young kids to develop into successful NHL players...."   Dude, it's not a development league, don't you understand it, dummy?

Oh, Verbeek, Verbeek.....when are you going to do something to make me really exited?

No "big name" coach was gonna take a chance on this team.  Too many risks to their coaching history, or too big a risk to take on your next, and maybe last, chance to be an NHL HC.

It will take a little while for the Ducks to be "good" again, and imo guys like Laviolette or Gallant or whoever would rather go somewhere they can immediately be successful.

 

Hopefully what HCGC can do is to get this team back on the rise - though it may take a bit of time - and turn the promising kids they have into NHL stars and standouts.

 

They 1000% need to play better hockey, play better as a team.  He should be able to get them to do that, at a minimum.

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I would like to see them set a benchmark for .500 hockey next season.  82-85 points.  Around 20th/21st place, right where OTT and VAN were this season.

That would be an achievable goal, imo, and a sign of trending in the right direction.

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I am amazed at the negativity here.   Give me boring, smothering, winning hockey 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.   The biggest gripe I had with Eakins was the lack of a system.   I want to see structure and accountability.  That is what Verbeek seems to be targeting.  
 

There is a reason that Roy, Gallant, etc. are former NHL coaches.   Somehow many here seem to forget that.

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While Cronin isn’t a marquee name, I’m OK with this hire. We have a TON of youngsters in the pipeline and a few relative newbies already on the roster. Hiring someone who has worked with “kids” for his entire career makes perfect sense to me. Between the Gulls and Ducks, we are a young team again, and have a ton of talent to develop. Taking a few more years shouldn’t be a bad thing if we want a contender for years to come. We have the raw talent, I believe both our new coaches will develop them, albeit slowly but surely, into a quality team we all will be proud of for years to come.

 

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