Fire Clode?

The analytics tell me that the system and process that Julien is coaching is working. They are consistently doing things that winning teams do. The results haven't matched up.

I wouldn't say they are all over the place. They usually play well. The results are all over the place. The Isles game was the exception, not the norm. Obviously it is hard to sit around and wait for the percentages to even out as the season heads down the shifter, but it is probably best to ride it out and do nothing.

I do agree that three missed playoffs reflects poorly on the coach, fair or not, but I do not think he should be sacked mid season.

The shooting percentage is bad luck. That is a fact. They will regress and the team will improve. The inconsistent effort that you're citing is another issue and it is maddening. I think the likely scenario is the team starts getting a little bit more puck luck for the rest of the year and improves to be a lower end playoff team but their brain cramps are abundant and if they don't clean that up, the increase in goal scoring that is inevitable for this team won't stop them from losing games in infuriating ways.

veritas said:

Their overall defensive talent is probably a bit below average. They have quite a bit of depth and have leveraged that very well, but the closest thing to a top pair defenseman they have is Torey Krug. And he's not one. I think they're forward group is really good, but overall they're realistically not a top 10 talented team.

Despite this, they've been absolutely dominant this season with the exception of converting shots/chances into goals. Shooting is an actual skill but some of the underlying numbers the Brunis are putting up this season are ruining most statistical models. It's not just a matter of them taking a bunch of shitty shots and having an artificially inflated corsi. Expected goal models that factor in various measures of a shot's quality have them as the best team in the league:

I don't know what to make of this to be honest, but I'm more than willing to be patient and see how the rest of the year plays out

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Travis Yost had a good article yesterday on tsn.ca that backed this up...
http://www.tsn.ca/bruins-should-wait-on-deciding-julien-s-future-1.653630

Smiling Joe Hesketh said:

there's no chance they thought they'd have another year of rebuilding.

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The disconnect here is that while the FO may have made moves showing they didn't expect to be needing any kind of rebuild, a good number of people who watch the team knew they didn't have the horses yet to seriously contend. Now we're all talking about Claude when most people on this board had this team pegged for a playoff miss entirely or at best a first round exit.

timlinin8th said:

The disconnect here is that while the FO may have made moves showing they didn't expect to be needing any kind of rebuild, a good number of people who watch the team knew they didn't have the horses yet to seriously contend. Now we're all talking about Claude when most people on this board had this team pegged for a playoff miss entirely or at best a first round exit.

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Bingo. The impression of most on this board is that the team, the same team that has been on the cusp of the playoffs the past 2 seasons, basically treaded water this past offseason. Ericcson was replaced by Backes, Carlo was promoted, and the 3rd and 4th lines were refreshed with a new combination of fungible talent and AHL'ers looking to make the leap. As a result, a lot of things would have to go right to avoid a 3rd straight DNQ, and so far only a subset of those things have actually went right. Beleskey's been hurt, and he was "meh" when he was healthy. Backes hasn't had the impact the team hoped. Krejci has had a slow recovery from his offseason surgery. Spooner has been terrible. The 3rd and 4th liners have played like 4th liners, again (correction: last year's 4th line was OHL quality, so that's probably an improvement). I'm not sure how firing Clode fixes any of that.

It's quite possible that Jacobs, Neely, and/or Sweeney disagree, and feel that a playoff spot is the bare minimum. In fact, I'd say it's quite likely, given the statements the 3 of them have made publicly. There is some justification for that stance: the team last year was at one point 39-23-8 and battling Florida for the division title with 12 games to go. And they missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker.

And, to be honest, the FO does feel that the team's performance is "unacceptable", I'd much rather them change the coach than trade their most promising prospects and young players for more Matt Beleskey's and Kevan Miller's.

Clode is safe per ESPN

Edit: source is Joe McDonald

Hmmmmm......

Last summer, whenever the "Fire Farrell" thread got some activity, the Sox would respond with a winning streak, and the thread would die for a few weeks.

I guess that's not happening here.

They could can him today and no one would notice.

I'm relatively certain people would notice

Julien made a "we don't have the talent...." type comment after the game yesterday. He is right of course, but I wonder if that ruffles some feathers upstairs.

For quite a while when the offense struggled, the defense was surprisingly good. Now the defense is faltering, too.

Smiling Joe Hesketh said:

So yeah, the team's not exactly responding to the pressure. Bad luck for Rask to get a migraine in the middle of the game, but still.

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I'd get a migraine too watching every opposing goalie look like the Great Wall of China against the Bruins.

Smiling Joe Hesketh said:

Couldn't disagree more with your conclusions. There's no excuse for the Bruins to miss the playoffs three years in a row. They're not an expansion team building from nothing, they're not in a full rebuild mode. They have what's supposed to be a solid core of players. They just signed Backes to a big deal; there's no chance they thought they'd have another year of rebuilding.

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OK, they need to fire Clode ASAP just to stop your descent into Rodo-land.

Daws213 said:

Seguin scored 29 and then 16 goals in the lockout shortened season. He also posted his best Corsi & Fenwick numbers of his career with the Bruins and has yet to come close to them with the Stars. Obviously playing with Bergeron helped these numbers. Management, basically Jim Benning who is doing his part to destroy the Canucks, then decided he wasn't worth the trouble and traded him.

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As the years go by, this never gets less infuriating.

Teams that trade great talents at the very moment when their trade value is as low as it will ever get deserve all of the mediocrity and suckitude they have coming to them. It's the very definition of bad management, worse even than trading a 3rd round pick for some Shithead that a good organiztion would't take for free.

Daws213 said:

Hamilton, who I would argue isn't really an offensive player, improved offensively every year under Claude. Then, as The Four Peters mentioned, Hamilton basically forced himself off the team because he hated the team/teammates/system.

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Not really an offensive player? He's basically matched Krug's point production for 2.5 years running and with more goals. He may not be Erik Karlsson, but "not an offensive player" is a bit extreme.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-boston-bruins-look-good-on-paper-so-why-do-they-suck/?addata=espn:boston:index

Boston does the little things well. It currently leads the NHL in Corsi and Fenwick,1 the most popular possession metrics, across all situations, and it ranks third in faceoff win percentage. Boston’s penalty killing unit is nearly impenetrable (its 86.6 kill percentage is second only to that of the Carolina Hurricanes), and its 34.1 shots per game is second in the league, behind the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 34.7. But despite all that, the Bruins are in serious danger of missing the playoffs. Again.

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But mediocrity doesn’t lead to postseason berths. According to Hockey-Reference’s playoff simulator, Boston has only a 25 percent chance of making the playoffs. For the Bruins to get in, the Maple Leafs would have to dry up and crumble during the second half of the season. (The Leafs have a history of collapsing down the stretch against the Bruins, so it’s possible.)

More likely, Julien’s days behind Boston’s bench are numbered. A third consecutive missed postseason would be damning for the franchise — that hasn’t happened in nearly 50 years. A departure by Julien would spell the end of a Bruins golden era that never quite materialized.

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Pretty much what we're all thinking.

Last night was basically another small snapshot at the entire season. I really think talent is the main source of the struggles, not the coaching. They outshoot Detroit 49-26 and out chance them by a healthy margin. They don't have the talent to convert the shots and chances into goals, game remains right, a rookie d-man makes 2 mistakes and they're down 3-2 in the 3rd and have to scramble back to get a win in OT. Same thing happened against Chicago. Came out like a house on fire, can't capitalize, suddenly it is late in the game and they make a mistake and lose 1-0. I'd have to go game by game, but I feel like they've had far more games like this that turn into coinflips than they have no-shows like that Isles game a week ago. I'm not sure what sort of coaching adjustments could be make to change the outcome of these games.

I look at the roster and see a legitimate top line. From there, it gets ugly. Krejci is still a legit #2 center, but that's where the forward talent ends. They don't have any top 6 talent to play with Krejci. Backes isn't a top 6 player. Krejci's LW this year has been Schaller, a player who passed through waivers unclaimed at the beginning of the season and Spooner who is a playmaking C playing out of position (not that I think he is any good at C). Vatrano's getting a look now, but he's a 2nd year pro who isn't really established yet. Maybe he hits, maybe he doesn't. 3rd line has basically been the leftovers of who hasn't worked on the 2nd line and Riley Nash / Austin Czarnik. On D, I think they are mostly OK. It'd be nice to fire McQuaid into the sun, but I don't think Morrow or Liles present a major upgrade.

I don't know, I'm rambling here. Ultimately, in my view, they have 4-5 really good players, a middle portion of decent players that are playing too high in the lineup or out of position (Backes, Beleskey, Spooner) and then the rest are rookies and/or AHL fodder. I think the biggest change they could make is finding Krejci some legitimate wingers.

Is Backes really not a top 6 player?

That would make his contract as bad as any they've signed if that's true.

cshea said:

Last night was basically another small snapshot at the entire season. I really think talent is the main source of the struggles, not the coaching.

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I wholeheartedly agree that the coaching is doing it's job and am an unabashed Claude fan, but I'm starting to wonder if he's not the right coach for this team, as unfair as that may be.

What I mean by that is, could another coach utilize the talents he has on the team better? While all of the metrics love the Bruins, it's becoming clear that perhaps the strengths of individual players are not being utilized appropriately. There may need to be systematic changes to take advantage of what some of the players do best, even if it requires loosening up some of the parameters that are required to run Julien's system.

I'm not ready to let Claude go, but I'm also not seeing the changes that are probably necessary to start getting the puck in the net. It may well be a talent issue, but there are going to have to be some concessions and sacrifices to utilize some of the young talent.

I admit that this is a brain dump and have not properly thought this out entirely, so there may be a lot of holes in this thought process.

Dummy Hoy said:

Is Backes really not a top 6 player?

That would make his contract as bad as any they've signed if that's true.

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I have had an issue with that contract from the beginning, it didn't make sense to me that they didn't want to sign Eriksson to essentially the same deal after having proved himself and built chemistry. The Backes injuries are a huge concern going forward and I think, ultimately, losing Eriksson fucked with the chemistry and dynamics of the offense.

I get that Loui isn't having a great season in Vancouver, either, but he was a perfect fit for this team and with Bergeron/Marchand and I think it's hurting more than we realize. Also, that Vancouver team isn't very good, either.

I hate myself for rehashing this, but it was just another in a long line of confusing roster moves from this front office.

I would disagree that Backes isn't a top 6 player. He strikes me as a pretty typical second line RW. His contract is a little scary (YIKES!) but I think 40 points out of your second line RW is pretty typical, no? I agree with the rest of your premise though. Not a lot of talent. I do think it takes talent to have the kind of underlying numbers they have though. The truth is probably in between. I also think the structure is covering up some of the defensive deficiencies. It seems like every time the D makes a mistake it is a HUGE mistake that ends up in a very strong scoring chance for the opposition.

FL4WL3SS said:

I wholeheartedly agree that the coaching is doing it's job and am an unabashed Claude fan, but I'm starting to wonder if he's not the right coach for this team, as unfair as that may be.

What I mean by that is, could another coach utilize the talents he has on the team better? While all of the metrics love the Bruins, it's becoming clear that perhaps the strengths of individual players are not being utilized appropriately. There may need to be systematic changes to take advantage of what some of the players do best, even if it requires loosening up some of the parameters that are required to run Julien's system.

I'm not ready to let Claude go, but I'm also not seeing the changes that are probably necessary to start getting the puck in the net. It may well be a talent issue, but there are going to have to be some concessions and sacrifices to utilize some of the young talent.

I admit that this is a brain dump and have not properly thought this out entirely, so there may be a lot of holes in this thought process.

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The team is carrying 13 forwards at the moment, 7 of which are primarily centers. On any given night they have 3 or 4 players playing away from their natural position. Roster construction is more of a problem here, I think. Too many guys not in their natural positions. I used to think centers could play anywhere, but this year is changing my mind.

As for Backes...

Last season he had 1.35 points/60, which was 109 out of 125 forwards with 1000 minutes. This year his scoring has improved to 1.57 p/60, but it still ranks 120th among forwards with 500 minutes. I don't think he is a top 6 player these days. His best usage is probably as a 3C, where he would get easier matchups, but apparently he is not comfortable playing C in Julien's system. They tried that in Detroit last week and that line was on the ice for 4 goals against, IIRC.

He's useful in other areas, like the PK and PP, but I think the team and Backes would be better off if they could find an upgrade on the wing and shuttle Backes down. He'd probably eat up 3rd lines, but they Bruins don't have anyone else to play RW.

I never got to see too much of Backes as a western conf player, but I have to imagine he's lost a step or two. Combine that with the game being faster and his contract looks downright scary as he ages. He had a partial breakaway the other night and he looked almost glacial. I think with the right matchups he's fine as a 2nd line wing, but will get exposed against teams like Montreal.

I am not an analytics guy in hockey, but what I see is lack of talent. Shift after shift seems like a third line. Guys play hard, play angles, pressure the puck, gain the zone, get pucks at the net. But they work so hard for every goal. There seem a lot of plays where it looks like it will turn into a transition chance, or if a guy could take an advantage created by a turnover, but they just don't seem to have the guys to make teams pay for the strategic wins. Can't see how changing the coach fixes that probelm.

From my observation the one thing that seems right is the coach.

reggiecleveland said:

I am not an analytics guy in hockey, but what I see is lack of talent. Shift after shift seems like a third line. Guys play hard, play angles, pressure the puck, gain the zone, get pucks at the net. But they work so hard for every goal. There seem a lot of plays where it looks like it will turn into a transition chance, or if a guy could take an advantage created by a turnover, but they just don't seem to have the guys to make teams pay for the strategic wins. Can't see how changing the coach fixes that probelm.

From my observation the one thing that seems right is the coach.

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Since I started coaching HS I don't watch as much NHL hockey as I would like, but this year I'm taking a year off for various reasons. I've been able to watch more of the Bruins than I have in recent years and from what I've seen this is spot on. Obviously the Bergeron line is fabulous, but after that it is a bunch of limited guys working really hard (scary considering how much $ is in 46 and 42). The goaltender is fabulous, and the defense is largely nondescript- not bad, but really no one who can make a difference (I do like CMiller and Carlo is impressive given his age. Krug too of course).

Just not enough talent but they bring it on the effort end. I've made myself pretty clear on Claude. I'd keep him around until Bergeron doesn't like him.