The Case Against Travis Green

[Camel Toe Drag]

1 hour ago, Where'd Luongo? said:

How many threads have you posted this in now? Not too popular eh. 

[PlanB]

5 minutes ago, Fanuck said:

In the modern history of this franchise the most successful coaches have arguably been Quinn,  Crow and AV - all had previous NHL head coaching experience before arriving here.  Is this a prerequisite for success - no, but imo it shouldn't be a criteria taken lightly. 

I hear what you're saying,  but otoh,  a couple other guys with previous head coaching experience and a couple cups both had varying levels of disastrous tenures here. 

[Fanuck]

2 minutes ago, PlanB said:

I hear what you're saying,  but otoh,  a couple other guys with previous head coaching experience and a couple cups both had varying levels of disastrous tenures here. 

True.   I acknowledge that NHL experience shouldn't be a prerequisite,  but not underestimated either. 

[TheRick]

The case against Travis Green is if he hires Zigmund Palffy as an assistant coach and they start doing this every Canuck goal:

 

[-AJ-]

Green has been my second choice after Gallant, but you've made good points to show that we shouldn't expect too much of him. I do think we'll end up hiring him anyways based on the comments made by management. Good job in your analysis though @AK_19.

[b3.]

I would prefer not have another rookie coach.

 

Seems to be like another Scott Arniel situation.

[stawns]

1 hour ago, Honky Cat said:

I think the fact that he was an NHL player definitely holds some weight with younger players.....The Canucks are really not going to be seriously competing for the next couple of years anyway,and they cannot get any worse than that are now...I admire the fact that he refuses to be an assistant,he wants to be his own boss... 

 

Part of me suspects that Green has known for quite some time that he was going to land the Canucks head coach gig...It feels like you could almost book it.

Yup, that's been my feeling from the day Willie was hired.

 

I hope they reward his ability and loyalty to the organization, it's a positive message to send to all levels of the organization.  If you have the ability, work hard and pay your dues, you'll get your shot.

[sockeye]

I'd like a fresh look behind the bench.  I support hiring Travis Green.  What have we got to lose?  It would be a minor miracle if we made the playoffs next year.  Travis has a decent track record and he won a Western Hockey League Championship with the Portland Winterhawks (and runner up in the Memorial Cup).  As far as Utica, he has made it to the playoffs once and he has had very little to work with.  Unlike many NHL coaches, he made it to the show (NHL) as a player and had a long career.  I think it's important (as part of a strong succession plan) to show that the Canucks management are willing to develop coaches (as well as players) and promote them when the time is right.

 

Plus, not that it really matters, I have a ton of respect for Ray Ferraro (like Travis, a fellow Trail BC boy) and he supports hiring Travis Green (check out TSN Vancouver radio podcast of the past week). 

[pluralsight]

Well written post, nice job. It seems to me that the Canucks should go with someone with NHL Head Coaching experience. Gallant or the return of the Crow might be the best fits at this point. 

[Shirotashi]

 

[Shirotashi]

Let Sutter mentor Green, that would be ideal.

[stawns]

4 minutes ago, sockeye said:

I'd like a fresh look behind the bench.  I support hiring Travis Green.  What have we got to lose?  It would be a minor miracle if we made the playoffs next year.  Travis has a decent track record and he won a Western Hockey League Championship with the Portland Winterhawks (and runner up in the Memorial Cup).  As far as Utica, he has made it to the playoffs once and he has had very little to work with.  Unlike many NHL coaches, he made it to the show (NHL) as a player and had a long career.  I think it's important (as part of a strong succession plan) to show that the Canucks management are willing to develop coaches (as well as players) and promote them when the time is right.

 

Plus, not that it really matters, I have a ton of respect for Ray Ferraro (like Travis, a fellow Trail BC boy) and he supports hiring Travis Green (check out TSN Vancouver radio podcast of the past week). 

I've been advocating for Green for a couple years now.  Saying Ferraro wants him behind the bench is making me re-think my whole stance.  Damn you Ferraro

 

 

[xereau]

His insistence on not being an assistant 1st in the NHL is troubling to me.

[hammertime]

He's too Green. Need a gnarled Ruff vet. 

 

 

[teepain]

Paul mcleans resume is the best for canucks. You remember the ottawa team in 2012 it was stinky and he got still got them to the playoffs . He could bring the best out of the young ones

[coolboarder]

I prefer Green for a several reasons, we need to train the young guys to be creative after their already structured game working as a team under Willie and Green which works in a similar ways but Green is more dynamics than Willie due to his work with Baertschi, and Virtenan.  Under Green, they both blossomed as a player in AHL level when their confidence was shot.   His encouragement on being creative helps them to find some open spaces within the system.  But don't forget that the management's philosophy is that their AHL and NHL system must be similar so when it comes for a call-ups, they don't have to spend time explaining new system but would be able to step up right away.  Green has to follow their directions and his deployment is good, making young players earn their ice time and is not reliance to veterans all the time and he rewards them immediately, within seconds or a game later, it's more of a variance than Willie does.    

 

Also, Green is his own man and he has his own system so he may run the system differently than Willie and will be able to run things his way.   He also wants the young players earn their ice time and he rewards them accordingly, unlike Willie's system which was harder to crack and rewards the plug differently in a unjustified way than young players on this team.   So if we hire Green, I would bet you that it is not exactly the same system as Willie.    If he sees a creative guys, he will not hesitate to use them in a positive way.   Also, he is able to work so many ECHLers into AHL and win some games and play structured game with a goalie.  If he has some talented players in the system, I have no doubt that Utica would be further higher in the standing.  

 

What we have to lose by hiring Green?  We continue to develop the youth until they are ready and if Green has proved that he is not the man for the job then next coach should be more of an experience coach to get them once they are further developed so I think Green should be given a chance despite his inexperience as a coach.  I wanted Green to be our coach after 2015 Calder Cup final but an extra couple of years in AHL does not hurt him that he is a proven AHL coach with limited talent on an AHL level.    I do not believe that the Canucks is ready for a playoff push with so many holes on the roster because of the decline of Sedin and Edler.  Because of this, Green should be given a chance for a 2-year development run with owner's approval regardless of results and on the 3rd year, he should be given a 40-game run to see if he is truly the man for the job once rosters holes is filled up slowly.  Benning should also be given 3 more draft years and on his 4th year, he should be given a chance for a hiring of an experienced coach he wants, rather than Green in 3 years from now.    What leverage the Canucks have now?  None, in my opinion.  They must earn their way back to the top, starting Green as my coach.   If Green is for real, we will have some stability for a long time and could be more valuable down the road.  

 

 

[Barry_Wilkins]

On 4/11/2017 at 8:41 PM, AK_19 said:

I have been incredibly surprised at the amount of support Travis Green is getting from fans as someone who would be a good coach to replace WD. I am absolutely opposed to Green becoming the next head coach of the Canucks for the following reasons:

 

WD's resume before joining the Canucks:

9 years experience as WHL Head Coach

2 years experience as a AHL Head Coach
2 years experience as an Associate Coach with Dallas Stars

WHL Championship

CHl/WHL Coach of the Year
2010 World Junior Head Coach (Canada)
AHL Championship

Green's resume currently:

1/2 season experience as a WHL Head Coach

4 seasons as an AHL Head Coach

WHL Championship

 

I have some major red flags with Green which include:

 

* 1) Not getting hired as a coach last year when there were a number of openings. Of note, he was in the running for Colorado and lost out to whatever bozo is running that team.

^2) His unwillingness to be an assistant coach. This one bothers me because it makes him seem pretty #arrogant especially considering his lack of experience compared to many of his peers who made the jump to the NHL as a head coach.

3) Like Willie, he appears to also not promote players unless forced to by injuries. Of note, +Demko has played significantly less games than I would've hoped this year. It wasn't until call-ups/injuries that he started getting longer strings of games and getting a much improved groove for the game. The players that seem to be getting the most minutes are fringe-NHLers or not Canuck property. 

$4) Green's teams have been as offensively choked as the Canucks team. In general, the Comets play quite a similar game to WD.

%5) There are so many more accomplished and skilled coaches available right now with better track records including: Sutter, Maclean, Gallant, Ruff, and Crawford. 

There were a number of comments others have made about Green that I would like to dispel:

1. Travis Green has done a great job developing our players.

I would challenge this position greatly. The players that have developed the best in the last few years spent little to no time in the AHL. This list includes Horvat, Tryamkin, Hutton, Stetcher, and to a lesser degree Boeser.

Sven Baertschi spent a total of only 15 games with the Comets. Sven did not adjust very well when he joined the Canucks the next season full time and took a significant amount of games to adjust and score points at the NHL.

The Canuck players Green has had the most involvement with include Subban, Cassels, Gaunce, Pedan, and Virtanen. Thus far, Subban has regularly been one of the first cuts at training camp. After coming out of the OHL scoring roughly at a 2.0 ppg rate, Cassels is currently trending to not become an NHL player IMO. Pedan has regressed from his earlier seasons. Gaunce has not produced very well in the AHL and has been only 4th line material thus far in the NHL despite already being 23 years old. Virtanen is currently one of the worst performing 1st rounders of his draft year. Although one could still point to improvements in everyone's game, they have, IMO, been only incremental. 

I would not credit a head coach for the development of Markstrom and Demko which has been the duty of the goalie coach, Rollie Melanson. Rollie has been the one constant with our goalies for at least the last half decade and transformed Vancouver from a goalie graveyard to a goalie factory. He has had a significant hand in developing the games of Luongo, Schneider, Lack, Markstrom, and now Demko. 

One could argue that the Canucks have not given much to Green to work with but it still doesn't give us much positive evidence that he has done a great job developing players.

2. Travis Green is like AV when he was our farm team coach. He deserves a promotion + similar to the situation that AV was in many years ago. 

Giving someone a promotion because they are next in line is silly. Our next head coach should be selected because he is the best person for the job. Period. If we went by this logic we would never bring in people outside of our system. Also, this would have been a terrible line of thought considering after Nonis was fired, Steve Tambellini was next in line. 

Another similarity brought up is that AV "grew up" with a number of our important prospects with the Moose and that let to an overall positive development of these players when they reached the NHL with AV. I have heard AV credited for developing on the Moose Burrows, Kesler, Bieksa, and Raymond. The only player that was a regular roster player when AV coached the Moose was Burrows. That's it. Furthermore, there isn't a single player that Green has developed better for the Canucks over 4 seasons as a Comets coach than AV did with just Burrows that one Moose season. 

Also, Green's situation is nothing like AV's before he was promoted. AV was already a Jack Adams runner-up and coached the Montreal Canadiens for a couple years. 
 

3)Travis Green was a former player.

I've seen this a few times and I find this reasoning silly. I genuinely have not seen any sort of correlation to how many NHL games an NHL coach has played and their ability to coach. Scotty Bowman is generally regarded as one of, if not the best coach in NHL history and he never played as a player. In current times, Mike Babcock is generally ranked as the best coach and he also was never an NHL player. On the flip side, Wayne Gretzky is considered one of the worst coaches in modern NHL history. 

With all that being said, I fully suspect he will become our head coach due to having a cheaper contract than other coaches and the Canuck owner rumoured to be trying to sell the team (less overhead cost). 

* You're contradicting yourself. If he has such a poor resume, why would it be a red flag that he wasn't hired last season? Shouldn't the fact he was in the running at all suggest that other management groups looked beyond the surface resume details to see other qualities you haven't mentioned?

 

^ I have no problems with his unwillingness to be an assistant. Perhaps Canucks management has already made a deal with him a few years ago that he'd be next in line for the top spot here. Or perhaps he realizes that the bogus old school "everyone must pay his dues" motto is overplayed. Green doesn't need to be perfect out of the gate, and it doesn't matter anyway, since we're not going to contend for anything meaningful the next two years. Let him work with our young players. It's all about development, instilling habits, repetition of specific lessons, motivation, etc. Whether he gains or costs 6 points over an 82 game schedule means nothing.

 

# I like that he's arrogant (if that's even accurate). He'd be coaching a team of 20 (mostly) impressionable players in a violent, hyper-competitive game and league. Vigneault could be arrogant. Tortorella certainly is/was. Bowman, too. Quenneville. Fred Shero. Pat Burns. Christ, come to think of it, how many successful coaches aren't arrogant?

 

+ Demko's start to the season was so-so. Why push him? Patience paid off, and now he's really turned it on. Great. Demko probably won't be vying for a starter's role with Van for at least two years. No rush, no pressure is the right tack to take with Demko. Looks like that's going well for Green, and for Demko's development.

 

$ Yeah, Green's team, this year, has been offensively choked. Have you seen the roster? It's a development league. Benning has conversations with Green literally every day during the season. They're on the same page in that they want their prospects to be defensively responsible, and to play with structure. This isn't so different from most other orgs, actually. The NHL has been increasingly changing (reverting, you could say) to Jacques Lemaire's 1995. No team wins by opening things up with little regard for defense. Seems Utica is checking those boxes. Is there even one good playmaking centre on our AHL affiliate?

 

% As for your "better, more skilled and accomplished head coaches", one can't say "better" along with those other superlatives. Until Green has a chance, there's nothing to compare him to. Ruff is wildly overpraised, including his long Buffalo stint. (Check, really closely, his playoff resume there, and you'll see that, in the aggregate, he underachieved relative to the match-ups during playoff runs.) Crawford's head coaching success is long ago. Sutter is the entirely wrong fit (he's a short-term get-it-done-now hard-ass impatient-with-mistakes coach). The only one I like in that list is McLean.

 

 

[VanGnome]

36 minutes ago, Shirotashi said:

 

Sutter resembles to me, Rowan Atkinson if he were to speak.

[wallstreetamigo]

We have a whole bunch of players who are just starting out and learning as they go.

 

Green is a coach just starting out and learning as he goes too.

 

What could possibly go wrong there?

 

I think the disqualifying factor (that supporters use as a positive for him) is that he knows the system. Guess what? The system sucks and is a huge part of the problem. We need a new strategy for how we play the game designed around the players we are moulding into the next core. Not to mention a new culture. That will come from a coach who prioritizes the young players and how to get them on a position to be successful.  

 

I don't want a guy who can simply continue what Desjardins started. I want a coach who can bring big improvements as a coach over Willie. In my opinion, that is not Green at this point. 

 

The OP is bang on that this smells like regret.

[Shirotashi]

12 minutes ago, VanGnome said:

Sutter resembles to me, Rowan Atkinson if he were to speak.

You mean Mr Bean? Nah mr Bean sounds way different he does talk in the series.