Monkey79 said:
So AvsGirl, what's the story with Hartley? I live in Atlanta & would like some skinny from an Avs fan's perspective...
Well, Hartley is currently being sainted in Denver...everyone is still wringing their hands over his firing.
I never liked Hartley (despite that he once backed me up when I defended Skoula to an irate sportscaster) because of his whole "doghouse" method. People keep praising his talent with young players, but usually it just consisted of cornering them, screaming at them for ten or twenty minutes during a practice, sending them out to play a big game and then benching them or flogging them in the press when they'd made a mistake.
Hartley carries long grudges. He makes a player's mistakes very very personal, like they did it to spite him. During the 2000-2001 playoffs, he benched Skoula for no reason anyone could figure out, and was overly defensive when people asked why--and everyone was asking, because it was so obvious that Bourque, Foote and Blake were just dragging out there and here was this young guy, just sitting there. Ville Niminen was traded because of Hartley. He came in to training camp overweight and with alot of personal problems, plus Hartley just disliked him. He benched him for half the season, finally let Nimo back out to play at Christmas, and then he was conviently gone. The only reason he'd let him play was to showcase him for a trade.
And he's a psycho at practice...he never played in the NHL and whatever the sports experts say, I think that counts for alot. He never knew what the players were going through. Bryan Trottier was someone who checked his blow-ups alot. That's all Hartley did was yell and scream and throw equipment bags.
There's only so much of that (if any) that's effective. The players didn't have alot of respect for him.
And he let the veterans do whatever they want. It was no secret that the real coaches were Sakic and Roy. And it was Ray Bourque who coached the guys into winning the Cup--it was never Bob Hartley, although he's happy to take the credit Denver willingly heaps on him. People here forget how pitifully out-coached he was in Game 7 last year against the Red Wings.
Bowman knew to run a longer line, because when Hartley goes into panic mode, he starts running them shorter and shorter until the veterans are running on empty.
I don't know how much of this makes any sense!! Probably none of it. I suspect though, that the same sort of things will go on in Atlanta.
Elisabeth
