Few things irked me more as a player than when I had a coach who coached our team through the lens of the score. As in, if we were losing 2-1 at intermission — but had hit three posts and missed on a couple breakaways — I didn’t want to hear some guy yelling about how dogshit our team is, or how lazy we were playing. I didn’t want to see the lines get shuffled because our goalie couldn’t stop a puck so we found ourselves behind. And at the lower levels, these guys are a dime a dozen.



Are we ahead in goals and shots? No? Frickin’ lazy players.



There’s a lot more to the game than that.



A good thing is that as you move up the ranks, you encounter fewer of those guys, until you get to guys like Mike Babcock, who will routinely tell the media his team played crappy after a win, or that they deserved a better fate after a loss. NHL coaches have a pretty good handle on how their team actually played, score...