Going to keep harping on it because, while there are obviously other issues with the team, I think the most important and most glaring is their possession issues/getting outshot. And again, I think this is directly related to Carlyle.
One more attempt to make that argument:
The most troubling thing on that front is that these are not new problems for the coach. While the Ducks were a middling team with the puck in the first two seasons after they won the Cup beginning in 2007-08, their possession numbers dipped sharply into the league basement beginning in 2009.
First they hit 47 per cent.
Then 46 per cent.
Then, in Carlyle?s last season in Anaheim, they won just seven of their first 24 games and were under 44 per cent.
He was fired.
When he reemerged in Toronto three months later, the same problem followed: The Leafs never seemed to have the puck.
...
?He may not be a numbers guy, but his eyes are telling him this is a bad thing,? Ferraro said. ?He didn?t need to know the metrics. Or even accept them. His eyes are telling him ?that?s not going to work.? More than any time I can remember, holding the puck and keeping it away from the other guys has become the accepted leaguewide thought. Before, only Detroit really had that mentality... Now, because of the way the game is officiated, you have to possess it.?
Ferraro views Carlyle?s problem as a classic one of a coach that?s mismatched to his personnel, something that has been talked about ever since he was hired to remold what had been a quick, exciting offensive team that allowed a lot of goals under Wilson.
Two years later, many Leafs players still like to rush the puck and trade chances; Carlyle has always been viewed as a safe, lock it down type ? although opinions on that are changing as Toronto has floundered in its own zone.
What that mismatch theory doesn?t explain, though, is why the Ducks began to struggle so mightily under his watch and why they suddenly rebounded ? possession-wise and in the standings ? when Bruce Boudreau took over.
It?s a shift that might simply speak to a failure to adapt to a changing roster and a changing league, something that has hit other veteran coaches in the NHL hard at various times.
One example there is Ken Hitchcock, who won the Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars back in 1999 but was bouncing between teams and didn?t have nearly the same success during stops in Philadelphia and Columbus.
Hitchcock has since reinvented his style with the Western Conference leading St. Louis Blues, asking his players to play a hard-charging pressure and possession game that worked to great effect against the Leafs last week.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/leafs-beat/mirtle-carlyles-failure-to-adapt-could-cost-leafs-more-than-playoff-spot/article17751075/?cmpid=rss1&click=dlvr.it
Ducks rebounded to 49% CF by end of 11-12, were at 48% in 12-13, and 50.1% in 13-14.
Leafs finished 11-12 at 49% CF (18 games under Carlyle), were at 45% in 12-13, and are at 44% this season (basically last - 0.1% up on Buffalo). Notice a pattern? Carlyle in Anaheim went 47 to 46 to 44 to fired.
(CF% is just the percentage of the shot attempts in a game the team has towards the other net - 50% is about average, 55% is tops in league)
Possession numbers are only harped on because they've proven better than other stats such as winning percentage, GF/GA at predicting future results. They're not perfect, you'll never get a stat that will be a perfect predictor. This does not mean that possession is even a great predictor of future results, but it's fair to say it's probably the most reliable of what is available. At this point in the season, it probably does not have much, if any, predictive value over those other stats above - over a large enough sample in a season they all start to be about the same, but it's earlier on in the season where possession numbers can be useful in predicting future performance. The Leafs possession numbers told the story of a team that was likely playing worse than it's record indicated.
