His skating, passing no. His d-zone coverage yes! Championships are won with d-zone awareness first. Ask Steve Yzerman. Look at the Habs of the 70's, look at how strong their plus/minus was. Who later taught Steve Yzerman, the same coach from the 70's in MTL. Even Guy Lafleur had a strong plus/minus. This is not a remark from last season with regards to Petry, he has a track record going back to his days as a teenager. I traded the best offensive player in the entire league at Junior A level to get a good backup goalie, a hard hitting d-man and two draft picks. One of the scouts threw his binder on the ground and walked out saying I knew nothing about hockey. The GM trusted me as I was hired to turn team around. In 16 years 1 player got drafted, the year I coached them, 7 of our players either played in AHL or NHL. I spent the entire first month of season working on two things, chemistry and defense. Never once worked on PP or anything passed red line. Our goals against went way down and our goals for went from 97 to 294. We had 3 centres that finished the year with 49, 52 and 46 goals. We lost in double overtime, one game away from going to play for the National Championship. I love hockey but studied human behavior which allowed me to really take my understanding of an athlete to a much higher level. Most people come on these comment pages, whether it is sports, faith or politics and spew off hatred and put down people. Read all my posts, I have never put one person down and always try to give good solid positive feedback. This is like raising a teenager. It is up to the teen to accept or reject the advice.

Forgot to finish about the Junior player I traded away. his father yelled at me and swore at me, saying his son was going to have a stellar NHL career. His son ended up playing two years of Junior with good scoring but with terrible plus/minus. He played 3 games at ECHL level and that was it.