During Elliotte Friedman’s non-traditional 31 Thoughts post on Thursday, he spoke with Anaheim Ducks’ GM Bob Murray and said he was a bit surprised by how blunt Murray was when it came to discussing the Ducks’ recent season.
He placed a lot of blame in a lot of places, even throwing another NHL team under the bus and saying his players “got away with murder.”
During a conference call, Murray said the following:
There were some stretches of very good hockey played by this group. Definite steps in the right direction of playing faster, quicker and doing some things the proper way. Far too inconsistent.
Citing that the fact that their terrible special teams is probably the reason they aren’t one of the 24 teams in the play-in should the NHL resume it’s season, he added:
That’s on the coaches, players and everybody. That has to be fixed. Certain things are going to change. I’m going to be pushing very hard. The inconsistencies cannot be allowed to happen with the way they were.
Murray said that backing off from the team on a day-to-day basis was a bad idea and called it an “error in judgement”, one that won’t repeat itself next season. Showing how upset he was that things got away from the team when he left them to run their own show, he added,
Everybody talking about the young guys, it just led players, at times, to say it’s just a rebuilding year, and that it doesn’t matter. Up and down the lineup, some of the kids were allowed to get away with murder this year. That’s over.
It sounded like part of the problem, at least in Murray’s eyes, was that head coach Dallas Eakins wasn’t hard enough on the players. In part, he blames that on Eakins time with the Edmonton Oilers. When asked about his take on Eakins’ performance as coach this season, he noted:
“I thought he was very organized and well prepared. I thought the communication was good early. It got off track a little bit. As I’ve said before, he had to get rid of some of the things that came from Edmonton. I think those are gone now. He was very hard on some young people in Edmonton and it kind of backfired on him. I’m not saying it’s all his fault, by the way.
That Murray mentioned Eakins’ history with the Oilers might not have been the best move. Why? Frankly, it’s hard to know if he’s suggesting Eakins was afraid to get critiqued again for being too hard on players — a critique that was often placed on him during his time with the Oilers — or if Murray was suggesting the Oilers roster, at that time, was full of immature players who tried to take advantage of a new coach.
It could be a bit of both. Still, it’s probably not the best idea to throw another team under the bus when being critical of your own franchise’s lack of success.
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