Former Russian national team head coach Vladimir Plyushchev has shared his assessment of Avangard Omsk head coach Guy Boucher’s performance during the Gagarin Cup semifinal series against Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, which Avangard lost 3-4.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect that as soon as Avangard faced trouble, their head coach Guy Boucher would simply vanish. The hysterics started as early as the fifth game, which Yaroslavl won in a shutout. And what Boucher did throughout the third period of the sixth game with a 3-1 lead is a complete mystery.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“For the entire third period, Omsk just kept firing the puck out of their zone. Fine, if they used a chip or a bank off the boards to clear the neutral zone, but no – they resorted to constant icing. That was the coaching instruction. Omsk, to put it mildly, wasn’t inferior to their opponent in class. They had no right to fall into such primitive and risky hockey. But their leader, unfortunately, lost his composure.”
“The 60th minute of that game was pure nonsense. The coach was on his own, and the team was on their own. To blow a 3-1 lead in 33 seconds and miss a spot in the final is borderline sabotage. Moreover, the coach didn’t even call a 30-second timeout or put out a defensive line during that stretch,” Plyushchev said.
