stubborn or patient

i was going to write a long diatribe about boudreau's unwillingness to change the configuration on his power play, an omission that contributed significantly to losses in games 2 and 3 of this series. but then he went and finally did it in practice yesterday, along with switching fedorov and backstrom (a move i swear i was going to suggest in a post but was to lazy to do it before it was reported - whatever, one day i'll learn). so now we'll see how the caps respond, if those changes are enough, and whether it's all too little too late.

one other thing i'd like to mention re the pp debacle, i was watching the caps tv interview with boudreau from after the game (an awesome feature, too bad the players almost never have anything interesting to say), and he was asked about incorporating laich's net presence on the first pp. bruce's response, not fully understanding the question, was a good one: he basically said that those players are who they are and they werent going to change, that they were a good pp during the last part of the season doing what they do. i think that's right. if you ask semin and backs and feds to do what laich does on the pp, then you shouldnt be an nhl coach. that's not who they are and it's too late to change their abilities (similarly, if you ask laich to do what either of those 3 do, youre even dumber). the reporter rephrased his question to get to the point: what about putting laich on that unit? bruce gave the first terse response i've seen from him all year: he's on the 2nd unit already, theyre out there. now this answer is disingenuous at best and idiotic at worse. he knows that 1) the 2nd unit has been out there for around 20 secs if at all lately, and 2) it's the first unit that needs the net presence; theyre the guys that are going to get the zone time and create the chances that require screening biron or a body to get to the rebound. just a terrible, terrible utterance from boudreau and i'm guessing by his pained delivery and his actions the next day, he knew he had fucked up and that he had been doing so for a while. there's a difference between being reactive and proactive, and though nhl coaches love to use the words, i'm not sure they know what they mean.