More lead changes, more open ice, more penalties, more power plays, more mistakes - it has taken away some of their control. And that was the whole point.
"The consistency throughout the game is something that is not to the coaches' liking because there are major swings," said Dallas Stars head coach Dave Tippett. "And a lot of times it's a swing where the game moves very quickly. It's good for the game, good for the fans, but it takes a lot of control away from the coach."
And Tippett is fine with it.
"The game is what matters most," he said. "If you really truly embrace what's good for the game and try to build and grow the game, yeah there's some frustrating times but in the end you have to say 'this is for the big picture' and we have to keep pushing that way."
The NHL's brain trust wanted more scoring chances with all these changes. Well they got it.
"The chance chart is going through the roof," New York Rangers coach Tom Renney said Tuesday. "And that puts a lot of pressure on your goaltending, it puts a lot of pressure on your defensive game in general, and certainly puts a lot of pressure on your defencemen.
"And consequently, we're doing a lot of teaching," added Renney. "In some cases we're teaching older and more experienced players kind of how to play the game again with this new set of circumstances."
The dizzying impact of the changes has coaches barely able to catch their breathe. Surviving the first month of the season over the .500 mark is probably an achievement.
"We were thinking, we're 6-3-1 right now. Should we be happy?" wondered Philadelphia Flyers head coach Ken Hitchcock. "Should we be angry because we lost some games in the third period? We all decided we should just be relieved. That's where we're at right now, we've decided we're relieved."
Coaches have yet to fully figure out the new standard of officiating and what to tell their players.
"If we're at a disadvantage at all as a coaching fraternity, that might be it," said Renney. "We're still waiting for consistency so that we know what to expect from night to night. We got into Montreal (on Saturday) and there's six penalties in the entire game - three per team. And then last night there's 17. And our game last night was a softer game than it was in Montreal. The intensity level wasn't nearly what it was in Montreal. And yet here's 17 penalties.
"So it's matter of getting a feel of how the game is getting called from game to game."
Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman, the NHL's all-time winningest coach, thinks they're calling it as tightly as ever.
"The difference to me now is that let's say a team commits 15 infractions, they're going to get called on 80 or 90 per cent of them," Bowman said Tuesday. "Whereas maybe in the old days they might have as many infractions but there might be a tendency to maybe be called on 50 or 40 per cent.
"There used to be a black, white and grey area, and now it's mostly only black and white. The grey area is limited now."
The boon in special teams has affected players' minutes, and that, said Hitchcock, has been his biggest concern one month into the season.
"If the same players are on the power play and killing penalties, and the game is on the line late and you're on the power play, some of those players are so tired they can't even make plays," Hitchcock said. "In our game Sunday against Ottawa, they were really tired in back-to-back games. And you're finding that with a lot of teams. Ottawa died with six minutes to go in the second period Sunday. They had nothing."
Hitchcock's debate now is whether he has to involve more players on special teams and cut down on the ice time wingers such as Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble are getting right now.
"I've got Gagne and Knuble on the power play, on the penalty kill, playing big minutes, and three games in four nights - they were both dead Sunday," said Hitchcock. "They don't have near the energy. So I have to find people from the third and fourth lines (to kill penalties).
"That's the control that coaches have to start thinking about, is spacing their minutes better, looking at finding more responsibility for more players because if you don't do it, your team is really going to suffer. I'm really finding that now."
Other changes have also hurt the coaches' ability to control a game, such as not allowing a line change on teams who ice the puck or calling a delay of game penalty for any player who shoots the puck over the glass in the defensive zone.
"I remember saying in one of the league meetings this summer, when you're a coach and your team is stuck in its own end and you're tired, and the heat's in the kitchen, it was always easy to take the heat out of the kitchen," Tippett said. "Maybe our game needs some of that heat in the kitchen, that's a good thing for it.
"Now it penalizes a team, it doesn't allow them to get out of an inferior situation as easily."
Controlling the puck, according to Bowman, is now more at a premium than it was when he still coached.
"If you don't have the puck you're putting your team in a more vulnerable position than you were before, because now you are vulnerable to a penalty," said Bowman. "There's certain things you can't do anymore. Before you could sort of play defence and give the puck to the other team and say: 'You've got the grenade, you're going to mess up, you're going to make mistakes.'
"But you can't do that anymore."
In the end, coaches are under fire right now more than anyone associated with the game. And because of that, they're going to occasionally react emotionally after a tough loss. The NHL will continue to warn and fine any coach that rips the game, as it did with Pat Quinn and Randy Carlyle last week.
Tippett feels there's no need to denigrate the game, regardless of how frustrating the changes may be.
"A lot of people don't know much about this game and get their version of it through the media," he said. "If all they ever read is coaches or players or GMs or whoever it is, badmouthing our game, what are they going to think when they read that? Why would they want to watch it? We need a positive image in our game."
