Upvoted for good discussion, but I definitely disagree with you. Hartley makes a lot of the right decisions. Baertschi wasn't one of them, and the Engelland - Brodie pairing isn't either, but you can't argue with his success record. He's known for being great at developing young players, and he's brought a lottery team to the brink of the playoffs. Playing players like Raymond and GlenX over younger guys makes sense. You need veterans on the ice. We already have an abundance of young players, so we need some older players to play the less flashy, low mistake hockey. Otherwise we become like the Oilers Or Buffalo. And playing the Gaudreau-Monahan-Hudler line would never have worked early on, because Monahan was playing defensive, top line centre minutes, while Gaudreau still needed sheltering in the early part of the season. Remember that Backlund was injured too, so we needed Monahan to have hard minutes. And honestly, playing Monahan in those circumstances helped his amazing development a lot. Also, Colborne is a good player. He has nice hands and playmaking ability, and he's huge. And that matters. We need larger, truculent players to complement smaller players, and having a skilled large player is better than playing Bollig (which he does anyways, for some unknown reason). Bigger players were down opponents, allowing smaller players to do their thing. Look at LA and Chicago. Both had big players and small players.

Every fan base complains about the roster decisions of their coach, except maybe Detroit. In the end, results are what matter in evaluating a coach, and Hartley has shown us results far beyond our expectations. He took a 20 year old rookie, and 5'9" rookie and a former perennial 2nd line veteran and made them one of the best lines in the league. He made an undersized dman and a underachieving formerly great offensive dman and made them one of the better 2nd pairings in the league. He took a team that just lost it's Norris worthy captain to a 9-3-3 March. He's had many rookies flourish under his tutelage. He made one of the league's worst power plays into one of the league's best, same with the PK. He has led the team to countless comeback victories. Those are the results that show he's a great coach (and his cups and successes in Colorado and Atlanta).

A couple mistakes with one young player and continuously playing Bollig and Engelland do not make him a bad coach.