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Coaches Around the NHL Share Barry Trotz’s “Old School” Tendencies Part 1

By Ben Eisenberg |
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Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Earlier this month I wrote an Airing of Grievances out of frustration with some of things the Barry Trotz does which I believe have cost the Washington Capitals points in the standings this season. I wanted to expand on this topic, because my theory is that Barry Trotz has “old school” tendencies that, when push comes to shove, Barry Trotz begrudgingly acknowledges and perhaps even utilizes modern hockey analytics such as the possession stats, but will gravitate towards following his gut and what his eyes tell him instead. 

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Barry Trotz and his continued use of Jay Beagle on the top line with Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, which usually coincides with rookie sensation Andre Burakovsky sitting in the press box, is the primary example and a heated topic of discussion on Twitter and the message boards. I wrote this in my recap of Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Flyers because it’s a persistent issue:

– We’ve been over this before, but Jay Beagle on the top line is never a good idea. It’s pretty disturbing that I was slightly happy when the Flyers scored a power play goal with Top Line Beagle in the penalty box early in the first, thinking it might be negative reinforcement for Barry Trotz. Burakovsky has been a wizard on that top line recently, and I’m sure Barry Trotz wanted to rest the rookie on a back-to-back, but man that healthy scratch is tough to swallow.

All that said, I believe that Barry Trotz is far from alone and that the vast majority of NHL coaches have similar old school tendencies, so I wanted to test the waters and see whether the grass is greener behind the other bench. In part one of my quest to find out more, I asked Jimmy Rixner of Pensburgh, Dan Saraceni of Lighthouse Hockey and Mike Murphy of Blue Shirt Banter to weigh in on the Penguins, Islanders and Rangers respectively with their opinions on the coaches of the other Metropolitan Division contenders in part one of this series.

Take a look.

Pittsburgh Penguins – Mike Johnston

Mandatory Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

I asked Jimmy Rixner, AKA Hooks Orpik of Pensburgh to weight in on Johnston’s habits as a first-year coach in Pittsburgh. We’ve heard a lot about the team’s focus on analytics in recent years and they aren’t shy about the fact that they use them in player evaluations. Surely, Johnston is a new-age coach who never does Barry Trotz like stuff, right?

Johnston has done a lot of curious things lately that don’t seem to make too much sense of the surface. Like all coaches he seems to like Craig Adams, despite him adding almost nothing to the table in terms of being a terrible possession player, almost no production and really bad underlying PK numbers too.

So it seems Craig Adams is Johnston’s Jay Beagle. Let’s hope MacLellan stays away from Adams at all costs. But wait! There’s more.

I kind of touched on some more issues I’ve had with Johnston here in terms of line matching from the recent Caps game that you’ll like. And he also pulled a fresh Crosby line off the ice from an o-zone draw with 41 seconds left in the 3rd period because Chicago had Toews out there. I wasn’t too sure the wisdom of running from that matchup with a chance to win the game in the last minute. They’ve also scratched Beau Bennett a lot lately, preferring to play Adams, Zach Sill and other bad hockey players in some bizarre way to teach Bennett a lesson about how they want him to compete more / play better in the tough areas. Yet other players that are struggling like Brandon Sutter aren’t sat. Like I said, maybe there is a reason for the decisions they are making, but a lot of recent ones don’t really add up in terms of being solid ideas to win hockey games.

You could copy a lot of what Rixner said, replace Bennett with Burakovsky and mistake him for talking about Barry Trotz. My personal opinion is that Barry Trotz is a better coach for the Caps than Johnston ever would have been, although the Pens’ situation is unique.

New York Islanders – Jack Capuano

Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

OK, so maybe Pens and Caps have coaching issues to complain about but surely the Islanders who have gone from mediocre to Cup contender in a short time have to be pleased with Capuano, right? Not exactly. While Capuano seems to have made strides this year, it seems he has a history of curious deployments and favoring guys who PLAY THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY!! IE get crushed in possession numbers.

I asked Dan Saraceni of Lighthouse Hockey to weigh in with his thoughts. Give him a follow on twitter if you want to see more smoking hot #content such as this:

I wouldn’t say he leans on veterans necessarily, but he definitely goes back repeatedly to guys he trusts, whether the stats bear out or not. Last season, he split ice time almost equally between all four lines despite the fact that the fourth line of Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas and Colin McDonald were a possession nightmare. That wasn’t why they lost a lot of games (again, bad goalies), but they weren’t helping. Also, like clockwork, Capuano rolls that fourth line out after almost every goal for or against for reasons only he really knows, mostly likely heart, grit and all that crap. He also has a habit of giving the team’s worst defensemen gobs of ice time. Last year, it was Andrew MacDonald who led the team in ice time despite allowing easy entries to any opponent on the ice. This year, Brian Strait seems to be the team’s go-to 6/7th rotation guy and his effect on the team is very similar to MacDonald’s; lots of hemmed-in D zone time and running around. Meanwhile, guys like Michael Grabner, Thomas Hickey, Calvin de Haan and Anders Lee don’t see as much of the ice as we would prefer.

Imagine if the Caps had a defenseman who wasn’t good at Fenwicking but still got top pair minutes or something along those lines? People would go CRAZY and be calling for Barry Trotz’s head.

This season has been a little different for a few reasons. Capuano talked about analytics during training camp, although we’re not 100% sure what analytics he was talking about because the Islanders don’t really say. He has decreased the fourth line’s ice time a tiny bit, and the addition of Cal Clutterbuck on that line full time has really helped. Obviously, adding Mikhail Grabovsky, Nikolay Kulemin, Johnny Boychuk, Nick Leddy and Jaro Halak will help win games. A very vocal contingent of Islanders fans hate Capuano for these and other reasons. He’s still called an “AHL coach” despite coaching in the NHL for four and a half years (he’s currently second on the Islanders all time wins list, way behind Al Arbour).

It’s funny, you’d never really think it’s possible but I suppose there’s an argument to be made for better talent making a coach’s job easier and covering up his annoying tendencies. Of course, all is not so bad on The Island.

Personally, I don’t think Capuano is a bad coach at all. The players clearly love him and love playing for him. Effort hasn’t really seemed like an issue, and there hasn’t been any public player strife or anything. There’s probably another gear they can reach, but it looks like he’s going to let them find it, even if it means making mistakes on the ice until they figure it out. At some point, he will be replaced as all coaches are, and how the next guy changes things will be interesting to see.

New York Rangers – Alain Vigneault

Mandatory Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

Fine, so Capuano and Johnston have their warts, but surely not Vigneault, right? After all, Vignault is supposed to be as new-school as they come, having unleashed the offense in New York after John Tortorella’s oppressive regime left. I asked Mike Murphy of Blue Shirt Banter to weigh in on Vigneault in case there was a slight chance that he had any gripes whatsoever about the Rangers’ head coach.

Tanner Glass is under contract for another two seasons after this (God help us) at a cap hit of around $1.5 million. As maddening as the Glass signing was this offseason, it has only been made worse by Vigneault putting him in the lineup over guys who can drive possession like Lee Stempniak or players who are simply not toxic to the team when they are on the ice, like Jesper Fast (prior to his recent injury). Having Tanner Glass out on the ice against almost any quality line or player is a recipe for disaster. He is slow, unbelievably bad at positioning, prone to taking bad penalties, and is often taken advantage of when the Rangers are trapped in their own zone. Oh, and he gets just over a minute a game of PK time. So, why is Glass in the lineup? Well, he’s a veteran and he’s the only Ranger on the roster who will regularly take fighting majors which, for some reason, is still regarded as valuable trait to some.

So Tanner Glass is Jay Beagle who is Craig Adams and I just can’t keep up. Someday those three will unite on some team’s fourth line and hockey analysts will wax poetic about what a TOUGH FOURTH LINE that is to play against. “Guys like that are the GLUE in a locker room boys, despite what all the analytics guys tell ya!” Also, please put me out of my misery if that team is the Caps.

Let’s talk about the Rangers’ power play next and how Vigneault is not doing things to help it succeed.

There is certainly a preference shown to veterans  in regards to power play deployment since Vigneault has taken the reins as the Rangers’ head coach. That Dan Girardi ranks third among Rangers’ defenseman in PP/TOI behind Dan Boyle and Ryan McDonagh is more than a little bit peculiar considering he has almost no offensive acumen whatsoever. The Rangers’ power play is about as hit or miss as it comes and it seems to depend largely on the team they are playing and whether or not they can actually get into the offensive zone without squandering most of the time on the man advantage. When AV landed in New York one of the first things we heard was that he paid attention to metrics and was, by all accounts, a “new school” coach. Obviously, Rangers fans were pretty damn excited after a few seasons of a winning strategy that seemed to be dependent on winning games 2-1 or 3-2 and just praying that Henrik Lundqvist could keep us in games. It seems that as new school as AV is, he does things by half-measures which appears to be what most coaches around the league do in regards to applying the teachings of the “new school”.

It’s funny because the Rangers have a good chance to make another run at the Stanley Cup this year despite having an imperfect coach. Maybe we’ve been way too hard on Barry Trotz after all.

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