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

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.