Coaches Around the NHL Share Barry Trotz’s “Old School” Tendencies Part 2

Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Expanding on Part 1 of this series which evaluates coaches amongst the Washington Capitals’ Metro Division rivals and whether they share some of Barry Trotz’s old school tendencies, I also asked experts of other successful teams around the NHL what they thought of their coaches. As a refresher, I’ve written on this site about Barry Trotz, stating that he’s a very good coach overall while also questioning his logic behind certain decisions. In a nutshell, my concern (shared by many) is that Barry Trotz is still a big believer in old-timey tautologies that ex-jocks and coaches think provide more value to a team than they do.

These usually come down to valuing fourth line scrubs or slow defensemen who can’t get the puck out of their own end while devaluing skilled players who contribute to positive puck possession numbers. See my rant on Top Jay Beagle and Press Box Andre Burakovsky from a few weeks ago which is still fresh to this day, unfortunately.

1) Continuing to play Jay Beagle on the top line in favor of Andre Burakovsky. Beagle is a perfectly fine fourth liner and has a certain value to a team. He’s good at suppressing shots against, a solid penalty killer and an excellent faceoff guy. Beagle should in no way be playing on the first line more than once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, putting Beagle on the top line seems to be Barry Trotz’s go-to move when he’s unhappy with the team’s overall performance. Burakovsky, being a skilled forward under the age of 25, is an easy target and seems to pay the price for the entire team’s misgivings in those situations. Sending a message once or twice? That’s fine. This is a pattern of behavior, though, for Barry Trotz. He has an affinity for Beagle and perhaps an irrational fear of Burakovsky’s rookie mistakes which in his mind seem to outweigh his overall very good play. Beagle has now started three consecutive games next to Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom and I’d argue that, while one forward out of twelve can only have so much negative impact on his team in a single game, Top Line Beagle has hurt this team this week to some degree. The top-line was mediocre in a strong overall possession game for the Caps in their 1-0 loss to Montreal and who knows? If Burakovsky starts that game, maybe it’s enough of a difference to put the Caps on the board. Ovechkin is playing as well as he has at any point in his career right now and it’s carrying the offense around him. The secondary scoring has, by in large, been lacking recently. Burakovsky, by possession numbers and point scoring pace is one of the best forwards on the team with little debate. He would probably help the team with that issue. Beagle, for his part, had a nasty turnover against the Habs in front of the Caps’ net that led to a critical Brooks Oprik penalty late in the game. He took two penalties yesterday against St. Louis. What example is he providing, again? Oates Approval Rating: 9 Oates would definitely approve of Beagle on the top line, except in his opinion, Barry Trotz probably isn’t playing him there regularly enough, therefore the move only gets a 9 on the Oates Approval Rating scale. Still, Oates would likely be proud that Barry Trotz is carrying on what has become a franchise tradition started by Dale Hunter three years ago and continues today.

All that said, I asked some experts of other teams outside the Metro to weigh in with their thoughts on what old-school stuff, if any, their coaches do that riles them up. Check out the analysis on the Nashville Predators, LA Kings, Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens.

Nashville Predators – Peter Laviolette 

Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

There is one coach who can seem to do no wrong. Jonathan Garcia of On The Forecheck covers the Predators and is having a good ole’ time this season watching Nashville ascend to great heights.

I guess I jumped the gun when I said there are a few things that Lavy does that annoy people. There really aren’t, at least not this year. The main thing has been not using certain players in the shootout. Ellis, Josi and other defenseman go before Forsberg, Neal, and I don’t think Ribeiro has ever gone. That’s relatively small. He messed with the line combos two games ago which, at the time, didn’t make any sense. But they proceeded to destroy both the Devils and the Sharks with those lines. Lavy went on record saying even though the team was on a four-game win streak, he wasn’t too happy with how guys were playing. So he wanted a different look. I appreciate that a lot, because it means he’s never resting on his laurels. …. Really, as far as the first year goes, there isn’t a whole lot I can think of that he’s doing that rubs people the wrong way. Sure, it’s still a little bit of a honeymoon stage, but after experiencing Trotz for 16 years it’s a breath of fresh air.

Well isn’t that just lovely! We’re so happy for you! Jonathan happens to also follow the Caps relatively closely and expanded on Barry Trotz a little further before asking if I could somehow find him an Alex Ovechkin bobblehead.

He’s been great for the Caps though. I was so hesitant about [Trotz] getting the call because of everything I saw from him. Sure, the decisions he makes don’t make a lot of sense, most of the time, but compare what the team looks like and how they play compared to last year or the year before. It’s discernible hockey. Can’t ask for much more than that. We’ll just have to see how that translates to the playoffs.

For the record, I’m seeing signs of progress from Barry Trotz that seem to indicate his capability to adapt in the modern NHL. He’s stuck with Evgeny Kuznetsov as the second-line center despite his inexperience, seems to be playing Andre Burakovsky more lately and even has the team playing better hockey with the lead of late. He’s also very intelligent about the game and has a strong grasp on puck possession and its predictive value (See his quote before the Winnipeg game about how the Jets lost to Nashville but dominated the game).

Los Angeles Kings – Darryl Sutter

Mandatory Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

Sutter is often championed as one of the most forward-thinking coaches of the modern era and with two Stanley Cup wins in the last three years, it’s hard to argue against him. Still, even Sutter isn’t immune from sensible criticism about some of his old-school tendencies.

Nick Chapin writes for Jewels from the Crown under the name nickc79 and his twitter feed is pretty awesome, I’d highly recommend following him. Here are his thoughts on Sutter:

As far as Sutter goes, he has a slight reliance on toughness and grit that grates on me sometimes. He over-values lumbering physical defensemen like Robyn Regehr and his ilk, which can be frustrating. If you watch the Road to the Stadium Series premiere, all he talks about is how the Kings need to be heavier and more physical and how it’s their identity. It’s also been rare that he’s been willing to deploy real skill on the 4th line, which means guys like Kyle Clifford or Jordan Nolan or Andy Andreoff or Colin Fraser have had probably-longer runs than they should’ve had with the team. With that said, these are fairly minor issues and he actually seems to grasp MOST modern ideas, so I try and forgive him for his faults.

Here’s the scoop, kids: all coaches love stay-at-home type defensemen and “gritty” 4th liners. It’s like a handshake agreement they all have before the start of each season to annoy bloggers. While Chapin is pleased with Sutter overall, it seems Sutter may also have an obnoxious tendency to rely too much on Jonathan Quick.

The only thing about him that really bothers me is his over-reliance on Jonathan Quick, who, frankly, is probably not any better than his backups, and hasn’t been besides his super season in 2011/12. The point isn’t that Martin Jones and Jonathan Bernier are definitely better, but Sutter rides Quick into the ground and we haven’t really been able to see what other guys can accomplish – unless Quick gets injured.

 Montreal Canadiens – Michel Therrien

Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports

There may not be a more fascinating case than the Montreal Canadiens in the 2014-2015 NHL season. They’re a bottom-ten puck possession team, the only one with under 50% Corsi-For that’s in playoff position. Except they’re not just in playoff position, they’re leading the Eastern Conference (as of Wednesday morning) It seems so unsustainable, yet they keep sustaining. Carey Price may very well win the Hart Trophy this year, and we should all be OK with that.

However, reading Andrew Berkshire of Habs Eyes on the Prize break down Therrien’s system should tell you that there are some concerning trends in Montreal. Therrien comes off as a cross between Adam Oates and Dale Hunter:

The main thing with Therrien is that he’s a hyper-conservative coach. Everything he instructs his team to do is the old-school version of risk-averse hockey. He’s so petrified of high risk turnovers that he’d rather go up the boards when exiting the zone, no matter what. Teams know this from pre-scouting and end up hemming the Habs in their zone for insane amounts of time. Same thing goes for zone entries, which are more often dump ins than entering with possession. Therrien’s mantra is always hard work over skill, and sometimes that works, and there are benefits to it, but ultimately it holds teams back from reaching their peak performance.

That’s dangerous territory for a team to enter. The Colorado Avalanche tried it last year and it worked until the playoffs, then came crashing down this year. Ten bucks says this is Therrien’s last head coaching gig in the NHL.

Boston Bruins – Claude Julien

Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Last offseason, most Caps fans would have KILLED to have Julien take over behind the bench after the Adam Oates firing. Look at what he’s done with the Bruins, after all, having led them to one Championship and very nearly a second one over the last four years. What’s not to like?

A lot, according to Gus Booth, who contributes to Stanley Cup of Chowder. Gus sent me a 915-word rant on Julien and how some of his curious deployments and pet favoritism has led the Bruins to struggle for the last playoff spot in the East. I regret that I couldn’t run it in it’s entirety, but here are some good nuggets.

Don’t get me wrong. Guy is easily in the top half of NHL coaches in terms, top third probably. He runs a system that’s produced very good, even great, possession results ever since the Cup year. The things that make me doubt Claude are probably flaws that a lot of NHL coaches exhibit, and I’m certainly not pretending I could run a hockey team better overall, but here’s a couple tidbits that don’t make any objective sense: -Playing stiffs like Kevan Miller, who is basically a living traffic cone, what remains Dennis Seidenberg, and Adam McQuaid more minutes than Dougie Hamilton. Even if Hamilton was as error prone as some (incorrectly) suggest he is, he’s probably made about a hundred more breakout passes than that group, combined, over the course of the year. I wish I was exaggerating. Julien clearly struggles with the same, “he plays a lot in his own zone, therefore he is good defensively” view that a lot of NHL insider people are stuck on. Look at Hamilton’s numbers this year, and what immediately sticks out is that Tuukka Rask, a Vezina-caliber goalie, has been Ray Emery-quality when he’s been on the the ice. Julien, as with many fans, seems to think that’s somehow the young defenseman’s fault, at least when it comes to allocating minutes to protect a lead. We’ve seen study after study that shows that about 99% of NHL players can’t affect their on-ice SH%/SV% in any significant way.

Here we have Julien making decisions based on seemingly-uninformed logic, like not taking puck luck into account and blaming a save percentage fluke on a good defenseman.

Julien also continues to stick with a D pairing that seems to have outlived its usefulness.

-Dennis Seidenberg-Adam McQuaid second pairing. My god. You’d think that even the “defense wins games” Bruins would realize that you need ONE defenseman who can complete a pass. Ironically, it was Kevan Miller’s injury–another DMan who literally cannot f****** handle a puck–that broke up this train wreck. Look at their play vs Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton on the road trip. Seriously, look at the NHL.com highlights and try to figure out what 44/54 are doing on the goals against. And that had been going on forever, just with more puckluck keeping the opponents off the board. Now, it’s not like Bartkowski or any of the Young D from Providence are worldbeaters, but there’s literally four of them they I’d trust more to get the puck out of the zone more than 44/54 or 86.

And finally, you think the Caps have problems on their top line right wing with the Beagle/Burakovsky quagmire? Take solace at least in having good company in Boston.

-Okay, so we had this dude named Jarome Iginla, and we let him go in the off-season and that was fine, since he’s too old for a multiyear deal to make sense, especially since the Bruins have managed the cap like a drunkard manages blackjack. Anyhoo, for the whole summer, the water-carriers waxed poetic about Loui Eriksson, a good two-way winger, on the first line with Krejci. Claude didn’t really let that happen because of the third-line chemistry between Soderberg and Eriksson. That’s only the beginning of the problem, though, for context. In a year where Krejci’s been in and out of the line-up, and his wingman, Lucic, was coming off wrist surgery and having kind of a down year, the problem was made worse by Claude refusing to settle on a RW. Seth Griffth played pretty well, and was sent down. Pastrnak’s been a revelaton since he’s been up, but was no longer on the Krejci line at the time of his injury. Eriksson’s barely got a shift up there, despite the fact that he’s basically wasted against third liners. Reilly Smith got a cameo, did well, and got sent back the Bergeron line. Marchand-Bergeron could win shifts with a border collie on skates as RW, they don’t need Reilly Smith. So the end result has been a generally ineffective “first line.”

We feel your pain, Gus. The truth is, most coaches are great until they’re not. Most coaches have a shelf life of 3-5 years with a team. The exceptions to that rule are either generational coaches,  are blessed with exceptional depth and talent on the roster so they don’t have to make so many “gray area” decisions, or both.

Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Conclusion

Trotz’s old-school tendencies are maddening at times, but he’s not so bad overall, nor is he all that different from most of the coaches that supposedly “embrace analytics.”

Let’s not lose perspective of how far the Caps have come in a short period of time since the Adam Oates disaster. Trotz has brought a lot of great things to the table: structure, accountability, possession stat increases, getting the stars to play to their potential and even developing Evgeny Kuznetsov into a real asset at Center.

Don’t be mistaken, I will continue to rant and rave whenever Burakovsky is scratched or Beagle plays on the scoring lines, but it’s nice to step back sometimes and appreciate that we have it pretty good right now in D.C.