The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

So the Bruins lost to the Sabres tonight. Not really that surprising.

Not that big a deal either. The Bruins have a supercomfortable two-point lead on the Thrashers for the eighth spot in the East and so why not lay down against a team that’s got the Northeast Division pretty much wrapped up by now?

Lots of blame to go around in this loss, as you’d expect. The first two Sabres goals went in off stupid Dennis Wideman who’s been complete crap this year. The third one was also his fault because he turned the puck over and went back to the bench instead of playing the guy to whom he’d just given it, because his stick was broken (or so he’d have us believe!).

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

Andy Murray knows a lot about hockey. You can go ahead and ask him about that sometime.

Maybe you haven’t heard about how Andy Murray gets things done. Getting a team with a ludicrous amount of injuries to key players into the playoffs last year? Yeah, that’s him.

Andy Murray is a brilliant coach. Know how he keeps his guys motivated? He tells them they suck. Really. He makes up brilliant sayings all the time, like, “Arrogance breeds complacency and complacency means you are going backwards.” Don’t want that, can’t have that. Not on this Blues team.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

So tonight the Flyers are beating the Caps by two late in the second period, right, And Philly’s a pretty good team with depth at pretty much every position and they’re not exactly wont to give up leads.

But the Caps had it figured out from the get-go: put your three best players, all three of which play different forward positions, on the same line and see what happens. What happens, of course, is that those three players combine for 4-5-9 and the Caps win 4-2. Nicklas Backstrom had the biggest night, scoring the tying goal and assisting on all three others. Alex Ovechkin ran his goal total to 11 in as many games with his brace tonight. Alex Semin went 1-2-3, and his goal was an absolute snipe.

So it stands to reason, then, that Bruce Boudreau would say this after the game, per Wyshynski’s Twitter: “Who knows where [they]‘ll be on Thursday.” YEAH BRUCE JEEZ WHO KNOWS?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

A thing I predicted: The Coyotes would make the playoffs. You could also file that under “A thing everyone on the planet thought was lunacy.”

And certainly, I get why. People looked at the Coyotes, who made very few “impact” personnel changes in the offseason (and by “very few,” I clearly mean zero) and in fact took on almost nothing but bad salary in the form of other teams’ unwanted contracts, and saw what they saw last year. Phoenix was a bad team by any metric, one that often seemed not only lost but beyond rudderless to boot, and so the fact that they added contracts that seemed to have negative value to an already-woeful lineup seemed the last shovelful of dirt on the whole Hockey In the Desert experiment, and, most would argue, with good reason.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

In a lot of sports, you hear close games refered to as “a chess match” and coaches as “tacticians.”

But for some reason, coaches in hockey don’t seem to get the credit that say, a football coach or baseball manager does. A hockey coach, the majority must suppose, is one that can give a good speech during intermission and maybe get the power play humming along above 22 percent. But other than that, you let the boys hop over the boards and your job is done until it’s prudent to use your one timeout.

But a coach’s job, as we saw tonight, is about far more than simply sitting on a one-minute team talk for most of a game, if not for its entirety. What Dan Bylsma did to Paul Maurice in tonight’s third period was nothing short of a master class in hockey stratagem.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am not, nor have I ever been, a hockey coach in any sense of the word. But in reading this Damian Cristodero article from the St. Pete Times about Barry Melrose’s plan for the Lightning, I feel like I’d do an okay job with an NHL job.

His big plan to right the Tampa Bay ship is pretty simple. Well, actually it’s shockingly simple.

Step one: Play your best players less.

Martin St. Louis averaged more than 24 minutes a game last year, and Lecavalier averaged just under 23. Melrose said they played anywhere from three to five minutes too much per night. In St. Louis’ case, I agree that almost 25 seems like a lot. In fact, it was the most of any forward by close to 30 seconds a night. Brad Richards, who played with St. Louis for most of his time in Tampa, was second at 23:27, followed by Alex Ovechkin at 23:06. A good four minutes too many for St. Louis, even if he did see time in all situations, and Tampa took a decent amount of penalties last year.

But getting Lecavalier’s minutes down to 20 or less is crazy. The team has no one besides Lecavalier to play in his place. Who picks up those minutes? Gary Roberts? Steven Stamkos? Ryan Malone? Eh, that’s not too good of a substitute.

Both will see their shorthanded minutes drop considerably to cover this, which would be fine except St. Louis averaged 1:46 shorthanded a night, and Lecavalier only had 1:33. Even if those numbers dropped to nil, they’re still losing 2ish minutes a night at even strength or (if Melrose is actually as stupid enough) on the power play.

Melrose calls this “resting,” I ask, “For what?” This isn’t a playoff-bound team, or anything like one. Too many holes, too many projects. Playing your best players as much as they can possibly play doesn’t strike me as a bad thing. It’s not like they slowed down or had the ice time affect them too greatly. Both Lecavalier and St. Louis had better than a point a game.

Step two: Don’t dump and chase.

Again, just brilliant coaching here. The only teams that can get away with the dump and chase are teams with good defenses. Tampa doesn’t have one. Tortorella’s insistence on using it was none too bright, Melrose’s correction of that practice shouldn’t be hailed as anything less than correction of an obvious.

So instead, the plan is (wait for it) puck possession! It’s just so clever.

Here’s Melrose, the master analyzer, on why it will work: “If we have the puck, they can’t score.”

Step three: Play defense.

But what happens when they DO have the puck?

“I’m not going to accept bad pinches,” Melrose said. “I’m not going to accept two-on-ones against. I’m not going to accept bad judgment on defense.”

Saying it is one thing, executing it is another. The fact is that Tampa’s defense features five 23-year-olds and they’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. That means bad pinches, bad giveaways, and odd-man rushes coming back the other way. Even if they’re encouraged not to jump into the play (and boy won’t Tampa be fun to watch this year if that’s the case?), they’ll still see a lot of forwards busting ass up-ice toward them.

So this is Barry Melrose’s three-part plan. Really.

Doesn’t it make you feel like all you need to do to coach is stand behind the bench in a suit?