2Fingers wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:11 am
UW, what about Tocket, how does he play in this? His coaching style, has it changed or the players not executing?
I think this team is playing more like last seasons team during the final couple months and playoffs than how the team played in the first part of last year. And while that style was almost as successful as the pre-ASG Canucks, there was less margin for error. The team collapsed way more, its controlled exits went way down, it began playing like a team that was more concerned with minimizing quality chances against than making the opponent concerned about neutralizing the Canucks. Its almost exactly the pattern that Greene's post-season season Canucks fell into and never really got out of. Its playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
This was and remains a terrible development. When Boudreau was in purgatory and Allvin and JR crapped on him while he was still the coach, one of the things they harped on was zone exits, precision with passes, more puck support. This requires spacing. And when Tockey took over, you started to see a lot more of this. But post-ASG last year, this became less and less prominent.
Part of this for this season is personnel. The fact is, Noah Juulsen and Desharnais can't make a tape to tape pass to save their lives not matter how short it is, and Soucy isn't really that far ahead of them and Myers isn't that far ahead of him. If you can't make those plays precisely, Gudbransoning/Schenning it out of the zone becomes a more attractive option because generating speed into and through the neutral zone requires precise passing to players in flight. During those Greene days, I was always pointing out that this isn't just the defensemen -- the forwards must be in the right position to receive passes with speed -- and you can never do that when there is total collapse as a defensive zone game plan because transitions require some spacing and movement.
But is this collapse mentality by design -- making the most of a defensive corps who outside of Hughes and the injured Hronek is deficient transitioning from defense to offense? I don't know -- and I don't know that Tockey tells the players, but what I've noticed over time is that Tockey's press conferences are often reactive to the most recent bad thing. Once you start being reactive to the most recent bad thing, you start trying to teach all things, you stop prioritizing, you start playing the game of how to not be bad instead of the game of how to make the other team look bad.
But the fact is, all hockey "systems" are tradeoffs -- as are the skill set of all but the most talented players. And so emphasizing everything is emphasizing nothing. It's chasing your tail. Maybe a better analogy, it is a giant bean bag chair. If you adopt one approach, you are going to squash beans where you sit, and more beans will shift to the places in the chair where your body is not. And so if the response is, well, there's too many beans over there and you shift your body, the beans will put pressure on a different place, creating a new problem. If you emphasize cluttering up the middle to cure the problem of too many cross ice passes, you reduce your breakout options. If you go for a defense with lots of length and get cheap length -- that cheap length typically correlates with below average passing or skating (or both). Just because all other things being equal, long guys are better than mid sized or short guys, so for mid sized or short guys to make it to the NHL they have to do something else better than average, and that something else is often skating or passing.
Fact is the team's identity is less and less clear as Tockey's been here, and that's not a good thing.
The other thing I haven't liked about how this team has played (and I think it comes from Tockey, but I am not sure), is the zone entries. I've said it a thousand times here, but I'll say it again. Dumping the puck in (except to facilitate a change) is the play when there are no other options; it should never be confused for a strategy. The best case scenario for every zone entry is control with speed. Next best is area chips and 50/50 races. Worst always is dump, 20/80 lose possession, and let's get it back.
You know how you know that dumping and chasing is the worst way to enter a zone? Because every team that plays good neutral zone defense (and I'd count the Canucks in this category) is playing a system designed to minimize the chance of controlled entry with speed.....
This year's Canucks seem to dump almost as a priority play. Bad.
If you asked me what the biggest deficit on the team is right now, I would say precision. That's not a coach thing, but systems and approaches could increase opportunities to make precise plays or decrease them. And that's the catch-22. If Tockey's assessed it all and has concluded the Canucks personnel lack the precision skills to play the kind of game that benefits from that, then you don't build around an approach that depends on it. And so the Canucks bang the puck off the glass and then chase the puck. Which really is a bit of a yawn, no?