Phanatic Hockey Editor
On breakup day for the coaching staff, May 14, Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet provided his most expansive thoughts, philosophy and plan to date about how to shake the club’s consistently dreadful power play out of the doldrums.
The second-to-last question from that media session revolved around the media-driven revelation of defenseman Jamie Drysdale’s “frank admission” following a Game 3 loss to the Hurricanes on May 8 that players often would disregard – though not willfully – what was planned on the power play, with the messaging and its lack of resonance with each unit contributing to its failure.
“I think when it comes to the power play, you gotta see things. Sometimes, it’s gonna take people longer to see things,” he admitted. “I can name 5 or 6 players where, to get technical, you’re playing against an aggressive diamond where the top guy is aggressive, he’s out of position, well, you gotta see that there should be a 2-on-1 in front of the net.”
“If that particular play happens, sometimes we’re not seeing it,” he added.
Tocchet also referenced that disastrous 50-second, 5-on-3 advantage from Game 3’s 4-1 setback as a prime example of the confusion. He and the coaches instructed the unit that Carolina plays a “2-up” system, which to them, indicated an easy solution to puck movement.
“Where do you want the puck to go? Down low,” he said. “It’s gotta be a 3-on-2 in front of the net. Well, we did a ‘high’ play. That’s what I think Jamie’s talking about, we’re missing the reads.”
"Accountability" from the Top
Tocchet offered a general mea culpa, admitting the coaching staff could impart the lesson in a way more conducive to success. But he had no idea, at that point, how the nuts and bolts would work so all involved could understand the correct reads. He wondered aloud where they could find the proper time and space to accomplish a proper regroup and re-teach.
“Is it better to do on the ice than in video? I’ve already talked about it with the coaches. We might just have a dedicated half an hour power-play practice on one rink, before the (main) practice even starts,” he said.
The Flyers managed to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory in the regular season, finishing dead last overall with a 15.7% efficiency. In the playoffs, they were 14th, firing at an 8.3% clip. That was after ranking 30th the year before under John Tortorella and Brad Shaw with a *worse* percentage (14.95%). Before that, it was last (12.2%), last (15.56%), last (12.55%) and 18th (19.16%) in the COVID bubble season.
"I think it’s something we’re gonna have to dive into because it’s been a long time here (since the power play worked),” Tocchet said. “We’re really gonna have to do some really out of the box thinking to fix this.”
The mind truly wanders at this prospect.
When pressed on how, exactly, the skaters involved on the power play could “get better,” Tocchet put it squarely on the players: “If you wanna be on the power play, you’re gonna have to get these reads. How do you get these reads? Study. Live it. Practice it. Rinse and repeat. That’s really what it comes down to.”
We’ll get to this later in the piece, but the class had a whole summer to do the reading, hope they aren’t cramming the last two weeks before camp.
On August 24, the Flyers released a team-friendly, video roundtable with Tocchet and three assistant coaches during which, in their words, “no state secrets” were revealed. Instead, the on-ice braintrust offered a general wide-ranging philosophical take on how the coaches instruct the players to function in all three zones.
As for the main man responsible for the power play, Yogi Svejkovsky offered a hint of how an internal issue, like, oh … maybe a failure to adhere to the power play system or making a failed read might be remedied in the moment or during a break in play.
“As a head coach, you have to trust your assistant coaches that, if the system is not followed, it would be my job, specifically, to deal with the player,” he said. “And then, at the same time you have to deal with (the fact that) every player will be different.”
Whole Team Concept?
Symposium facilitator Jason Myrtetus later spoke of having an “alpha” in the offensive zone to set up a power play, like an Ovechkin or Kucherov to which Svejkovsky replied that there is a whole-team concept which relies on the entire unit understanding their roles, rather than a point person with different responsibilities.
“You look at in the Eastern Conference as a whole, there’s way more diamonds, way more aggressiveness,” he noted.
“The process was understanding how to beat the structure of the opposition. The only way to see how you do, is to see what you create. Out of that, (you analyze later) are we creating?”
And, then, as Svejkovsky explained, with the help of the off-ice assistants who crunch numbers while watching the post-game video, players have a readout of how their o-zone entries affect their play.
“We were top 10 in ‘Grade A’ chances, it tells you we should probably not be the last team in the league (in PP percentage),” he added, without explaining exactly what stats or metrics comprised such opportunities.
Svejkovsky proceeded to explain there is an overlap of communication from the top down, as Tocchet previously had control of the man advantage in both Colorado and Pittsburgh, as far as receiving guidance on what to address.
“So, what we’re looking at now is, how can we help our players in different ways, over the last 3 months, to give them the tools to improve,” he continued. “And, let’s say you’re the quarterback, that you understand how to get your lanes open, that you have more time to take shots.”
From here, the idea of summer homework from the coaching staff to the players emerged again, with the expectation that this off-ice study was intended as a primer ahead of whatever they do to practice to Tocchet’s specifications. He gave the strongest indicator yet that nothing is set in stone.
“It’s going to be a fight for them to see who’s gonna be on that first unit, second unit,” Tocchet said. “This year’s one of the year’s (the slots on each unit) is open.”
New Boys for the New Year
On a July 20 video call with local media to announce his new contract, Drysdale provided the only hint at what skills he might further develop to help the cause.
“I think there’s a lot of little things I can work on, when I get the puck (make a) head fake … a little bit more deceptiveness, obviously the main kicker is shooting more,” he said. “I’ve been pretty continuously working on my shot the last year and throughout the summer, so it’s something I’m going to come in confident with and use it as a weapon.”
Back at the ranch, assistant Jay Varady, whose umbrella also includes the power play, offered the following when discussing the difference between thinking and reacting when a new system is introduced.
“I think when you’re teaching new concepts, sometimes a player has to think. And then as you develop and start to get comfortable, they stop thinking and they just start playing,” he explained.
Again, communication is hammered as a key concept, but at least Varady diplomatically acknowledges the players’ responsibility in absorbing the information, then internalizing it as they practice and play.
“It’s a process you have to stick with as you’re implementing things. You have to know there’s going to be a little time where you see a little hesitation - have a little meeting, have a conversation and as (learning) starts to grow and progress, it naturally becomes the way you play.”
Ok, but that attitude only works with the internal belief that *this* staff with *this* certain set of skills and system can override the mistakes of the past. We’ve seen the failure up front for the fourth regime and counting.
If that’s the prevailing wisdom, maybe one of the “out of the box” suggestions for fixing things should be keeping the longer-termed players (Tippett, Couturier, TK, Risto) away from PP1 and PP2 to avoid the brain rot that comes from veterans having to fully internalize *another* system.
Who among the newer puck-hungry players might be able to provide a remedy?
Three likely lads are Trevor Zegras, Alex Bump and Porter Martone. For the former, it needs to be beaten into his brain “shoot first, distribute later,” unless he’s the distributor or quarterback for the unit, then, like Drysdale, he's got to focus on the initial read while carrying the puck. For the middle man, a known shooter, he needs to seek the puck, collect the puck and shoot the puck inside 30 feet. For the latter, if he’s the plumber down low, he needs to muscle defenders in front and be quicker to rebounds and loose pucks.
Following Up
How does this all mesh with the actual nuts and bolts required to make the power play function in real time?
We didn’t get an answer here, and we won’t have any semblance of an answer until the units have been determined through camp scrimmages and preseason development, then put on display for the first 10 regular-season games or so.
Given Tocchet’s assertion that coaches review everything from the previous season to detect what needs to be tweaked – and given that zero time was devoted to an answer about the power play when discussing offensive-zone entries – here’s a short list of questions that should be asked, by anyone who covers this team in any capacity:
- How do you plan on practicing the power play?
- When would you practice it?
- Do you simulate game conditions? If not, why not?
- If you do simulations, do you approximate any of the other 31 NHL teams’ PK strategies?
- What time and space will you devote to meshing o-zone philosophy with power-play entries?
- When practices did occur, how were changes and corrections made?
- Now that players have had a year’s familiarity and the head coach has uncovered issues per above, how will you approach it this year beyond the timing and length of practice?
- How, if at all, will the general five-man-unit offensive-zone philosophy impact the actual power play?
- How will you deal with addressing these issues given the reduction of preseason games from 6 to 4?
Stick with the Phanatic for the last of our Offseason Weeklies, scheduled for Sept. 15.
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