Sunday, October 23, 2011

Some Teams Have Real Problems


     (Seriously: The largest identified issues are superstars occasionally not playing like perfect superstars and a theoretical concern about the sixth, seventh, and eighth defensive slots?)

Hockey Consultant got concerned when she saw the box score of the Minnesota Wild game the other night. Minor league call-up Brian Strait got injured. Brooks Orpik was still out with an injury, and Kris Letang was serving the first game of a two-game suspension. Zbynek Michalek and Paul Martin both had to play—literally—half the game. And Hockey Consultant got concerned that the Penguins were going to have a really tired out top-4 defense by the time the playoffs rolled around. And she was really worried about the coaching staff not having a 6th defenseman they could trust to play solid minutes.

So Hockey Consultant proceeded to compose (an unpublished) blog post comparing Pittsburgh's current top 4 defense to the defense that was 8-deep that won the Cup. Long ago, in a former life on a different blog, Hockey Consultant wrote about the "Trade-Offs of a Salary Cap Era". And she's beginning to think that Matt Niskanen is looking, now, the way Kris Letang looked back in 2008-09 (talented and ready to play a role on a Cup contender, but not yet as an over 20-minute-a night-player). So she's really wondering about what happens if one of the top four defensemen goes down and what if two of the top four go down in the playoffs. Back in 2009, the Penguins were eight deep and a young Alex Goligoski and an old Philippe Boucher could step in and play limited minutes as needed, and the 2011-12 Penguins don't yet run eight deep on defense like that.

Seriously. This is Hockey Consultant's concern about her favorite team.

Hockey Consultant can only imagine how many other fanbases would love to have these problems:

  • We are waiting on two former NHL scoring champions to return to our division-leading team.
  • We are waiting for a 24-year-old defenseman who's scoring at nearly a point per game and generally playing very well to eliminate the occasional but really irritating brain-cramp mistakes from his game so he's brilliant ALL the time, not just MOST of the time.
  • We are waiting for two "slow starting" veteran defensemen to get over their seemingly slow starts (which is already happening, but we get impatient very easily).
  • And, of course, some of us (or just Hockey Consultant) are very, very concerned about the sixth defenseman and very concerned about being eight deep on defense in the playoffs and if number 7 and number 8 could actually play solid minutes if something happened (like it did in 2009 when Alex Ovechkin ran into Sergei Gonchar's knee).
So, Hockey Consultant knows that the Penguins could go and "upgrade" their number 6 defensive spot at the deadline, especially with the salary cap space they should have given the (unfortunate) injury of Crosby now. She knows the salary cap era means that there may be trade-offs and the Penguins may have to take the chance that none of their top-4 defensive guys goes down with an injury.

But as she looks at her "concerns" a few weeks into the season, she has to laugh. While she still thinks the pyramid is the best overall framework to figure out a franchise, when it comes to the regular season (which is going to stretch on for several more months), if the biggest thing you have to worry about is the sixth defenseman, well, umm….

There's a framework for that. For a fan, it's called gratitude and thanksgiving and enjoy it. Even beyond the obvious of "Former NHL scoring champions Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby being healthy", there are teams that would love to have "24-year-old Kris Letang being consistently brilliant all the time" and "Former Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin not trying to do too much when healthy" and "We really need to solidify our 6 through 8th defensive depth for the postseason" on their list of "problems".

So, remember that phrase your parents and teachers loved to throw to you about "Real problems"? The 2011-12 Penguins may yet (and, in fact, most teams will at some point) experience "real" problems that they will need to overcome to win the franchise's 4th Stanley Cup.

For now, though, in October 2011, let Hockey Consultant be clear in speaking to fans of her favorite team when she echoes the words of teachers and parents by posing the rhetorical question: "You realize some teams have real problems?"

Oh, and Duh…


Dan Bylsma has helped to create a Penguins team with an identity. He's been given good players, but it's his job to put players in the right roles. He and his staff continue to work to get the most from all their players.

So when I talk about identity and about the players, I don't say any of it to dismiss the Head Coach's role in all of this. Without strong coaching and leadership, the team doesn't know its identity and the players can't execute well if they're placed in the wrong roles.

So the Coach has done a good job. In case it needs to be said. I'd prefer that the Coach, like he encourages his team and even his All-Star players to do, continues to improve himself. (And, yes, I'm nitpicking, but maintaining emotional control on the bench with bad calls might help his more emotional players learn to do the same. And, of course, getting his superstars not to try to do too much.)

But just to state the obvious: Without solid coaching, the team isn't able to respond with "We know who we are" and players aren't able to excel in roles that are designed for them.

Experience, Competence, and Maturity: Cliché Words That Matter (And Explain Why the Seemingly Inexplicable is Easily Explicable)


In addition to knowing who they are, the Pittsburgh Penguins have another advantage on their side when it comes to winning games without superstar talents.

For all people wince at the Penguins forwards sans Crosby and Malkin, there's something important to note about the players who play important minutes on the Penguins.

The first power play unit, even sans Crosby or Malkin, typically consists of players with years of experience working on NHL power plays and still includes players who have been on a power play unit of a Stanley Cup winning team.

The penalty killing units, sans the team's best defensive defenseman, Brooks Orpik, typically consists of players with years of experience killing penalties and includes players who have killed penalties for Stanley Cup winners.

If you examine the youngest players on the Pittsburgh roster sans Crosby and Malkin, they have actually been through "playoff wars". Jordan Staal is 23. Tyler Kennedy and Kris Letang are 24. Since coming into the NHL, they've been to the Stanley Cup Finals twice and won the Cup once. They've each played in four Game 7s. They've been on the winning and losing side of deciding games in the playoffs and know what it takes to win and what it means to fall short.

Including those experienced younger players, anyone who's playing an important role on the Penguins—please note, for the most part—remains one of those "veteran" or "savvy" to whom all the cliché words can be accurately applied. They are players who possess:

    Experience: They've done it before.

    Competence: They know how to do it.

    Maturity: They actually execute what they know how to do.

While not all of Pittsburgh players meet this test, look at the ones who are given big minutes when the star players disappear from the line-up. With Brooks Orpik out to start the season, the remaining to three defensemen Kris Letang, Paul Martin, and Zbynek Michalek played nearly half of several sixty minute contests. Letang's the youngest, but his experience dwarfs that of many older players. Look at the players populating Pittsburgh's "bottom six", experienced veterans like Pascal Dupuis, Matt Cooke, Craig Adams, and Arron Asham. Bluntly put, the Penguins don't have any kids who are "learning" how to play in the NHL. If Pittsburgh hands a prospect a job, it's because he's ready for the rigors of the NHL and likely ready to play a small role on a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.

See, the Penguins are in "win now" mode. It's why they lost Nick Johnson on waivers to Minnesota. It's why Eric Tangradi is still in the minors. It's why players who might be allowed to learn the game at the NHL level in another organization are still playing for Pittsburgh's AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre.

But it's also one of the reasons why the team continues to win without Crosby and Malkin. Because the players the GM the team has surrounded his stars with are ready to contribute to a winning team, now. Because they may get sick of all the injuries, too, but because they still know how to play, and play well, sans the services of injured superstars.

See, the Penguins have chosen to have a lineup of experience. And as much as Hockey Consultant hates clichés, there's truth in the fact that a team comprised of players who know what to do (experience) and how to do it (competence) and then just go out and do it game after game (maturity) translates to a team that wins much more often than it loses.

It's not always a matter of age. And, at some point, the players with the talent and will get the experience (so say the 2009 Penguins who wrested the Cup from a team that had all those cliché words in spades). But it is a matter of knowing what to do and how to do it and then actually doing what you know how to do.

So the Penguins make it a point to have competent adults, as opposed to learning-on-the-job kids, filling out their roster. Though it may cost a bit more—there's a reason Pittsburgh is a cap team—that cost paid for itself when the Penguins made the playoffs in spite of playing all but one game in 2010-11 sans the services of one of their top three centers. And, thus far this season, the cost of paying for NHL-ready grown-ups has enabled them Penguins to get off to a fast start despite, once again, being without the services of two former NHL scoring champions.

               

The Response of Identity


Hockey Consultant's hometown franchise impressed her in a couple of "micro" ways this past week that have led Hockey Consultant to be even more impressed with a "macro" truth about the 2011-12 Pittsburgh Penguins to date.

First, the Penguins—already missing injured superstar centers Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin—learned they'd be forced to play without another one of their All-Star players, minute-munching defenseman Kris Letang. Having played in Winnipeg the night before, Pittsburgh's fourth All-Star, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, gave way to his back-up for a game the next night against the Minnesota Wild.

Against the Wild, the Penguins played the same puck possession game they've always played, and played hard. When a call-up went down to injury, two veteran defensemen stepped up and played nearly half the game. Even when forced to play without their star players, Pittsburgh didn't change how they played. Pittsburgh ended up won two games that they had every excuse—and people would have accepted them as reasonable—to lose.

While the response to a couple of losses and still more adversity was impressive, Hockey Consultant was particularly impressed by an in-game response during a Saturday evening game. A bad refereeing call put the wrong player for New Jersey in the penalty box. While Pittsburgh's head coach was apoplectic over the officiating error, the Pittsburgh power play was disorganized and made errors and proceeded to give up a shorthanded goal to the player who was supposed to be in the penalty box.

Then, a few seconds later, the same power play unit that had just screwed up was back on the ice. And they promptly scored a power play goal and restored Pittsburgh's 1-goal advantage. The Penguins responded with a power play goal, then responded by putting the game away with 2 more goals.

In the response in the two games following the Letang suspension and in the power play unit's in-game response to screwing up against New Jersey, Hockey Consultant notes a common thread in how Pittsburgh responded. They responded with identity: This is who we are. This is how we play.

Back in the days of Mario, Jagr, and Francis, the Pittsburgh stars defined their team: The Penguins are a high-scoring juggernaut.

The Penguins of Crosby and Malkin, the Penguins who were taught defensive play by Michel Therrien and who have a system of constant attack with responsible play perpetuated by Dan Bylsma, have a different identity. They have All-Stars, but their identity isn't as a team of All-Stars who outscore you through sheer skill.

Without getting into nuts-and-bolts, the Penguins make it a point to out-will their opponents. They play aggressive, in-your-face, puck possession hockey, executed by everybody in the lineup. It's who they are, and it's how they play, no matter who's in or not in the lineup.

And it means when they slip up—when talented players make egregious mistakes and allow a shorthanded goal—the Penguins' response is that of a team that knows its identity: "That's not how we want to play. We need to play the way we play."

And then they play that way—and decisively put away the game.

But how did they respond to such "adversity"?

In the early stages of the 2011-12 season, Hockey Consultant can't help but note she's watching a team that knows who it is and how it plays and that this team's sure knowledge of its identity—"This is who we are and this is how we play"—enables that team to respond to adversity with something of a shoulder shrug.

Because who they are, and how they play, is not defined by who's in or not in the line-up. Having Orpik and Letang both back in the line-up is great. Adding Malkin and Crosby back, eventually, will (as ridiculous as it is to write) make the team, of course, better. It's not like it's ever a good thing when elite talent disappears from the line-up.

But the team identity—"Who we are and how we play"—stays the same. A power play unit that makes a mistake and gets a goal back right away. Easier to do with Crosby and Malkin in the line-up, right?

And yet still done because, well, that's who the Penguins are, that how's they expect to play, and that's how they hold themselves accountable for playing.

If you're curious as to how or why the Penguins continue to win games, might Hockey Consultant suggest that you can easily note the identity of the Pittsburgh Penguins as that of a team that expects to win no matter what by playing aggressive puck-possession hockey—and may Hockey Consultant suggest that identity is part of what enables the Penguins to respond to adversity by winning hockey games?

Enjoy It, Edmonton (Letting Childhood + Youth Be Exactly That)


The Pittsburgh Penguins are Hockey Consultant's favorite—and hometown—franchise. Aside from the seasons that ended with Cup victories, a few other seasons stand out to Hockey Consultant as "very special" seasons. And when Hockey Consultant gets a glimpse of the Edmonton Oilers of 2011-12, particularly their young forwards, she's reminded of one of her favorite seasons in Pittsburgh hockey history, 2006-07.

Back in 2006-07, the Penguins were still a line-up of children. Literally. Evgeni Malkin was a 20-year-old rookie center; Jordan Staal was an 18-year-old rookie center. Sidney Crosby was a 19-year-old sophomore player. Marc-Andre Fleury was in his first year of "consistent" starting for the NHL team. Kris Letang was a 19-year-old defenseman who briefly made the team out of training camp. Tyler Kennedy was a 20-year-old prospect playing his first full season of professional hockey in Wilkes-Barre. On that Penguins team, former first-round picks Brooks Orpik and Ryan Whitney were still early in their then-nascent NHL careers and were rightfully viewed as talented and inexperienced kids.

Flash forward one spring, and all those kids had the experience of winning three playoff series and playing in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Flash forward two springs. Going only by birthdate standards, the triumvirate of centers remained kids. Going only by birthdays, important but complementary 22-year-old players on that Cup run, Kennedy and Letang, were still just kids. The goalie wasn't yet 25.    

But as hockey people—and fans—understand well, something happens as soon as you win the Cup. You're never a kid again. You've proven you can win it once. So the old long-awaited goal and dream is now the every-day-of-every-year expectation.

You won it once?

When are you winning it again?

It can be easy for Hockey Consultant to forget how young the players on her favorite team remain. Jordan Staal—the third-line center of the Penguins when Crosby and Malkin are healthy—has already scored 100 goals in the NHL. Kris Letang and Tyler Kennedy have already played hundreds of NHL games. Evgeni Malkin is a former playoff MVP; Crosby is a former league MVP. All of these achievements—including scoring titles Crosby and Malkin both won—happened before any of these players turned 25.

But there's no way anyone in hockey, or any fan, will ever view any of those Pittsburgh young players as a kid.

Watching Edmonton play, though, Hockey Consultant sees a team rife with talented kids. While she doesn't see a Sidney Crosby, she can't avoid noticing how many talented kids populate the roster. Talented kids you can—as Hockey Consultant did with her Penguins back in 2006-07—look at and imagine what one day, will be.

So, even though the Oilers are not likely to make the playoffs this postseason, Hockey Consultant would advise fans across the league to pause and enjoy watching the Edmonton Oilers play hockey. Because it is fun to watch kids, as kids, play the sport. It is fun to imagine what some day, will be, without stressing out because right now, they're not producing as much as they can and will later and that's actually OK because that's kids being kids and they're developing and that's what they're supposed to do.

One of Hockey Consultant's favorite games can be seen on the web. The game is from October 2006. The Penguins have three teenagers score in this one game. Crosby would win the league scoring title that year. Staal would be a nominee for Rookie-of-the-Year. Letang would be returned to his junior team and captain Canada's entry at that year's World Junior Championships to a gold medal.

Two years later, all those players would forever be known as Stanley Cup champions.

With their names etched on the Cup, they'd never again considered kids whose development was expected to have a few curves here and there where productivity in games might be less than ideal as they figured out a few things. Having shown they could meet the standard of the apex of the sport, that standard and that level of play, across-the-board, became the everyday expectation.

Goodbye to commentators talking about the "kids" and "youth" and "potential" of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Hello, commentators talking about the "battle-tested" and "playoff experienced" of the young twentysomethings on the Pittsburgh roster. Hello to the reality of what the analysts said about how they'd need to be even better than they were before because every team now specifically game-plans to stop Pittsburgh's "battle-tested and experienced" youthful talent.

For Hockey Consultant, there's just something about that October game against the Rangers and the talent those teenagers showed when they scored the goals they scored. There's something about that special 2006-07 season that announced the Penguins were back as a force to be reckoned with. Something that said these kids were going to be scary. Along with just getting to go along for the fun ride of watching those kids learn how to win.

Edmonton is likely more than two years away from a Cup championship (the Pittsburgh group was accelerated by outside trades) and perhaps even from a season like the 2006-07 season was for the Penguins, but the journey of watching talented kids learn to be stars should be similar. And fun.

And, perhaps for Hockey Consultant, there's a reminder that though the experienced and accomplished and still young players that headline her favorite team's roster are never going to be kids again by NHL standards, there's still an echo and linger of youth in their games, too. Crosby has regularly picked one thing to improve at every offseason. Other players have followed the example of their captain and are continuing to find areas where they can improve, too. It's just that the improvement is expected and demanded, NOW, and a lot sooner than it ever used to be in terms of "perform in games, perfectly, now!" Gone, to some degree, is the sheer fun of enjoying as you watch kids figure out how to get as good as they are going to be.

But as a legitimate Cup contender with a finite amount of time to contend, well, the Penguins and everyone else simply understand that improvement has to happen. Because it's critical that Jordan Staal steps up offensively if Crosby and Malkin can't play. Tyler Kennedy has to score more goals, and really, really, really, Kris Letang seriously has to learn how to quarterback an elite power play. And ideally, of course, for Pittsburgh, all those things would have happened in games well before yesterday's games.

But when she watches the Oilers play, Hockey Consultant remembers there's magic in what you can enjoy when you just go along for the ride. And, as a fan before she was anything else, Hockey Consultant would tell any team with kids of any age or experience level : Go for the ride, and no matter how bumpy it is, enjoy it. Because youth and childhood last only for a season (in Pittsburgh's case) or a few seasons. So let the kids be kids—and enjoying watching the kids when the commercials call them, as they did for Pittsburgh back in 2007, "Boys against men".

Because, pretty soon, even if their birthdates say they're still kids, the playoff ads and announcers are going to be talking about how they once scored game-winning playoff OT goals or shorthanded goals in the Stanley Cup Finals or hat tricks in the conference finals and demanding and expecting that you reach that level again, and then, someday farther down the line, they're going to ask if your hands and feet will still allow you to do those things—

But for now, the Oilers are talented kids, and that's magic to watch.

So watch the magic. Enjoy the show. Let the kids be the kids they are for the season(s) when it lasts. And if you need a reminder, watch this magic show from 2006.

And remember how fun the journey was to see those same kids eventually do this.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Kris Letang’s Correct Comparable (Aspirationally)=Chris Pronger


When the NHL suspended Kris Letang for 2 games for a hit from behind on Winnipeg Jet Alex Burmistrov, Hockey Consultant couldn't get a phrase out of her mind. Actually, when it comes to Letang—a player Hockey Consultant followed closely for years before he became an NHL mainstay—the suspension brought to mind a long-held belief about the defenseman who Hockey Consultant has long believed is the closest comparable—aspirationally— for Letang.

Chris Pronger.

Pronger's suspension history is here.

But you'll also want to take a look at Pronger's career playoff statistics. If the average TOI numbers don't say this clearly enough, and if the amount of time spent on the power play, killing penalties, and generally being on the ice more than any other player don't say this either, let Hockey Consultant spell it out, quickly: The eighth-seeded 2005-06 Edmonton Oilers don't advance to the Cup Finals without Chris Pronger on the roster. The 2009-10 Philadelphia Flyers don't get to the Finals sans Pronger, either, and that annoying one game suspension in the 2007 playoffs aside, the Ducks don't win the Cup in 2007 without Pronger.

An in-his-prime Chris Pronger is a dominant franchise defenseman, one who can dictate the pace of a hockey game with controlled, aggressive, physical play (including, of course, shooting, skating, stickhandling, and yes, hitting) in all three zones of the ice.

Throughout his career, Kris Letang has—quite hyperbolically, in Hockey Consultant's view, and she admits to believing the kid was going to be a star before he'd even cemented a permanent place on the NHL roster (and would defend herself by noting NHL luminaries such as Paul Coffey and Scott Bowman did the same at a later point)—been compared to players like Paul Coffey and Nicklas Lidstrom. Given some of Letang's easy-on-the-eyes skills in terms of skating and silky soft shootout hands, it's easy to see how those comparisons might happen, but the comparisons to those players are fundamentally wrong.

Paul Coffey played in the late eighties. He always had the puck on his stick, and no one could catch him. Teams didn't use video and shot blocking as systems the way they do now. While Coffey once broke his jaw blocking a shot with his face in the playoffs, Coffey did not play an era where he was required to do what the modern, tight-checking, systematized NHL requires defensemen to do. (Simply put, there is too much strength and too many systems for the wide-open style played in the eighties and early nineties when Coffey was dominating.) Nor is Nick Lidstrom a good comparison for Letang. Lidstrom, fundamentally, is ridiculously poised and positionally sound. And while Letang does have offensive skills and has learned a lot about defensive positioning, he's not an offense-only guy in today's NHL, or purely a "mobile and minute-munching" defenseman.

Like Chris Pronger, Kris Letang is a physical hockey player who plays aggressively. Like Pronger in his prime, when Letang is "on", he's playing with incredibly controlled aggression, perhaps best called "aggressive poise". When Letang is "off"—and he's off too much for the liking of Pittsburgh fans who have seen him dominate games and expect and believe he can and should do that night after night—he is either far too tentative (seen in early years), or, more recently, his aggression is less controlled, and that unharnessed aggression can result in awful-looking mistakes (things like a giveaway, or a physical defensive error, or well, not letting up on a check when—as another Brendan Shanahan video shows—he clearly knows how to do the right thing.)

Fundamentally, Chris Pronger is the correct aspirational comparable for Kris Letang.

A smaller version of Pronger, yes. A faster version of Pronger, hopefully.

But a physical defenseman who can make the great offensive plays and also make great positional defensive choices, when on, but, whose entire game, when on, is undergirded with an aggressive edge that enables him to dictate the flow of the game on the ice.

Hockey Consultant believes that Letang's learned a lot, and she hopes he'll "take his medicine" from the VP of Player Safety and not stop hitting but take the suspension as a lesson in controlling his emotions and harnessing his aggression appropriately.

But here's the thing about aggressive hockey players, or, more specifically, aggressive hockey players with the physical skills to be franchise defensemen.

You need to control the game 200 feet to 200 feet while playing half the game, and more than half the game if you are in a playoff overtime game? You need to play how Letang played against the Edmonton Oilers the opening road trip of the 2011-12 season, making a marvelous defensive play and quickly converting it to offense, and you need to do that shift after shift after shit? You need to set a tone for a period or a game for your team with a check or a hit? You need to control the entire flow of a game, end-to-end, like a general commands his troops?

If you're a physical player—not a smooth-skating guy who doesn't spend any time in his zone and you play your best defense when you get to pick in the moment if you'll use only your stick, or just sound position, or a legal hit, or some combination thereof, to make the right situational play—you have to play with aggression.

And your aggression—because of how your skill set wires you to play hockey—brings with it way more good than bad.

So Letang's best upside—and please note, we're talking upside here, Hockey Consultant IS ABSOLUTELY NOT saying Letang is anywhere near the level Pronger has reached in his career—is, stylistically, to be a smaller, hopefully faster version of Chris Pronger in his prime.

And do you know the one word that best described Chris Pronger?

"Nasty."

Nasty good. Nasty to play against. And, occasionally, even when he was doing far more good than harm in a playoff run to a championship, nasty in terms of being physically tough on the opposition to the point of being disciplined by an NHL that often failed to suspend star players.

Call Hockey Consultant crazy, but a part of her is relieved to see Kris Letang get suspended. Because it confirms something she's always suspected. That he's not going to be some very lite version of a smooth skating Paul Coffey or a positionally perfect Nicklas Lidstrom. But that he could be different than those players. He could use his own skill set, not exactly the same as theirs, and harness his aggression to play well against the strong, fast, and young players populating the NHL today.

Letang wouldn't be Chris Pronger lite, either. But Letang could be—and Hockey Consultant would argue—he is also wired to be— like Chris Pronger.

Go ahead and ask any NHL GM or Coach who wanted to win a championship: If having Pronger commandeer the ice during playoff game meant they occasionally had to live through a few too many minor penalties, coach him to learn to control his aggression, and well, remind him to play with a CONTROLLED, aggressive edge—they would moan and mutter and complain as they'd accompany him to a discipline hearing or two and remind him to control his snarl in highly critical moments, but they'd do it, honestly, if secretly, with a smirk that they were glad Pronger was on their side and not another team's.

Letang, a one-time All-Star who played important but protected minutes on a Cup champion team at age 22, still has a long way to go to have a career that is anything close to Pronger's. But, in Hockey Consultant's view, his play shows a couple of things: Like Pronger, the league tells him to stop it. Because, well, All-Stars and franchise defenseman don't need to make borderline/illegal hits to play hockey. And it's true—they don't.

But that fine line?

That nasty edge?

Defenseman in the mold of Pronger and Letang play the game best with a controlled snarl. So if a suspension teaches Letang (who has seemed, in other areas, to be receptive to instruction, albeit it may not happen as quickly as most fans would prefer) that his snarl is fine and quite necessary, but to control his snarl appropriately, well….

Look out, NHL, and not for more "fine lines" (though Hockey Consultant knows too well they happen with aggressive players and it's constantly checking in to keep human beings, all of whom have emotions, appropriately in line). Look out for the kind of nasty, franchise defenseman, 28 playoff games out of 28 playoff games, you dread playing against while secretly wishing that aforementioned nasty player were on your side.

And look out for someone other than Hockey Consultant to realize that, perhaps, it's not hyperbole to describe the style of game Kris Letang plays at his best as eerily similar—stylistically, anyway—to the way hockey has been played, excellently, for years, by that so nasty good defenseman, Chris Pronger.


 


 

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Framework Thinking: The Figure-Out-a-Franchise Pyramid


Hockey Consultant's favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, recently experienced their first 2011-12 regular season loss in regulation. (Hockey Consultant never expects her team to go an 82-game season without a regulation loss, but that first regular season regulation loss, nonetheless, is always a bit of a downer.) After the game, the coaching staff and players said all the right things. The coach didn't use fatigue as an excuse. The oldest player on the team stated—correctly—that the team didn't play the whole 60 minutes and failing to show up in the first period cost the team the game.


At this early juncture of the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins fall in the middle tier of Hockey Consultant's "Figure out a Franchise" pyramid. By constructing this pyramid, Hockey Consultant has taken a basic concept from her real-world (read: paying) job called "framework thinking" and constructed a "framework"—or model—through which one can quickly determine where a particular hockey franchise falls. The basic point of framework thinking is to be able to arrive at accurate, fast conclusions based on the minimum amount of available data. 


Take a look at how you can rank a hockey franchise based on their responses to poor on-ice performances:

             HOCKEY FRANCHISE RANKING

After Pittsburgh's 3-2 regulation loss to the Buffalo Sabres, the Penguins said all the right things. But saying all the right things puts the team smack dab in the middle tier of the "Hockey Franchise Ranking System". To become a better team, the 2011-12 Penguins have to stop talking about what they failed to do and immediately begin fixing what they failed to do.

Generally, Hockey Consultant finds the above graphic very helpful for anyone who is trying to figure out where a hockey team is and where that hockey team is going.

At the very bottom of the pyramid, it stands to reason that if a team fails to acknowledge any type of poor play, that team will never actually improve upon the poor performance. Whatever the reasons for this may be (your team is not talented enough; the owner won't let you spend money, your players are hurt and you can't do anything more), there's a reason teams down here are usually also at the bottom of the standings.

There's a stage between very bottom of the pyramid (where poor play is not even acknowledged) and the middle tier (where poor play is accurately acknowledged). This lower middle stage is tougher because a team knows that something wrong, but the team is not quite sure what, exactly, needs to be fixed. When a team can't accurately identify what needs to be fixed, the team can not improve enough. Depending on the talent and commitment level of a team, a team could still end up in the playoffs and even make noise there. Flat-out, though, if a team is here on the pyramid, that team is never likely to come close to winning anything that matters.

Most fans—and too many coaches and general managers, in Hockey Consultant's view—mistakenly view Stage 3 as the "apex" of the pyramid. We as a team acknowledged what went wrong, so it's all good.

But the top-performing franchises, year in and year out, along with the coaches and general managers who just seem to get results, no matter what, understand that Stage 3 is actually "middling". It's not enough merely to acknowledge what went wrong.

Teams that win division championships and teams that win multiple rounds in the playoffs don't just acknowledge things that go wrong. They accurately identify what went wrong, but then they fix it. Ideally, a coach fixes it as soon as it happens in a game. Equally ideally, the players adjust their performance in the game itself.

And for that stage, well, take a look at this graphic:
In early October, Hockey Consultant's favorite team is on track to make the playoffs, so they're on the right track. But they won't be on track to be an elite team until they prove they can quickly correct poor performances. And they won't be on track to win a championship until they consistently perform well, sans any poor performances (of, for example, failing to play one third of a 60 minute game).

The correlation between the two charts, of course, is never going to be perfect. Generally, though, it's not enough just to acknowledge what went wrong. Doing that should be a minimum expectation of any professional franchise.

Becoming a really good team is about fixing what went wrong as fast as humanly possible.

Becoming an elite team is about preparing for and playing the games in such a way that mistakes don't occur in the first place.

Look at these charts, side-by-side, and take a gander, month by month. If the months go by and your team is still talking about the same things without fixing them—don't expect to see them playing hockey in June.

If you're actually able to note a team's slow progression—and note: it will be slow-climb up the pyramid during a hockey season—don't be surprised when that team is playing hockey when spring turns into early summer.

But, take one last look. While you may not like the answers about a particular team, the data doesn't lie.



Hockey Consultant will have a better inkling of where her team is going when she pulls out these charts again in later months. If the Penguins are still scoring in the middle of the pack in the winter of 2012, no matter what anyone says, the team will not be likely to win the franchise's 4th Stanley Cup.

By January and February of 2012, however, if any team starts to score somewhere in between very good and elite, you very well could be looking at teams that will be challenging for hockey's holy grail in the late spring and early summer of 2012.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Jaromir Jagr

Jaromir Jagr is, was, and remains Hockey Consultant’s all-time favorite hockey player.   Jaromir Jagr was the first hockey player she “called” correctly.  (Note: It wasn’t a difficult “call”.  By “call”, she believed he would one day be the best player in the world.   As an eight-year-old, she watched a rookie dominate.  As  a thirteen-year-old, she smiled that she had been right when she called Jagr being the best player in the world “right”.)   No matter what Jagr does—even if it’s kicking her beloved Penguins out of the playoffs in a coming spring—she’ll always love him.   (Hockey love, when it comes to Hockey Consultant and her all-time favorite player, is plainly irrational.)

Hockey Consultant believes she understands Jagr better than most.   Jagr has always been a highly emotional player.   Though Hockey Consultant was disappointed when Jagr chose not to come to Pittsburgh and rolled her eyes about the “left-handedness” of Crosby and Malkin, she ultimately felt she understand Jagr’s reasons—and emotions—for not returning to Pittsburgh.  (And they weren’t actually about “left-handedness”, either.)
  
Fundamentally, the Penguins belong to Crosby and Malkin.  If something had gone wrong—and Jagr’s been through this before, in Pittsburgh—it would have been on Jagr.  It would not have been on Crosby or Malkin.   Jagr didn’t want to deal with that, especially having already lived through it once (no matter how much of  it he brought upon himself back in 2001).

The heart of the matter, though—beyond the basic fundamentals—was simply this:  Jaromir Jagr did not want to come back to the NHL to be a complementary player on a contending team.   (Honestly, this is a fit Hockey Consultant thought would be perfect for a 39-year-old player.  Bookend your career with Stanley Cups as a complementary player.)   Jaromir Jagr wanted to come back to the NHL to be Jaromir Jagr.   To remind the league, one last time, that he’s one of the best players ever to play the game.  To be the face and heartbeat of a franchise.  To make an impact.

Hockey Consultant is aware of Jagr’s age.  She’s also aware of Jagr’s insane work-out regimen.   (To be honest, Hockey Consultant was saddened Jagr did not want to be part of the Penguins.  The workout regimes of players like Crosby, Letang, and Malkin, along with their desire to be the best in the world, remind her that those kids are exactly the same as the hardworking, want-to-be-the-best-in-the-world kid a teenage Jagr once was.)    She’s aware that if anyone can defy age and time and physics, it’s Jaromir Jagr (who’s been blessed to have a healthy career, save for a few annoying groin injuries).  

And, to be honest, in the only flashback to her junior high years Hockey Consultant would ever want to have, she’s actually looking forward to watching Chris Pronger and Jaromir Jagr play for the same team—old men though they may be in NHL years—and see if they can still dominate.    As a fan, she’s looking forward to watching the players who once were promising kids, became the best players in the world at their respective positions, and who will retire as Hall-of-Famers.   She wants to see them play, and play well, for as long as possible.

Hockey Consultant gets what Jagr wanted.    To say he’s, well, Jaromir Jagr.   To dominate.      She understands the choice.   She’s not sure how the choice will turn out—she still thinks Jagr would have been more likely to grab a Stanley Cup as a complementary player, not as one of “the” guys.  

Hockey Consultant tries not to let fandom make her irrational.  But her fandom states this (even if she should not let her fandom inform her consulting, but a secret about life is that being a fan informs most things, even when it's pretended fandom has no impact on any thoughts or calls or decisions).  Betting against Jaromir Jagr isn’t wise.   If the odds are against it—don’t bet against him.   (Though she notes the odds against him never before have been time and age and nature.) 

But, for this one, Hockey Consultant—if and when she gets her cable and Internet installed and up—will be watching with eager eyes to see what becomes of Jaromir Jagr in 2011-12.  But for now, Hockey Consultant would advise anyone—even disappointed Penguins fans who are mad at Jagr—to enjoy the fact that they can still watch, for now, one of the greatest players ever, yet again play in the NHL and who, for now and on the power play, still shows why he is the 9th leading scorer in NHL history.

Hockey Consultant’s One Sentence on Jaromir Jagr:   Since even the best players ever can’t be the best forever, just enjoy watching every minute of Jagr’s NHL time while you can…and if you’re actually IN the game, then take the time to learn from playing against or playing with one of the greatest players of all time.


Consulting Advice for the Reigning Jack Adams Winner: Get Elite Consistency from Elite Talent

As HBO’s 24/7 told us, Dan Bylsma’s reign as Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins has pretty much been a “Steel City” dream.    Bylsma’s success story is clear:  He took over as Head Coach, and a few months later, he could add to his resume “Head Coach of a Stanley Cup champion”.   It was under Bylsma’s direction that the Penguins had the best penalty kill in the NHL in 2010-11 and still finished with 106 points in spite of the absence of former NHL scoring champions Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for half a season.    Bylsma got All-Star level results from four talented players and still had a structure in place for the rest of the team—half of which, at one point, was composed of AHL players—to win tight games against other NHL teams.

In his coaching tenure, seemingly the only thing Bylsma has failed to do, quite honestly, is to have a power play that consistently produces to the level of the talent on the ice.    When the team was still healthy last year, there was actually a darkly comical moment when Bylsma was wearing a microphone during the team’s “Inside Penguins Hockey” weekly show.   Bylsma’s power play, featuring three All-Star players, was practicing a 5-on-3, and Bylsma actually stopped and asked Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang:  “Which one of you is putting the puck in the net?”   The players, not wearing microphones, had some sort of discussion among themselves, but Hockey Consultant was darkly amused that the Head Coach actually had to stop and ask which of his All-Star players would deign to achieve the objective of the practice exercise and shoot the puck to score a goal on the power play. 

Yet, for Hockey Consultant, that scene stirs the one piece of feedback she’d have for Dan Bylsma that’s not about the power play.   It’s about managing superstar players who have more skills than anybody else and, at times, go off the deep end and try to do too much themselves.  Before Malkin’s 2010-11 season ended with a knee surgery, he regularly tried to do “too much” and didn’t have success at the MVP level he’d proven capable of in prior seasons.  The tale of Kris Letang’s two seasons—looking like the best defenseman in hockey before the All-Star break and not close to that same level after the All-Star break—is, incorrectly, blamed on Sidney Crosby’s absence.  Hockey Consultant observed that the issue was not Crosby’s absence, in and of itself, but that Letang changed his game when Crosby and Malkin went down and started trying to run the entire show himself (failing miserably, because an elite defenseman can’t defend well if his main focus is on attempting to supply the missing offense of two centers who are former NHL scoring champions).

Hockey Consultant is aware that the issues of Malkin and Letang trying to do too much could be due to their ages:  They are experienced, but still young (and they weren’t born with the same preternatural maturity of a Sidney Crosby).  You could say it’s on the players to learn the game and make the simple play and play within themselves.    You could say that—and Hockey Consultant would agree, wholeheartedly—it is something the players have to learn, and that it’s going to be learned, at times, like it or not, through painful experience of what doesn’t work when they run around trying to control a game in and of themselves.

But Hockey Consultant has an additional take, and her additional take is this.   Pittsburgh’s Head Coach, who has proven capable of letting superstars do their thing, putting role players in positions to succeed, and having AHL players come into his lineup and play within his system without missing a beat, still has plenty of room for growth when it comes to getting elite consistency from elite talents.   He knows how to provide the atmosphere for the elite talent to grow, but he still has to work to do in learning how to manage the players to get them to, well—

Stop doing too much.
Make the simple play.
Your talents are awesome.  Take that risk.  Don’t take that one.

And when they start doing that—to stop it and correct it, immediately.  The way Bylsma stops and corrects and seemingly fixes everything else.    He’s got to learn how to do it with players who have elite talent but who, too often, because they try to do too much, fail to have elite consistency.

Perhaps it’s trust.   Letang doesn’t try to do too much when Orpik is his defense partner.    When Malkin trusts his linemates—even Max Talbot in the 2009 playoffs—he doesn’t try too hard to do everything.  But when Malkin and Letang don’t have that trust, they run around, trying to do everything, and in so doing, failing to consistently perform as elite talents. 

It’s on the players, of course.   Ultimately, it’s on the players to perform.   

But the Coach is paid for a reason.   Teams have coaches for a reason.  Hockey Consultant dares to suggest that if Head Coach Dan Bylsma can figure out the right conditions—and maintain them—and manage them—that he’ll soon have more people jealous of the team he gets to coach than he already does.  Because he’ll have two more consistently elite talents.  

And when those talents translate to the power play, well—there really will be nothing for Dan Bylsma to fix—except, of course, that is, climbing the mountain to achieve higher, year after year after year.

But for now:  Figure out when and why 71 and 58 start running around.   Stop and prevent those conditions if you can.  If you can’t stop all of those conditions (injuries will happen), do as much as you possibly can to manage those conditions.    But as soon as those elite talents start trying to do everything themselves, know this:  It’s their job to play within themselves, but it’s your job to make sure they know when they're not doing that and to help to provide the conditions where they know they must play within themselves. 

Coaching is always, on some level, a Catch-22.   But fix that—and really, the power play, too, but that’s a whole other topic for a different day and it was 2-for-its-first-2 so Hockey Consultant will lay off for a week—and Dan Bylsma, truly, is the coach that can get results from any level of player, no matter what.

October Hockey Is Not April Hockey

It’s a truism of the NHL season that the hockey gets better the longer the season goes.   In the fall, you’ll see egregious things like giveaways from players who ordinarily know better.  You’ll see goalies whose timing is off and who are letting up goals they won’t let up later in the year.  You’ll see the beginnings of systematized play, but you won’t see coherence as new linemates get used to each other’s tendencies.

As fall turns to winter, you’ll see better hockey, but it’s really when winter turns into spring and the snow disappears that the best hockey is played.   Oh, of course, that’s because only 16 teams make the playoffs.  But that’s also because the great irony of the NHL schedule is played out:  By spring—not naturally hockey season—the teams and players have been playing long enough that good hockey is played.

But October hockey?   For those like Hockey Consultant, who love the sport, October hockey is welcome.   But, as the shootout reminds, October hockey is early regular season hockey.   Even for teams that just competed for the Stanley Cup, they just took a few months away.    Fundamentally, the teams may have changed very little, yet, just as every Cup winner has to give the Cup back at the end of summer and earn it again, so, too, does every team have to rebuild, a little.  Rebuild the system.  Rebuild the trust.

So, remember.   What you’re seeing in October will not be what you see in April.   But the foundations laid in October are important for what you see in April.    

So October’s a time for learning how to win and figuring out how to improve.   But it’s a “process” time where performance counts (the points are the same in October as they are in March).

Hockey Consultant encourages you to remember this, though:   October is a “process” time for everyone.   So accept the process—and as the best teams do—and start the process in such a way that you’re building the foundation for the performance you want when April turns into May such that your results in May can turn into playing hockey in June.

But don’t forget:  It’s still a process.

On Inconsistent Brilliance—or Why It’s Still Better to Have Superstar Talent than No Talent at All

Hockey Consultant didn’t actually get to see the opening games of the NHL season.  (Sadly, Hockey Consultant recently moved and is annoyed with her limited options for Internet and cable service and still does not have the ability to view games online or on TV, though hopefully that situation will be rectified soon.)  In lieu of actually watching the games, Hockey Consultant utilized her smart phone to listen to an opening game and follow evening long chatter on various online forums and, of course, Twitter.

Hockey Consultant found herself very annoyed as she wondered about how two former All-Stars had actually played.   Some people complained that former Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin and finished-sixth-in-Norris-Trophy-votes-in-his-age -23-&-4th-NHL-season Kris Letang played horribly.   Both, it was clear, had shifts that resulted in taking penalties that should not have been taken.      Yet, there was another side to how these two players had played, as seen in other chatter:  Fans of the opposing team marveled at the talent of both players.  In between moments of “What-the-heck-was-that?!”, said negatively of chances that weren’t finished and giveaways, there were other moments of “What-the-heck-was-that?!” said in regard to brilliant plays that less talented players just can’t make.

Hockey Consultant did see one thing, though, which is why she prefers to view herself as a consultant (one who, on rare occasions, notices things that could be useful).    When the game was on the line—admittedly in the regular season way of a shootout—the Penguins had two All-Star talents capable of closing out a win.

That’s the thing about players with superstar talent, the kind that the two players apparently having very “mixed” games had.   Even when they have “off” nights and do terrible things that they don’t do on nights when everything is “on”, any competent GM or coach (note:  not a journalist, not a blogger, and not a fan) still wants those players on his team.   Because those players—even on an off-night—gave the Penguins something they would not have had if they didn’t have players with those talent.

Those kinds of players—even on their “off” nights where mistakes happen—still do more to help a team win than lose.   And when evaluating their games, as 24-7 showed us that GM Ray Shero and Head Coach Dan Bylsma regularly do, you might give them a middling grade of 3.  But you might bump those grades to 3.5 given how they came through in the shootout.   And you might also note that even on nights where their games were around a 3 level—they ultimately had key contributions in a victory on the road against one of last year’s elite teams. 

And you might be best off remembering that, for the most part (there will be occasional horrific games for even the best of players), what Hockey Consultant would encourage any frustrated GM or coaching staff to remember if they ever sought her advice for dealing with the reality that even superstars don’t always play at “level 5” (A+) level every night.   That superstar talent is what every team in the league covets because, well, that kind of talent can still end a game with one save, or one shot, no matter what happened the rest of the game.

So, consider this Hockey Consultant’s friendly reminder:  If your team has superstar talent, it means you’ve got a better shot at winning the game with one or two plays.   You’re never out of it.   You can always come back.

And those players you’re mad at for being inconsistent?

They’re superstar talents because they can play better—and there’s every chance they will.

So look forward to them playing better.  And, by the way, enjoy the win you got when your two superstar talents had “less than perfect” and even “inconsistent” games and still delivered a win for your team.