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?

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 4^th 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.