Leadership is not an issue for Flyers
To the surprise of no one, the Flyers have appointed
Claude Giroux as their new captain. I'm not in favor of a team automatically appointing it's best player as captain, but I think Giroux can handle the added responsibilities with no problem.
Giroux already displayed leadership traits on and off the ice and, at age 25, has enough experience to command when he speaks. He's not a colorful quote in the media, but that's not part of the job description.
Much more importantly, the captain has to be willing to be a team spokesman and advocate in good times and bad. He has to have his finger on the pulse of the locker room and, when necessary, be the one to communicate players' concerns and gripes to the coaches. He also has to "sell" the importance of every one buying into the coach's system, and putting self-interests aside for the good of the team.
As a second-tier responsibility, the one who ought to establish a rapport with the referees, argue the team's case on disputed calls and tell hot-headed teammates when to cool it. Ideally, he patiently answers the same questions from the media over and over about what's going right or wrong. It is not so much the eloquence of the words that matter, it is the confidence and demeanor with which he speaks.
At the third tier of responsibility, the captain is inevitably one of the guys whom a team's PR and marketing departments call upon to represent the organization in public. Some organizations care more about this than others. The captain is expected to arrive on time, in a cheerful mood and, preferably, be appropriately dressed for the occasion. The Flyers are one of the teams in which upper management DOES pay attention to these seemingly minor details.
Of course, the hockey part of the job comes first on every team. But a captain is always expected to be a leader by example at all levels. A team captain who rolls his eyes at the third-level stuff -- or wants to perform these tasks solely on his own terms -- can find he has no friends upstairs if and when his and the team's on-ice fortunes take a downturn.
Even before he was given the C, Giroux showed adeptness in performing the primary, secondary and tertiary duties that will expected of him. He said yesterday that being captain won't change what he's already doing, and he was right. He knows what sort of on-ice identity he wants the team to have and he will do his part to make it so.
That's why naming Giroux as captain was pretty much a no-brainer, even though there are a couple older veterans such as
Danny Briere and
Kimmo Timonen who'd have been equally good choices.
What is actually MORE important than who has a letter on his uniform, is whether the team has a good leadership group in place. No one player can lead alone. The alternate captains and a couple veterans without a letter on the uniform but an understanding of the bigger picture of team unity and team identity also have to reinforce the message whenever necessary.
For whatever flaws the Flyers may exhibit on the ice in a given game or stretch of games, lack of leadership will not be a problem. The team had a strong leadership group last year, and the group is virtually the same (minus Jaromir Jagr) heading into the shortened 2013 campaign.
*****************
Laviolette Under Pressure to Change the System?
Something that became abundantly clear after the Flyers' playoff elimination last year was that general manager
Paul Holmgren wanted to see
Peter Laviolette make a few adjustments to his offense-oriented system. The GM perceived a need for the club to improve its team defense and keep things a little bit more under control in front of
Ilya Bryzgalov, as the team did during the month of March.
Holmgren was very straightforward about his views when asked about it on media day after the team's playoff elimination by New Jersey.
Said Holmgren, "There is no question in my mind that we have to do a better job with goals against. It is related to Ilya a little bit. It is related a little bit to how we play. We are an offensive team that can score. We just finished a five-game series where we didn't score a lot of goals. We certainly didn't generate a lot of offensive chances."
A step toward putting some action behind that ambition was asking
John Paddock to be the eye-the-sky assistant coach looking primarily at the team defense aspects of the game and communicating his findings to Laviolette.
Another step: In his media availability session yesterday, Comcast-Spectacor chairman
Ed Snider put some not-so-subtle pressure on Laviolette to sacrifice a bit of scoring in the name of lowering the team's goals against average.
Snider hammered home that message twice. First, he was asked about his expectations for
Ilya Bryzgalov this year. Couched in an obligatory expression of confidence in the team's big-ticket goalie was a challenge to focus a little more on team defense.
Snider said, "I think we are in good shape in goal, I have a lot of faith in Bryzgalov and I think he’ll do a real good job for us. I’m not concerned. I think a lot of his problems have had to do with the different style we played as opposed to Phoenix. I really believe that we’ll tighten up a little bit to help him out and I think he’s a damn good goalie."
Later, a followup question was asked about the specifics of "tightening things up" and whether it was a reflection of what needs to be done to maximize Bryzgalov's effectiveness. In response, Snider got very specific and threw down the gauntlet to Laviolette and his coaches to make some subtle but important changes to the system.
"It’s not in respect to Bryz, it's respect to the way teams are playing now," said Snider. " If you watch the playoffs and saw how teams played and how we couldn’t adjust to New Jersey (Devils) when they were bringing all their men back and then we had like three forwards on five players, it’s hard to score. So we have to adjust accordingly to make sure that we’re up to date with what’s going around in the league."
When the issue of systemic changes was raised two days after the New Jersey series ended last year, Laviolette got a bit defensive (no pun intended) about it.
"Do you think that attack systems have ever won Stanley Cups before? Do you think that attack systems have ever gotten to the Finals before?" Laviolette retorted.
The then added, "We needed to do a better job certainly in a lot of areas. I think defensively we could have been better. Offensively, in the playoffs we generated the least amount of shots and opportunities."
But, here, Laviolette was referring only to the New Jersey series, while Holmgren was referring both to the series and a season-long inconsistency in the club's defensive play. Snider made it clear yesterday that he stands behind his general manager on the issue.
To his credit, Laviolette seems to understand that the only goal that matters is winning hockey games. Whether it's by "scoring more" or "allowing fewer" isn't important in any given match but can become an issue eventually if a team is not adept at winning either high-scoring or low-scoring games. H
Laviolette is an intense competitor. He professional enough to have embraced the addition of Paddock as an assistant coach. As a lover of hockey and both the art and science of coaching, he is smart enough to know he and his team stand to gain when he compares notes and ideas with longtime coaches such as Paddock and Phantoms head coach
Terry Murray.
In other words, it's not a battle of one philosophy against another. It's simply a question of finding the right balance and making the system work for the personnel on hand.
My own views on the subject:
1) Last year, the Flyers were perhaps the only team in the East with the right combination of skill, size and offensive resilience to beat the high-powered Penguins in a seven-game series. But Philly did not match up nearly as well to New Jersey and would have matched up even worse to the Rangers if they had made the Eastern Conference Finals.
2) The way the Flyers played in Game 6 against Pittsburgh -- virtually a perfect balance of offense and defense with a strong game in goal -- would have gotten them past New Jersey. But instead, the Flyers reverted to playing more the way they did in Games 1 through 4 of the Pittsburgh series, and the operating space just wasn't there.
3) When I look at the way the Flyers current blueline is collectively made up -- lots of size, average-at-best mobility, less puck-moving adeptness than the group that started last season -- I think it is absolutely critical to knock the pace down a half-notch. Having a third forward a little higher in the offensive zone, an "everyone backchecks" mentality and not being caught cheating out of the zone on potential breakouts will be important.
***************
Kindle users: Please sign up for Flyers Buzz. For more information
click here.
Click below to follow me on Twitter:
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»