When the Flyers held their postseason wrapup press conferences last Thursday, Paul Holmgren said that the team needs to reduce its goals against average next season. Peter Laviolette agreed.
However, when it came to the means of accomplishing the goal, the general manager and head coach did not appear to be completely on the same page right now.
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."
Laviolette, on the other hand, got a bit defensive (no pun intended) when asked about whether the team's attacking system needed to be altered. He answered the query with two questions of his own.
"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 responded.
He 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.
I agree with the GM that the team's style of play was part of the root cause this season, along with the up-and-down play of the goaltender (and the defenders in front of him) within the system it employs. The latter part is up to the players. The former is something the coaching staff needs to look at this offseason.
Veteran defenseman and team leader Kimmo Timonen was asked about the team's system in the locker room after Game 5. Without reading too much into his response -- it was, after all, a moment of extreme disappointment and anguish -- he elected to defer the question rather than attributing it solely to lack of execution. That suggests he privately felt changes were needed.
"Well, that's the coaches decision, not mine," said Timonen. "I'm not going to go there to say what we should have done. That's their job and I'm sure they are going to think about it afterwards. Maybe there was something we should have done."
To be fair, however, there is a flip-side-of-the-coin argument to be made about the team's ability to win a Cup within an offensive-minded system when they play against highly disciplined defensive teams. Danny Briere articulated the other side.
"I think it changes from season to season," said Briere. "If you look at our playoff run two years ago, we beat three defensive-minded teams in the playoffs (New Jersey, Boston and Montreal). Then we lost more of a run-and-gun series in the Finals against Chicago."
It should also be said that, if you are going to list the demerits of playing an offensive-oriented system this season the positives should also be mentioned. The Flyers were arguably the NHL's best comeback team this season, and it served them well in the Pittsburgh series and Game 1 of the New Jersey series. Until the playoffs, they also had one of the NHL's better winning percentages when scoring first. Unfortunately, they went 1-6 when scoring first in the playoffs.
In the month of March, the Flyers clicked both offensively and defensively (and Bryzgalov had a lot to do with it). Then they sustained a wave of injuries that apparently was rather substantial even by stretch drive/ playoff standards.
In terms of specific adjustments to strategy, Laviolette explained his philosophy and also went into some of the tweaks the club attempted to employ against New Jersey.
"We only tried to change things that could benefit us, not to make things worse. When you talk about changes in hockey I think you go and make drastic changes you really confuse things," Laviolette said.
"When we make changes, they are minor changes, where somebody is positioned, where somebody goes to, maybe a set break out, maybe something to look for to try and get away from D-zone coverage, maybe an option that might be open or putting the puck in a certain area but they’re not drastic changes to what we do."
"We have our identity. Our identity, I think, you work on it in sports, in hockey anyway. I think maybe it’s different for other sports. Maybe in football where you have six days to change a game plan, maybe you change it based on the opponent but in hockey you really work at your identity. You try to become really efficient at it. When you get to a point in playoffs, you hope that you’re flying high with it and you get bounces and you stay healthy and there’s a lot of things that go through it I think."
"Having been through it a few times now, there’s a lot of things that go right but certainly your identity has to be on the mark and leading the way."
The strong impression that I get is that Laviolette is comfortable with the system he already has in place. He is not about to willingly make more than minor adjustments to the team's style, and the same stylistic identity will be preached from the opening day of training camp through the playoffs.
Since the system isn't going to change much, a big part of the challenge that awaits the Flyers this summer is not just one of adjusting some of the personnel. It is going to be for Laviolette and his staff to identify the areas where the team can improve defensively within the current system.
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Laviolette is a coach who has won a Stanley Cup and came within a Game 6 OT loss in the Finals of playing to win a second one. So I can understand where he's coming from.
However, one thing that I have noticed the last two seasons, but especially this year, is the NHL has increasingly reverted to the clogged-up, clutch-and-grab, go-ahead-and-interfere style that prevailed prior to the 2004-05 lockout. Big, shot-blocking defensemen and players who grind it out on the boards have once again become more effective in playoff type games.
Nicklas Grossmann is a player whom I like quite a bit. But I have to be honest here. He is a good example of a player who knows how much holding and interference he can get away with, especially while he was playing with two knee braces during the playoffs. In broom closet hockey without a lot of obstruction minors being called, he is an extremely effective defenseman. When it's racehorse hockey, he struggles. He reminds me a lot of Mattias Norström, who thrived in the close-quarters NHL of the late-1990s to mid-2000s.
It always takes a good mix of players -- speedy ones, big guys, finesse players, north-south ones -- to win in the playoffs. That is how a club can be more effective against opponents of a variety of styles.
Apart from the need for long-term planning on the blueline, I think the Flyers can still stand to add a little bit more grit and/or size up front. As July 1 draws closer, I plan to write a blog looking at UFA role players whom I think could benefit the bottom six forwards. Here, I'm referring to players such as Travis Moen, Paul Gaustad or even Adam Burish (who is average sized but has been highly effective when healthy for Dallas the last two seasons).
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