One of the many tweaks that the Vancouver Canucks are making behind the bench for the 2017-18 season involves the return of Newell Brown as an assistant coach.
A native of Cornwall, Ontario, Brown's sister is the mother of perpetual trade bait target Matt Duchene. Brown was a centre in his own playing days, which peaked with a year on the Canadian National Team in 1985-86. In the fall of 1987, he returned to his alma mater at Michigan State as an assistant coach, then put in NHL stints as an assistant in Chicago, Columbus and Anaheim—twice—before joining the Canucks for the first time as they were peaking in the 2010-11 season.
Brown spent three years in Vancouver before being caught in the housecleaning that came along with Alain Vigneault's departure at the end of the 2012-13 season. He spent the last four years in Arizona and was an early dismissal at the end of the year, well before head coach Dave Tippett and assistant Jim Playfair also left the team. Another assistant, John Slaney, remains with the Coyotes, as does goalie coach Jon Elkin.
Though the Coyotes failed to make the playoffs during Brown's four seasons with the team, they were pretty good on the power play in his first two seasons.
In 2013-14, they finished 18th overall with 89 points (five ahead of the Canucks) and were tied for sixth with a 19.5 percent power play (the Canucks were 26th at 15.2 percent under John Tortorella).
In 2014-15, Arizona ranked seventh in the league with a 20 percent power play while Vancouver was 11th at 18.9 percent in the team's first season under Willie Desjardins. The Canucks finished that year eighth in the standings with 101 points while Arizona was 29th with 56 points.
What's interesting now is that Sam Gagner was part of that 2014-15 season in Arizona. His 41 points in 81 games were second on the team behind defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, so it's easy to see that the team's failure to generate wins came from a lack of overall offensive firepower—for his role, Gagner did his bit. He was fourth among forwards in average ice time but second only to Shane Doan in total power-play ice time among forwards.
Six of Gagner's 15 goals that season came with the man advantage, and so did 12 of his 41 points. So it looks like there's something there, in terms of how Newell Brown was able to use Gagner during that season in Arizona.
"I am excited to work with Newell again, and I do think there’s a chance for us to step forward," Gagner told
Jason Botchford for the
National Post.
However, Gagner also tells Botchford that his success with the man advantage last season in Columbus came from a different deployment:
“That was the first year I played (between the circles on the power play),” Gagner said. “I did it a little bit in Philadelphia, but it was a different set-up. It was from the other side, and I didn’t have a one-timer.
“I added another element to what I can do on the power play. Being in the middle, you rely a lot on the guys on the outside to make the reads...The guy in the middle has become pretty important. He’s asked to make plays, support the outside and finish chances.
“There’s a lot more that goes into it in today’s game. I think in the past, the guy in the middle was more of a guy to screen a goalie and tip pucks. So there’s been more elements added with how aggressive penalty kills are and how hard it is to score.”
As for Brown's point of view?
"Teams really study what you’re doing and put up good defences and you have to change with the times and know what’s going on in the game," he told
Ben Kuzma of
The Province when his hiring was announced in early June.
"Over the last four years, I’ve evolved in that area and hopefully I can bring some new ideas and try to find that success we had before."
Brown's past relationship with Gagner may have helped the Canucks make the winning bid for Gagner's services after his strong season in Columbus. It's believed that Brown also advocated for the signing of Alex Burmistrov, who he coached in Arizona for half a season in 2016-17.
One other interesting connection—Brown and Travis Green worked together twice with the Anaheim organization. Green picked up nine power-play points and averaged 2:38 of ice time per game with the man advantage when he was a player and Brown was a Ducks assistant during the 1998-99 season—when Anaheim had the top power play in the league thanks primarily to new Hall of Fame inductees Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne.
In 2006-07, the pair briefly reunited again when Brown was in the second year of his second tour of duty with Anaheim and Green was signed as a free agent. He played just seven games with the Ducks that year before being placed on waivers and finishing out his career in Toronto.
"You have to have a lot of variations, I don’t think you can do just one thing,” Brown explained to Kuzma about his plans for formation and execution next season. "I like the drop pass and I like to have three or four different break-outs—including a speed one and a drop-back one.
"Having unpredictability to your power play with lots of movement and motion is important, but you can never get away from the fundamentals of shooting and having timely net presence."
"We’ll see in the summer who will go where when we form the (power-play) groups," Brown added. "The power play is a fickle thing. You need to get it going early to get the confidence for the season."
The Canucks finished 28th in the league in penalties drawn last season, with their 227 power-play opportunities averaging out to only 2.77 man advantage chances per game. The power play was ice cold right from the beginning of the 2016-17, connecting in just two of the team's first 12 games.
If Brown can turn that around, it'd go a long way toward a more respectable season for Vancouver in 2017-18.
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