Exit Day II: Fletcher and Gordon Meet with Media
Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher and interim head coach Scott Gordon met with the media on Monday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees to wrap up the 2018-19 season and discuss the offseason. Fletcher and Gordon alike said there is a
mindset that needs to change on the team, and it something that goes beyond systems or personnel upgrades.
"We have some bad habits right now: Flying the zone before we have possession of the puck, not getting in shooting lanes, not keeping the third guy high, turning pucks over in the neutral zone when there's no time and space to make a play, and just recognizing things. It's [adhering to good habits], but you need the mindset to embrace the habits," Fletcher said.
Fletcher said that he would take the time he needs to interview candidates for the head coach job; one of which is Gordon. He declined to discuss any other potential names. Gordon said that he did not directly contact new Florida Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville (but left unsaid that it had already become clear that Quenneville's heart was set on reuniting with Dale Tallon in Florida and he was apparently not inclined to listen to other offers).
Fletcher and Gordon both identified a top-six-caliber center as a need for the team if they are able to fill it. Claude Giroux will likely stay at wing and Nolan Patrick may not be offensively ready to produce at a bonafide second line center pace for a full season. Fletcher said that he'd like to see Patrick continue to work on his shot and at getting a little quicker. Fletcher also said that he'd like to add a veteran defenseman to the starting lineup in addition to signing a veteran goaltender to play in tandem with Carter Hart.
In terms of what needs to happen on the ice, Fletcher and Gordon were on the same page: 1) The team needs to spend more time attack, less time defending, in part by playing smarter hockey in the offensive zone, 2) Cutting the team GAA is a must, and one component of that is forwards committing to a 200-foot game so that they don't make life tough on the defensemen and both forwards and D-men alike giving the goaltenders a reasonable chance to make saves; 3) The young players in the lineup need to continue to show growth in their games and the team as a whole needs greater consistency.
Gordon, as he often does, went into a lot of hockey-related detail about the specifics of what he feels the team needs to do. In terms of his own future, while he would not rule out taking another role if not retained as head coach (whether it's going back to coach the Phantoms, being a Flyers assistant, etc.), Gordon understandably tried to keep the focus on his observations from the season and what he'd like to build from, change or introduce. Fletcher said that no decisions would be made on assistant coaches until there is a new head coach in place.
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SCOTT GORDON TRANSCRIPT (courtesy of Flyers)
On the two-way play of forwards
I think for me the biggest thing that our forwards have to get better at is not just our entries and turnovers and that, but how we play inside the offensive zone. When I look at shots against and look at time spent in the offensive zone, defensive zone, I look at different d-zone coverages of opponents versus ours, why some teams are giving up less goals or shots, the one common denominator, and I’ve always felt this way but in particular this year, the amount of time you spend in your defensive zone, how good you are defensively, there’s a correlation of how good you are offensively.
Not from a scoring goals standpoint, not necessarily a shot standpoint, either. It’s a willingness to work in the offensive zone under desperation like you would work in the defensive zone under desperation to keep the puck out of your net.
The one thing in my meetings that I talked to the players about, when you’re in the offensive zone there’s almost a mindset that nothing bad is going to happen, you can take the foot off the pedal, you can find shortcuts, and there’s no immediate consequence as far as the puck going in the net. That’s not to say the play can’t go down the ice, they score off the rush, they score on your defensive zone coverage. When you don’t apply yourself into the details of defensive zone coverage, and it ends up in the back of your net, it’s very easy to point fingers as to who made the mistake.
But the reality is if you’re in your offensive zone and you’re paying attention to the details of getting to the front of the net, beating your check off the wall, protecting the puck, cutting back, moving your feet when you get the puck, supporting to the puck, that is to me what makes a team better defensively.
If you look at two games in particular – the game in Dallas, we were outshooting them 20-13, 13 shots against, you’d say well we played pretty well defensively, we didn’t spend a lot of time in the defensive zone. Then if we take the third period against Carolina, we’re outshooting them 10-1. I just said this to a couple players, I said, "This was probably one of our best efforts in the defensive zone since I’ve been here, that third period."
They were like, "Yeah."
Well I said, "Wasn’t it? We just gave up one shot."
Then I said, "It wasn’t good [because of our defensive play]. It's that we didn’t have to play in the defensive zone. That’s why it was good."
And so if you think about that, what did we do that allowed us not to play in the defensive zone? It’s everything I just listed. When I look back over the 50 games that I was here for, that’s the one area I probably could have as a coach put more detail in as far as not so much we didn’t talk about it, but I think those are habits. I think those are habits that get created throughout training camp, throughout preseason and at the start of the year.
I was asked the other night "How do you get in a situation where you’re always behind?", and "Why is this team always coming from behind and having to push, whether it be in the second period or the third period, goalie pulled? How does that happen?" I didn’t get into it then. But, in my mind, it’s establishing that mentality at the beginning of the game that puts the other team on their heels and sets up for your success over a 60-minute period.
You’re going to have times during the game where the other team’s going to have a push and they’re going to play well. But you have to enhance your chances to be able to do that. And that’s one of the things that we were always doing it when we were behind. You look at some of the games we came from behind and how we had great periods of pressure, offense, shots. That’s the common denominator. It’s always about the effort that you put forth in the offensive zone. It’s important [in its own right], but if you don’t do it, then all of a sudden it’s important because of the failure you’re going to have when you're having to play too much in your zone.
On whether he'd discussed this topic with Fletcher (who gave a similar opinion during his earlier media session)....
I shared a little bit of what my thoughts were on that this morning. It’s obvious.
You go into the offensive zone and, I don’t want to say it’s optional that you have to work hard in the offensive zone, but the consequences of not working hard in the offensive zone don’t have immediate effect on the scoreboard. It can, but it’s not something where if you break down in your d-zone right away. well, "This guy didn’t do this, this guy didn’t do that, goalie didn’t make a save, whatever it might be."
Nobody’s talking about the offensive zone. This guy didn’t go to the net, this guy didn’t win a battle, this guy should have cut back, didn’t cut back. Those are the type of things that don’t show up on a stat sheet, but they’re so important to a team’s effectiveness in the offensive zone. It's also important because, if these are habits, it's going to mean less time in your own end.
On the Flyers not carrying play enough at 5-on-5 even when they were winning regularly from mid-January to March.
Carrying the play: Well, when I look at it… just by numbers, it seems Tampa Bay is one of the worst teams when it comes up to giving up shots against, I think they give up over 32 shots against [per game], and it obviously doesn’t affect them.
This is another conversation I shared with a couple players, S we play against St. Louis and we have a second period where I think from less than 16 minutes left in the period, we pretty much spent the entire period in our zone. Up until that 16-minute mark, we had a pretty good start to the period. And then we didn’t break out, and then we lost a faceoff, iced a puck, turned a puck over in the neutral zone, came back in, had coverage, but expended a lot of energy in our zone for the majority of the second period.
One of the things that I do postgame is not only do I look at my team, but if there’s a particular team that does something that I think might be better than what we do, or something that I hear they do, I’ll go back and look at that while I’m breaking down the game for our team. In that game, we had I think 2 ½ minutes of offensive zone possession time, which is probably a season-low. They had probably 8 ½ minutes of offensive zone possession time. Those are your highs and lows for the year.
So I’m saying to myself, "OK, what did they do well defensively?"
In that game, we had some great offensive chances. It was more after watching it than I thought during it. And so when I started to say "OK, what are they doing REALLY well defensively?' I didn’t come away thinking about things they were doing well. I didn’t see it. The chances they were giving up, the turnovers they were making, they were equal if not worse than some of the things we were doing. Now, obviously they win the game, they were the better team, there’s no question about it.
So I also looked at it from an offensive standpoint. What they were doing? What was different from us? And everything I just talked about was why they were having the success they were against us in the offensive zone. The amount of time they were spending there. Why were they good defensively? Well, they did the work in the offensive zone. They were making it hard for us to defend against.
And so, when you look at that, I think that was something that was pretty consistent with our team. I thought we started to defend better in our zone as far as keeping the play to the outside. But we just did too much of it. It doesn’t matter what system you play for defensive zone coverage. If you’re going to spend a lot of time there, you’re going to give up shots. Bad things will happen.
That was something that our team could have been a lot better in. As a coach, I know that wherever I’m coaching, I’m going to get back to making an emphasis on the effort that’s exerted in the offensive zone.
Did guys take steps towards better habits?
I think anything as a coach that you want to emphasize, whatever you emphasize gets done. Sometimes it’s immediate, sometimes it takes changing a mindset on how you have to do things.
A lot of our young forwards, a perfect example here, I had a conversation with Nolan Patrick about setting a breakout. He came back like he was going to be the middle option, where he should have been a lower option below the goal line for the defenseman. That’s something he’s not accustomed to. He logically gave me what he thought, what he saw, about how he thought the defense was going to come around, hit the winger, and he’s going to be in position for that pass. But that passing lane never developed. And there’s another option for us to be able to use him down low.
In the last game, G, in a similar situation, he was the first forward back and the defenseman was being pressured. He went below the goal line to the D, the D basically tied up their forward, G game in and grabbed the puck and we broke out easily.
So sometimes through experience as a player that comes out of junior, they don’t have value in that. They see the value in what the next play is going to be that doesn’t come to them, they’re getting in position for that. There’s elements to all parts of the game that come from repetition and what you emphasize, that comes over time and consistency.
It’s no secret, there’s not a whole lot of practice time in the second half of the year for all teams. You try to figure out what’s the most important thing that’s going to make the team better. We talked about the neutral zone, we talked about what we needed to do to improve the power play, the penalty killing, and putting the appropriate time into those areas. We did put time into the breakouts, but there’s just not enough time to get it to a level of consistency that needs to be executed.
Did you make pitch for yourself this morning?
No. there was no interview part to it. It was just talking generalities, what the schedule’s going to be, some brief conversation about some of the meetings with players.
How much of the changes you wanted to make were you able to get in?
From a breakout standpoint, getting out of our zone, that’s something there’d be a huge emphasis on. Everything I described to you has pieces to it. We need to get better in the offensive zone, and I don’t even think we touched the tip of the iceberg on that.
Too many Flyers shots taken from distance?
Just watching other teams play; St. Louis, I don’t know how many point shots they had against us, but I do know how many times they took pucks off the wall from behind the net and went to the net and tried to score, get into position at the net front. That is something we don’t do a lot of, and those are habits.
Skating with the puck in the offensive zone with pace instead of standing waiting for something to happen. Those are habits.
There was a coach that took over for another coach and they had immediate success from an offensive standpoint as far as adding a goal a game to their season average. I just asked, "What are they doing differently?"
He said, "We’ve kept the defensive zone the same, but the one thing that we’ve gotten away from is trying to generate offense through the defense [at the point]." There are times you have to do it like when you’re playing against a team like Toronto. They basically play 5-on-3 below the hash marks, so there is no room to be able to take pucks to the net. To get it up to the upper portion of the zone and get bodies up there, that makes it harder for them to defend, then the stuff down low will open up.
The thing that coach had said was we’ve gotten away from trying to generate our offense through the defense and take advantage of the opportunity to put the puck to the net, whether it be from the goal line, from the hash mark, off the wall, skating to the net, jam plays, attacking from the top of the circle in off the wall, even throwing blind pucks to the net, that was the difference in how they played offense.
That’s something that players need to adapt to. They want to make the play that sets somebody up at the back door. They want to get set up for those types of plays. But the reality is when those plays don’t work, generally they’re going the other way, and you haven’t put yourself in a position to work as a five-man unit or a three-man unit below the tops of the circles.
That’s something that I feel strongly about, that I know from my best years of coaching that I used to put a huge emphasis on. I got away from it a little bit in Lehigh from the standpoint that we had offensive teams that led the league two years in a row in scoring, but sometimes that’s your talent and sometimes that’s power play. The two different years there were two different reasons – one year we had a really good power play and the other year we scored a lot 5-on-5.
I think the mindset of our team should have been more, and it’s something I probably should have hammered home in practice a little more, but when you try to do that stuff, it’s taxing. It’s work. You have to prioritize whatever you’re trying to work on outside of that. You hope, as players they’ll embrace it. But sometimes it’s the habits that get you to do it all the time.
Was it gratifying to hear so many Flyers lobbying for him and saying they enjoyed playing for him?
What I can say is.... I had a great time with the group of players here. What I liked about it is when I was up front, when I did call them out, when I was hard, when I challenged them, I got a response from them. To be able to do that particularly in this day and age and not have the players resent you, that to me is the important part. To be able to coach them, they might not always like what you have to say, but if you can put it to them so they can understand it, think about it, and respond, I felt like I got a lot of that, and that to me was the most rewarding part.
On video sessions and meeting with players...
Through the player meetings, I talked to the players and asked them what did you like that we did that we changed, meetings, practices, systems, video length, stuff like that. It was refreshing to hear the players say they had appreciation, particularly the younger guys, to sit down and go through their shifts or go through things, tendencies they had in their game that were either good, bad or indifferent.
I’s nice to hear that because sometimes you think you’re doing it and it’s going in one ear and out the other. They look at you as they’re coming down the hall and you say "Hey, let’s sit down and watch some video," and in the back of your mind you’re saying to yourself, "Is this guy saying, 'Not again!'"
So the fact that they offered up that, said it had value in it, makes you want to continue to do it. You do it anyway, but the fact that they felt the reward from it, that it was beneficial, that was good.
Nolan Patrick has historically been a slow starter. Do you have any theories about players you’ve had in the past why somebody would perennially take a while to get going are their tendencies or trends that you can correct as a coach?
I can’t speak to Nolan Patrick. I don’t know specifically how he trends or why he feels that way, but I don’t think that is a good thing to say. I think you should certainly try to do anything in your power to make sure that you are not. I do think that training camp is an important part to getting out of the gate quickly and how hard. Obviously you have to train over the summer and get yourself prepared for the start of the season, but also throughout training camp you have to push yourself to be ready for the start of the season and not use the excuse that I’m a slow starter. That has to come from within. If everybody else can be ready for the start of the year, then there is no reason why anybody else shouldn’t be.
Are the players' heads in the right place about wanting to get better?
I think that if you’re a professional athlete, I think that’s something you’re always striving to do is get better. Unfortunately, in the NHL there is not a whole lot of time on the ice to get better in terms of practice time and you have to manage your diet, there’s a lot more that goes into it than throwing on the gear and going on the ice for practice.
I’ve found a willingness, for example, with TK. We have an optional skate on Saturday, and he’s out there practicing. A lot of that has to come from the players and to me that is encouraging that he is usually one of the first guys on the ice and one of the last guys off the ice and as players, you look around and you’re watching the guy that’s leaving the ice, he’s the first one off. Those are the players that’s who you’re concerned about.
As a group, I don’t think our young players are like that. They do want to get better. As I talked about with the video, very engaged very interested to see what you have to show them. So, from that stand point, there is a caring- learning to win. That’s something that comes with time and winning. Having the right mindset that sometimes things aren’t’ going to be good for your personal situation of where you are in a game, but sometimes you have to make decisions and plays that are good for the team.
Are there any uncoachable players?
No. One hundred percent no. I think as I told the players Saturday night. It has probably been the best group of players I’ve had to work with from that standpoint. From an attitude coach ability, work ethic, I have no complaints in that regard.
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