I spent three days at a coaching school, you can too

Some observations, notes, stories from picking brings from a handful of NHL coaches

A year ago I attended The Coaches Site Live, a three-day coaching conference held in Ann Arbor, in an attempt to make myself a better hockey writer.

I believe it worked.

Whether it was instant application or a long-term idea I better grasped, spending the three days at the clinic helped me better understand the game.

For example, I’m almost embarrassed about how little I knew about power play entries before attending this clinic in 2023.

It also pushed my curiosity. Once you learn a little, you want to learn a lot.

That’s one of the main reasons I’m attending the 2024 version of TCS Live, which starts next Thursday in Ann Arbor. You can still register here.

This year presenters include coaches from the Washington Capitals, Ottawa Senators, San Jose Sharks, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Calgary Flames.

With all of this in mind, I figured it was a good time to re-share this story I wrote about the experience at the 2023 clinic:

One of my commentaries on hockey media, myself included, is that we don’t understand the game in front of us nearly enough.

In other sports, football for example, there’s loads of expertise on systems and styles of play. It gets woven into general storylines, you see similar things in NBA coverage and in international soccer coverage.

It doesn’t happen nearly enough in hockey coverage. Part of that is reflective of the game itself, it’s fast without many natural breaks. We don’t have broadcasters in a position to naturally teach about the game, so coverage, starting with those broadcasts typically becomes more about narrative and transactional news.

Hockey media, again I’m included in this, often miss the events happening right in front our faces.

Personally I’d like to be better about that. I’d like to better understand the game, be able to better relay that to readers, and in turn be able to ask better questions in the future about why a team is playing the way they are.

That’s why I attended the coaching clinic the past three days in Ann Arbor put on by The Coaches Site. (This isn’t ad or anything like that, I paid to be there.)

I believe I was the only non-coach in attendance. I awkwardly answered the question, “Where do you coach?” multiple times. But I came away with a pretty good knowledge base, and hopefully a better understanding of the subjects I’m covering after listening to and filling a notebook from presentations by Pete DeBoer, Ryan Huska, Derek Lalonde, Glen Gulutzan, Brandon Naurato, and several others.

Many of the insights will, hopefully, make coverage at Shap Shots better. That’s the long-term benefit here.

In the short-term, here are some immediate notes, stories, and takeaways I wanted to share with subscribers.

The Oilers players really cared about the power play record

Gulutzan ran the Edmonton Oilers power play this season, which set a new record for efficiency, converting 32.4 percent of the time. That surpassed the old record of 31.9 percent set by the 1977-78 Montreal Canadiens.

Gulutzan relayed this story about the regular season finale against the San Jose Sharks.

Going into the game, the Oilers knew if they went 1-for-4 on the power play, they’d get the record. After Edmonton scored a power play goal, and they were 1-for-4, Connor McDavid turned to Gulutzan and asked, “are we good?” referring to the record.

The power play unit in that moment decided they didn’t want anymore power plays for the rest of the game, they didn’t want to lose the record.

Leon Draisaitl then yelled to the official, as Gulutzan, remembered, “We don’t want anymore penalties.”

The ref gave a weird look, and skated by.

When the ref skated by again, Draisaitl relayed the point again. Edmonton didn’t want another San Jose penalty scored that game.

About five minutes later there was a pretty obvious trip, that wasn’t called, Klim Kostin stood up and yelled at the ref about the call. And the officially simply pointed to Draisaitl and said, “I thought you said no more power plays?”

The call was’t made, Edmonton got the record.

The power play discussion also got me thinking about why power plays were so effective in the playoffs, why the penalty kills were getting eaten alive.

Part of the answer is that talent level is higher than ever in the NHL. The other part, which a couple coaches relayed this weekend to me in conversation, was how the penalty kill doesn’t get the same amount of practice as the power play.

This problem has grown with teams using top players on both the power play and the penalty kill. When a team works on special teams, it’s often the power play that gets focus, not the penalty kill.

It’s a point of emphasis some teams may consider next season, not adjusting personnel, but better focusing on usage of players in practice and putting more importance on the penalty kill part of the special teams practice.

On a similar note, the Winnipeg Jets changed their meeting structure this year and no longer do penalty kill meetings in person on the day of the game. This started out of necessity, a coach was unable to travel so things had to be done remote, but became an advantage where Winnipeg would run PK meetings over video the day before games instead of at the rink the next day.

Jets video coach Matt Prefontaine mentioned at the conference that the change in format led to better PK discussions. Players had more time to break down the penalty kill, and players would often come to the rink the next day with questions that could be answered.

He also noted the Jets are kicking around ideas of doing that for power play meetings in the future as well.

The Boston D and DeBoer’s offensive philosophy

Someone smarter than I has probably already written about this, but in the NHL this season the Stanley Cup Champion (Vegas Golden Knights) and Regular Season champion (Boston Bruins) both used a pretty unique defense compared to the rest of the league.

The coaching connection here is obvious, Bruce Cassidy used to coach Boston and now coaches Vegas. The schematic connection also should have been more obvious to me, but that’s why I spent a couple days educating myself at a coaching clinic this week.

While some teams in the NHL are more of a swarm defense and some are more of a zone, the Bruins and Golden Knights are a hybrid where the defensemen play a zone-type role and the forwards are man-to-man.

The most important part of this system, and both teams are able to do it because of their size on the back end, is the over reliance on sticking by the net. The two defenders are almost always within stick length of their respective post, and are willing to concede possession on the outside to stick and own the slot/net-front area.

Dallas tried to pull Vegas out of this alignment in the Western Conference Final at times by keeping four players high in the zone, trying outnumber the Golden Knights up high and at the same time trying to bait the defenseman from leaving his post.

It worked at times, DeBoer showed some clips of times Dallas built a downhill attack within the zone because of that 4-on-3 advantage high in the zone, but the Stars weren’t able to generate enough in that slot area to make up for other mistakes in a series loss.

DeBoer also shared his personal offensive philosophy at the conference.

“It is difficult to teach scoring. Hockey is not scripted like football where everyone runs precise routes. Our job as coaches is to CREATE TIME AND SPACE for offensive players and then let their instincts take over. We also have to identify and sell to our group on where the goal are scored at the toughest time of the year.”

The toughest time of the year, of course, refers to the playoffs. But DeBoer said that style typically switches at the trade deadline, particularly with teams that are in the playoff hunt.

Players start to dial in on the details after the deadline, either on purpose or because of natural learning of a system.

Derek Lalonde and the power play

Lalonde doesn’t run the power play in Detroit, that’s a responsibility for assistant coach Alex Tanguay.

But Lalonde did run the power play for Team USA at the IIHF World Championships this spring as part of the staff with David Quinn.

Lalonde ran through his presentation he gave to Team USA players, pulling specific clips he used from the Red Wings season in doing so. He also then went and broke down each power play for Team USA at the World Championships.

The Detroit (and Team USA) power play isn’t complex, it’s a pretty simple approach with a double-drop pass and a built-in cutback system at the blue line. Lalonde wants to enter the zone as a unit, while the puck carrier at entry is basically checking back to allow others to finish their routes.

From there the power play philosophy is built on moving the defensive box to create seams for either the shot or the pass.

I’ll have more on this stuff closer to the season, but Lalonde also shared a pretty good story about how Tanguay called him with a FaceTime after Canada won the gold at worlds and the United States lost in the bronze medal game.

Team USA had a better power play percentage at the tournament than Canada. So Lalonde said that was his bragging right anytime Tanguay tries to bring up the gold medal in the future.

Michigan and analytically planning practices

Michigan coach Brandon Naurato didn’t speak about his on-ice product, but did discuss some of the off-ice decisions and challenges coaches face.

The thing that was interesting to me is how Michigan uses data to better plan practices for game performances.

Because of the resources Michigan has both financially and within the student body, Michigan had more than a dozen students working as data analysts for the hockey team.

One of the most important developments was the monitoring of players and categorizing different drills for proper load management. This is how Michigan would build practices during the season, pairing drills together that worked in cohesion for energy use, and avoiding certain drills closer to game day (which is Friday and Saturday in college hockey).

Naurato said one of his biggest goals for next season is to dive even deeper into sports science and figure out how it can help the hockey program.

On a Michigan hockey note, there was a good presentation by Michigan Woman’s coach Jenna Trubiano on late-game tactics.

The Michigan women’s hockey team is a club team. There isn’t a Division I program in the state of Michigan. As someone who lives in Michigan now, sees hockey’s growth up-close by taking my kid to the rink, it’s kind of ridiculous that Michigan doesn’t have a Division I women’s team.