There has been more talk around these parts about systems through the first week of the season than at any time since Herb Brooks took control in the early ’80’s, bringing his program to Broadway from the University of Minnesota by way of Lake Placid.
The modified Soviet-styled approach never got the Blueshirts to the Canyon of Heroes, but it sure did scare the living dickens out of the Dynastic Islanders.
Systems are designed to give teams their best chance of winning. Head coach Peter Laviolette has been using a version of his neutral-zone trap/lock through his last four stops in the league when he was hired by Carolina in the middle of the 2003-04 season after having been let go by the Islanders after two years.
That system took the ’Canes to the Stanley Cup in 2006. It took the Flyers to the Cup Final in 2010. It took the Predators to the final in 2017.
But while systems protect and enhance teams, they do not win championships. Players win championships.
Jacques Lemaire was both renowned and reviled around the league for installing the neutral-zone trap when he was hired by the Devils as head coach in 1993. They went to town on it, extending the Rangers to seven games in the epochal 1994 Eastern Conference final that stands as arguably the greatest playoff series in NHL history. A year later, the Devils rode the trap to the Cup.
Lemaire was a great player for Montreal. He was a great coach in New Jersey. Until, that is, he became convinced that it was his system and not players such as Scott Stevens, John MacLean, Claude Lemieux, Stephane Richer, Neal Broten, Scott Niedermayer, Billy Guerin and, oh yes, Martin Brodeur, that actually won the Cup.
The coach was not shy in letting people know that’s what he thought. The players were not exactly delighted. And do you know what the system did the following season? The system — I mean, the Devils — missed the playoffs in becoming the first defending champ since the 1970 Canadiens to fail to qualify for a title defense.
Systems are necessary. Adjustments are necessary. Structure is a requirement. But it is still the players who determine the outcome. At some point — and probably much sooner than later — outside fascination with Laviolette’s system will fade. And attention will be directed, as always, on the players.
As it was on the Rangers during and following Thursday’s belly flop of a 4-1 defeat to Nashville at the Garden, in which the home boys were a step and a thought slow pretty much from start to finish and lacked the battle level to overcome their sloth.
It wasn’t the system that let down the Rangers; it was the Rangers who let down the system and each other. They could not establish any type of meaningful forecheck. They had issues getting out of their own end. They were disconnected with and without the puck in the neutral zone, while yielding a pair of breakaways and nearly two handfuls of odd-man rushes.
Essentially nothing was close to good enough on this night as the Blueshirts fell to 2-2 in advance of a five-game trip out west that commences in Seattle on Saturday.
From Laviolette’s perspective, the most egregious of the numerous flaws on display was his team’s unsatisfactory compete standard. There is never an excuse for that. That’s why this one stung far more than Saturday’s 5-3 defeat in Columbus in which the team was scattered for the first 40 minutes.
“We had the same problem in Columbus where we gave up too much but in Columbus we competed hard,” Laviolette said. “We attacked the net hard.
“It’s different for me because there were a lot of components and aspects of the game that were missing. With that, you’re not going to find much success.”
The Predators, who played a much faster game than their opponents, gained a 2-0 first-period lead with a late pair of goals by Cole Smith within 4:58 off a pair of turnovers, the first while trying to escape the zone, the second off an errant K’Andre Miller pass at the offensive blue line just as a power play expired.
By the way, the answer to the question of who is having a more difficult start to the season, Miller or Braden Schneider, is C: Both of the above.
The trap/lock is supposed to prevent odd-man rushes. It did not. The trap/lock is supposed to spring odd-man counterattacks. It did not.
“We’ve got the system but we’ve got to move our feet and get people into battles,” said Chris Kreider, kept off the scoresheet for the first time. “It’s about working smart, too.”
The Rangers have work to do. Oh, and for the third time in the last three games, a “goal” was wiped off the board on a successful offside challenge. That represents carelessness.
That’s not the fault of the system.
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