UPDATE 1:15 PM EDT
Post-Practice Report
Today's Flyers practice was a very skating-intensive session, running about 45 minutes. Get used to seeing the team do a lot of skating at practice, because it is probably the number one area that Craig Berube wants to emphasize right now.
"We need to get quicker as a team," said Berube. "We need to skate quicker, and improve our skating conditions. We need to think quicker, too. Those things go hand-in-hand."
Another interesting development today was the fact that Ian Laperriere said that one of his pet projects as a new assistant coach is to help Zac Rinaldo become a penalty killer in the NHL; which has been a stated goal of Rinaldo's pretty much ever since his rookie season.
"Zac has the speed, and he really wants to learn," said Laperriere. "He's always asking questions."
Rinaldo said that he considers Laperriere his mentor and would like to emulate his own game as closely as possible to the one that enabled Laperriere to play over 1,000 games in the NHL as a checker, penalty killer and agitator.
"Just in the last four days, he's given me all sorts of pointers, things I'd never even thought about," said Rinaldo.
Side note: Berube said he does not plan any line changes right now from the Florida game. Although he wouldn't say who is starting in net against the Coyotes, all indications were that Steve Mason would get his fourth start in the season's fifth game. That's especially true with Mason coming off a stellar performance on Tuesday.
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REFS GOT IT RIGHT
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking by phone and communicating by email respectively with a pair of longtime NHL referees, Paul Stewart and Kerry Fraser. I asked both about the situation in Tuesday's game in which referees Kelly Sutherland and Darcy Burchell gave Craig Berube the choice between a four-minute five-on-four penalty and a two minute five-on-three.
Both men confirmed that the situation had been handled correctly, according to the rulebook.
In case you didn't see the game, here's what happened: Philadelphia's Jay Rosehill was called for a delayed-penalty roughing minor behind the play. The Flyers touched up for the stoppage and Rosehill started to skate toward the penalty box. As he did, a fracas ensued at centre ice. Rosehill saw it, left the box and jumped into the scrum.
After Sutherland and Burchell conferred with each other, they skated over to Flyers' head coach Craig Berube. According to Berube, he was given a choice between a four-minute 5-on-4 or a two-minute 5-on-3. Rosehill also got a 10-minute misconduct in addition to a pair of separate roughing minors -- one before the whistle and one after the whistle -- and there were offsetting minors to Philly's Zac Rinaldo and Florida's Tomas Kopecky.
Fraser, who was kind enough to respond at length to my email within an hour and then used our correspondence as a rule-teaching topic in his
"C'Mon Ref" column at TSN.ca, told me that he had this situation happen more than once in his own refereeing career.
According to the NHL rulebook, when there are multiple but uneven minor penalties assessed to both teams for after-the-whistle infractions following a previous delayed penalty, the coach of the team with the extra penalties gets to decide which penalties he wants to be treated as offsetting penalties.
Since Rosehill took a penalty before the whistle, the Flyers were already going be shorthanded 5-on-4 for two minutes. When the after-the-whistle fracas developed, Berube had the choice of either:
a) having Rinaldo and Kopecky penalties offset (with no additional change in manpower) and Rosehill's second minor penalty being tacked onto the first for four minutes of 5-on-4 shorthanded time, or
b) having the Kopecky and second Rosehill penalties offset and having Rinaldo's minor served as the extra penalty, which would have meant Rinaldo and Rosehill concurrently serving two-minute minors and the Panthers playing 5-on-3 for that span.
Berube, of course, chose the first option. The odds killing off four minutes (or even five minutes, as the Panthers later did) of 5-on-4 time are significantly better than surviving a 5-on-3 unscathed for two minutes.
"I have never seen a coach prefer the 5-on-3 but the choice is theirs to make," Fraser wrote.
After Tuesday's game, Berube said that the coach on the bench being given a choice of two different penalty manpower options for his team was an unfamiliar situation to him during his lengthy career as a player and coach (spent primarily as an assistant). However, he didn't need any lengthy explanation of the NHL rulebook scenario from Sutherland and Burchell to know which choice to make.
The discussion with the officials was brief, and the choice was immediate.
Reached by phone during a trip to Russia, where he now serves part-time an officiating consultant with the KHL, Stewart said that the situation was handled correctly all the way around. The referees, led by the experienced Sutherland, knew the rulebook thoroughly enough to know exactly what they were supposed to do before assessing the penalties and "canceling" the Rinaldo and Kopecky minors.
"This is a tactical situation that not many coaches are aware of but it does come up every once in awhile," said Stewart. "I had it happen when I was refereeing."
An enforcer/agitator himself during his own playing career, which included a 21-game stint in the NHL for the Quebec Nordiques, Stewart joked that he'd probably put a few of his own coaches in the same penalty-choosing scenario that Rosehill put Berube in the other night.
Side note: I did not see James Duthie's TSN program, "The Quiz" on Wednesday. From what I have been told, however, it was incorrectly stated on the show that Berube had chosen to accept the 5-on-3 penalty rather than the 5-on-4 option. None of the panelists had seen the game in question, because the scenario was laid out wrong and then commented upon as if Berube had chosen to put his own team down by two men while protecting a one-goal lead in the third period.
The Chief is a pretty astute hockey man, but this particular "choice" was a no-brainer for anyone. If Berube would have voluntarily elected to put his own team down by two men for a full two minutes with his team defending a one-goal lead in the third period, his NHL head coaching career should have ended after one game.
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ROSEHILL AND THE 'ACCOUNTABILITY' ISSUE
Jay Rosehill's actions in leaving the penalty box to jump into the fray at center ice were very short-sighted and potentially hurtful to his team. His heart was in the right place -- he saw Rinaldo get outnumbered at center ice, and wanted to defend his teammate -- but his head was not. Common sense did not prevail.
In the aftermath, I'm sure there was no happier person in the arena than Rosehill that the Flyers killed off the four-minute penalty and went on to win the game. No player, especially one who plays Rosehill's role as an enforcer and receives sparing ice time, wants to be responsible for putting his team in the predicament that he caused.
There was a lot of postgame talk about accountability for the player. One local newspaper columnist asked Berube if he had any "punishment" planned for the player (prompting the now-famous "What do you want me to do, spank him?" response from the Chief).
Quite frankly, it was an odd way to phrase the question and a pointless one to ask. Rosehill knows what he did wrong and that, as someone who rides the cusp of being the 12th forward or a healthy scratch on any given night, he can ill-afford to take bad penalties (especially blatant ones after he's already put his team shorthanded for two minutes on a marginal call that went against him because referees know what his role is on the ice).
What is the proper way for the coaching staff to handle the situation? It needs to be handled internally, as I am sure it was. Neither Berube nor new assistant coach Ian Laperriere are hesitant to deliver a straight-to-the-point message to a player.
Both Laperriere and Berube understand what happened and can relate to similar situations in their own role-playing careers where they acted before thinking. Berube was a tough-as-nails enforcer and Laperriere as a physical-and-gritty checking liner who was never shy about dropping the gloves. In their combined NHL playing experience of over 2,000 regular season games, there were most certainly many situations where they overstepped their bounds and took extra minor penalties they soon regretted.
The number one rule for hockey tough guys is that it's fine to drop the gloves and fight, but just don't leave your team shorthanded if at all possible.
It was sufficient for one of the coaches (more likely assistant coach Laperriere) to privately speak to Rosehill, saying he understands why the player did what he did but the coaching staff never again wants to see him leave the penalty box if and when a similar situation arises. After reiterating the team's expectations of the player, the coach most likely closed the short discussion with a word of encouragement.
Rosehill knows that he owes it to his teammates not only to put his own body on the line to defend them physically but also to be trustworthy in picking his spots when to do so. He has to look his teammates in the eyes after the game and the next day at practice.
To expect Berube or a member of his coaching staff to publicly humiliate his own already-embarrassed player shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of management dynamics, much less the way hockey coaching works. Even if Berube planned to fine Rosehill or scratch him next game as a direct result of the incident, he wasn't about to announce it publicly (nor should he).
To be honest, Rosehill probably should not have been playing at all in the Florida game. Panthers enforcer Krys Barch was scratched for the game. Kris Newbury, who acquitted himself pretty well in limited ice time in the Carolina game on Sunday, probably should have been dressed for the Florida game.
Furthermore, unless Paul Bissonette (who has completed his three-game NHL suspension) dresses for Friday's game, there is not a compelling reason for the Flyers to dress Rosehill against the Coyotes. While Rosehill -- contrary to what some have said and written about him -- is capable of skating a few non-fighting shifts per game on the fourth line without hurting the team, Newbury is the more versatile player of the two. Additionally, while he's not a heavyweight or as proficient of a fighter like Rosehill, Newbury is another player who is not the least bit reluctant to get involved in fisticuffs.
Scratching Rosehill for Newbury has nothing to do with "establishing accountability" for what happened in the third period on Tuesday. It's simply the better lineup decision from a hockey standpoint, at least in my own opinion.
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