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What Is More Problematic: Mike Johnston's System Or His Player Usage?

October 12, 2015, 11:22 AM ET [204 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
With the Pittsburgh Penguins losing their first two games of the season and not looking particularly good against the Arizona Coyotes there is some early season tension brewing.

Criticism has ranged from Mike Johnston's player usage, his system, while other criticism has focused on player performance.

Mike Colligan recently wrote about Mike Johnston's system and was critical of it.

I respect Mike's work, but in this case I don't see things quite the same way he does.

Here is the article.




There are two of Mike's points that I want to touch on. The first point is that teams are figuring out Mike Johnston's system and that the Penguins effectiveness has dropped each additional time the team plays an opponent.

The Penguins won 66 percent of games when facing a team for the first time last year. That number dropped to 52 percent when facing a team for the second time. It plummeted to less than 36 percent when facing a team for the third time or more.

The NHL figured out Mike Johnston and he hasn’t adapted well. Now they’ve had an entire summer to break down film on his simplified systems. That’s also a problem.


I don't question Mike's figures at all but I would like to add some context to those numbers



Here is the source of the chart. You can visit the website and play around with the information.

Apologies for the smaller image but that black arrow is pointing to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The chart is giving the 'CHIP' or cap hit of injured players.

Cap Hit of Injured Players (CHIP) represents the per-game cap charge of a player missing a game through injury/illness, i.e. annual cap charge divided by 82 (as per the former capgeek.com)


As we know the Penguins started the season relatively healthy but injuries kept stacking up over the course of the season. We know that injuries are a huge factor in NHL teams ability to win hockey games. So it should not be surprising that teams started doing better against the Penguins as time went on last season. I don't think it was other teams figuring out the Penguins (not that something like that does not exist) as much as it was simply injuries, yet again.


Caroline Wilke, who covers the Dallas Stars for Today's Slapshot, had this to say:





Caroline was referencing a presentation by Brad Stenger. His presentation talked about the different stresses on athletes and its impact on health. He also discussed performance related data.

One of the interesting bits of information was the ratio of practice injury to game injury. In hockey that ratio is 1:15 while in other sports like soccer it is a more favorable 1:25. In a nutshell hockey players are more susceptible to be injured in practice than other sports. This is something to think about as Mike Johnston is known for his rigorous training sessions with the players.

So between Johnston's hard practices and the injury cascade theory it may be Johnston's practice intensity that needs to be changed more so than his actual X's and O's system.

*An additional piece of information from Brad's presentation is that forwards lose 15% of their skating velocity from the first period to the third period. Having the ability to play more forwards is going to help the Penguins on this front*

The other point that I have a difference of opinion on is that Pittsburgh needs to alter what they do because of a player like Rob Scuderi:

Evaluating a head coach is tough to do when you’re not in the locker room between periods, on the ice at practice, or able to see how a coach interacts with his players behind closed doors.

All we can really use to evaluate are on-ice results and heavily-scripted press conferences.
Funneling the offense through Scuderi is one of many reasons that I’m still not sold on Mike Johnston’s effectiveness as a head coach in the National Hockey League.

If Johnston is telling his forwards to pull up and pass off to Scuderi, there’s a major issue in his coaching system.


The play in question:



This is a great example of why Mike Johnston's system works. Fast talented forwards are able to blaze through the neutral zone quickly after the opposition has turned the puck over in the Penguins defensive zone. The speed drives the defenders back as they scramble to recover. Phil Kessel makes an excellent pass to the trailing defenseman. In this case it does happen to be Rob Scuderi and as we all know he is not offensively gifted. But the problem isn't Phil Kessel looking for that opportunity it is the fact that Pittsburgh plays Rob Scuderi. This is a player usage issue and not one that has to do with what the Penguins are trying to accomplish systematically. Mike Johnston's adjustment needs to be benching Scuderi. Nothing more nothing less. If a better skating defenseman was in the play that player might not have had to take a long one timer. They may have been able to skate it in further as Dallas defenders collapsed. The slower Scuderi had a back checker right on him forcing the shot.

I don't want the Penguins to switch away from a logical game plan because they refuse to bench players that don't belong in the lineup. Pittsburgh has three readily available options to replace Rob Scuderi with (Adam Clendening, Tim Erixon, and Derrick Pouliot). Any perceived defensive shortcomings with those three options should be prefaced with the fact that Scuderi himself isn't exactly good in that department either. There are easy fixes available and the Penguins need to entertain them.

For me it is Mike Johnston's player usage that needs to be altered not the system in place.

Thanks for reading!
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