Follow @james_tanner123 The Coyotes look to take advantage of a favorable schedule to start the year tonight and go 3-1 in a 4 game home-stand that featured some nicely spaced out games and no back to games for nearly the entire first month of the season.
The Blues come to town tonight and Jake Allen will make his season debut. For the Coyotes, it's not yet announced, as Tippett doesn't "want to get into a goalie controversy every week around here," although it's a fair question as Smith has been horrible, allowing 10 goals on just over 50 shots so far.
I would assume based on the way Tippett dismissed the question that Smith will get the start, and he should. If nothing else, he's earned the right to work out his game on the ice. He'll be fine.
I would expect to finally see some of that defense we assume the Coyotes will provide, although coming off being shut-out to the Kings on Thursday, the Blues are due for some goals.
And frankly, I hope the Coyotes allow six goals per game until it's clear to everyone that the way they are constructing their forward lines is not optimal.
Once again, the Coyotes have given Sam Gagner a new linemate. Shocked that he hasn't been able to get anything going with Korpikoski and Klinkhammer, or Korpikoski and Moss, they are now giving him Korpikoski and Chipchura.
Finally!
Perhaps there's a reason why I am not an NHL coach (I blame the 'Accumulation of Opportunity') but I continue to fail to see how skating your most talented checker/defensive specialist on a scoring line, while playing your most offensively gifted centre on a line with a couple guys who would be hard pressed to describe the opponents goalie to a police sketch artist, is a good move.
In fact, I question the entire strategy of the Coyotes lineup construction because they seem to not understand that "defensive specialist" is someone who has good position and "tries hard" when they don't have the puck. I am willing to change my mind on this as new information emerges and I learn more, but my opinion right now is that teams who skate and try to score are more successful than teams who try to defend.
In the last year - blogging for this team - and thus having more time available to watch and read and learn about hockey, I have learned a lot. The advent of Advanced Stats has occurred on a mainstream level during this time, and though I don't claim to be an expert in anything, what I have taken from the whole movement is that we overrate defensive specialists. Having the puck and shooting it seem to correlate very specifically with winning games.
As such, players "known" to be "bad defensively" like Leafs d-man Jake Gardiner or the Senators' Erik Karlsson seem to have more value than previously thought since their skating and offensive abilities are mathematically shown to drive possession and win games. Basically, the whole entire stats and analytics movement seems to suggest that the idea that defense wins games is a myth.
What really seems to win games? Having the puck, getting lucky, getting good goaltending.
In this new era, the Coyotes seem at once on the cutting edge and sadly regressive. The construction of their defense (minus Gormley who should be playing) speaks to the idea that puck moving and speed are paramount, and their up-tempo aggressive style does as well.
Where they seem stuck in the past - or perhaps too terrified, financially, to miss the playoffs and thus take risks - is the construction of their forward lines: there are just too many "defensive" style players. And for whatever complicated ownership, attendance, market related reasons, they decided to send virtually all of their young talent away and make it their focus to finish 8th in the conference and use 2 or 3 home play-off dates as motivation to play it safe.
I get their thinking: they lack the firepower of most teams up-front, so they are playing to their strengths. I happen to think this is a flawed way of doing things because a) you're still likely to score 2-3 goals per game on average and b) the puck moving ability of the defense can compensate for the weak offensive nature of the forwards to some extent.
In my opinion, by trying to play to their perceived strength the Coyotes are actually playing into their biggest weakness. If you can't score, trying to "be defensive" only plays into the problem.
For example, Moss is a useful player, but the fact is, he's only useful when his team doesn't have the puck, which is a little like being good at being poor. Sure, it's a good skill, but it's better not to have to use it.
Playing Moss and Chipchura anywhere above the fourth line line seems to me to be a really bad move based on what we know about how hockey games are won and lost.
I personally would waive and/or demote both of them immediately.
If the early season has taught us anything, it should be that the Coyotes can score maybe a bit more than was thought and that their defensive game is not maybe what it's cracked up to be. Sure, it's only four games, but if your plan is to win by preventing goals I think we have enough data to say that that is, at best, a flawed strategy and at worse, abjectly stupid.
I believe the NHL is in an adjustment period right now - tyring to figure out to different degrees what analytics can teach us and how best to deploy players to take advantage of new information. My prediction is that eventually we will see a team iced that is completely devoid of defensive specialists. Don't forget, a team that skates and scores can still hit - even "finesse" hockey players tend to be much larger than average real life people.
If I was the Coyotes I would explore this option: I would ice a team that's first duty is offense. This team would still play aggressive "Coyotes" brand hockey, it just would do it better because actual talent and not "character" and "defensive acumen" would be the qualities looked for in a player.
Here's the lineup I would ice:
Boedker - Gagner - Doan Samuelson - Hanzal - Domi Lessio - Vermette- Rieder Gaudet - Hogdman - McMillan
OEL -Yandle Stone - Michalek Gormely - Murphy
Of course this team - by convention anyways - would have too many rookies and not enough experience (another myth greatly overblown in my opinion is the value of experience) but it would skate most other NHL teams into the ground. Save me the 'Domi can't play this year unless there is an injury" posts too. I know that. This is just a theoretical lineup there is no chance they will ever employ. I would bet a million dollars though that if they did it would beat the hell out of what they are currently doing.
Offense wins games. Defense is overrated - anyone can do it. Guys who previously would have been considered "tweeners," as in, they are not good enough to play on the second offensive line and not "grindy" enough to play on the bottom 6 will find jobs in the NHL in the future. Guys like Chipchura, Klinkhammer and Moss, they are going the way of the enforcer. This is because we now know the defensive specialists, the face-off specialist and the defensive defenseman are not as valuable as we thought they were.
The Coyotes would be smart get on the progressive edge of the curve.
Thanks for reading.