In short... the swarm didn't work because the Oilers didn't have players who had the defensive awareness and hockey sense without the puck to be applying that system... in general too young, too small, too inexperienced, too much roster turnover with very little team chemisty.
I know it's 20/20 hindsight to some degree... but a coach coming in and pulling that out of the bag thinking it would work can't help but be labelled naive at best... or incompetent at worst.
Clode in Boston has box protective Dmen.
To sum it up...and put it in simple terms a swarm is extreme committee play. The focus is on the puck and everyone is focussed on possession.
Looking at how MacT assessed the roster he was given in his first solo presser as GM...he said his d were basically impotent, his bottom six was a black hole, and his top six were too small and passive to play a slow paced game in closed quarters. Without drastic overhauls it would seem that the oilers needed to rely on speed and agility combined with their skill and perform defense, and offense, by aggressive committee puck support and pursuit.
That equals swarm.
Lets nit forget that teams adjust their systems and have different systems for different situations five on five. I am not a coach but as a player i worked with triangle in my mind at all times. Me, my d partner and my centre, or who took that responsibility formed a triangle of support and coaches would adjust how those points were to be spaced and under what situations, under what
Boston is great to watch because they can play a collapse, an overload, and swarm...all shown in high def on three back to back to back opposition entries. Watch a player with the puck try to turn his back, go to his back hand onehanded, or lose control and you start seeing boston players change positions to assess a swarm.
The difference is Boston has the D and Centres they have. Like i said...i am no coach, and i ran EVERYTHING in my head off a tringle of 2d and centres. Boston has Chara, Boychuk, Seids... And Krejci and Bergeron (as far as iam concerned two of the three BEST
BEST centres in the world). All os the players they choose to draft have high hockey IQ and thats their deciding factor, not just skill. Ability to read plays, ability to read a defensemans next two seconds of decisions, ability to manipulate their covers, identify opposing systems in the moment.
Now MacT has given us better box defending d...you can look up the advanced box stats...who are still mobile. He has gotten us two wingers with size that are good at performing in an overload system and can be versatile for a coach thru the roster.
Finally i think MacTs questions of our goaltending being the questionable major problem with the team(so questionable in his mind that he avoided talk of goaltending at first and tried to deflect those questions which showed he had no trust)..that led to the defense by committee mantra...has been proven and put to bed. The idea that we needed to go all in at having the puck...that even a long shot from centre could kill us kind of mentality...is done now. Yes our goalies sucked. Soon the long lupul shots along the ice from thirty feet were going in with no price to pay and regularity akin to the sun rising in the morning.
I suspect the more conservative system will evolve more now with the incoming d and as the core grows we will see more systems implemented in the same game. I dont blame Eakins for thinking it could work with the speed and agility available. When i think of swarm i think...weak d and very fast and agile players...Swarm with weak goalie? DONT DARE LOSE THE PUCK.
