Question about the AV years

[vancityluongo]

the idea that AV's deployment of the sedins won them both an art ross is a myth.

in 2010, when henrik won his art ross, here are the zone starts of other top centers in the league:

rank | season | player | percentage of o-zone starts
6 | 2009-2010 | JONATHANTOEWS | 58.8
8 | 2009-2010 | EVGENIMALKIN | 58.1
9 | 2009-2010 | NICKLASBACKSTROM | 58.0
10 | 2009-2010 | HENRIKSEDIN | 57.7
16 | 2009-2010 | SIDNEYCROSBY | 56.7
29 | 2009-2010 | STEVENSTAMKOS | 54.6

it's not until 2011 that AV went totally nuts and gave the sedins historically high, and unreasonable, offensive zone starts.

but no, i obviously would not want keith and weber and suter against tanner glass' lines. i certainly wouldn't mind the kesler and torres/lapierre/hansen lines sharing some of that load though.

and yes, obviously if manny and hamhuis were healthy, we'd have had a much better chance of winning against the bruins. maybe even sweeping them. but the point is: in the case of catastrophic injury, which we did indeed have, and which is not super-uncommon for teams on deep playoff runs to have, we didn't have our two best scorers fresh, or even close to a reasonable level of freshness. they were destroyed. i blame that not only on having to face big dudes like seabrook and weber more often than they should have, but also on the fact that for the sedins, unlike most forwards except the ryan smyth and holmstrom front of the net types, o-zone shifts are harder on their bodies than neutral zone or defensive zone shifts because their game is absorbing contact to make the play.

Huh, I fell for the myth I guess. Thanks for that. How about Daniel's Art Ross then?

I dunno. You have a point about offensive shifts being tougher, but AV limited their ice time to a reasonable level to compensate for the abnormal usage. Henrik was 15th among centers in the playoffs in TOI/game.

http://www.nhl.com/stats/player?rep...&season=20102011&gameType=3&aggregate=0&pos=C

It's not like Torts where he was riding them 25 minutes a game in October. Maybe AV could have had the foresight to roll the lines a bit more throughout the playoffs, but when you have players as good as the Sedins, you want to play them in every critical situation (unless you're a moron like our current bench boss).

You might be right that the Sedins could have been rested more, but by the end of the SJ series, everyone on the team was banged up. I'd actually argue the real killer in that playoff run (aside from injuries of course) was not wrapping up the Chicago series early. To which you could make the counter-argument (and the basis of the question in this thread) that if they had played more aggressively to start Game 4 or after taking the lead in the third period of Game 6 against the Hawks, maybe they end things then. That one or two games might have made the difference.

(Wow, talking about 2011 in hindsight is depressing. Let's agree to disagree hahaha).

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Huh, I fell for the myth I guess. Thanks for that. How about Daniel's Art Ross then?

well if the sedins showed that at their best they could win an art ross with a normal distributions of offensive zone time (relative to other superstar offensive players), then why would we give credit for 2011 to AV instead of to the sedins themselves?

I dunno. You have a point about offensive shifts being tougher, but AV limited their ice time to a reasonable level to compensate for the abnormal usage. Henrik was 15th among centers in the playoffs in TOI/game.

that's kind of my point though. mismanagement, or at least less than ideal management. at the same time as you are feeding them o-zone starts, you also are denying them icetime in other situations. remember how 2010 they regularly scored off the rush, and then in 2011 almost never did? that AV probably thought he was "compensating" here is precisely the problem. you have horses, let them run. whereas he micromanaged on both sides of the ice.

It's not like Torts where he was riding them 25 minutes a game in October. Maybe AV could have had the foresight to roll the lines a bit more throughout the playoffs, but when you have players as good as the Sedins, you want to play them in every critical situation (unless you're a moron like our current bench boss).

oh definitely, AV was miles better than torts and now willie. no argument there. but my point isn't that the sedins weren't rested enough, just that the crazy zone distribution of 2011 and 2012 did more harm than good. people like to think the o-zone minutes are softer minutes on the body, but for the sedins' specific game they in fact were harder.

You might be right that the Sedins could have been rested more, but by the end of the SJ series, everyone on the team was banged up. I'd actually argue the real killer in that playoff run (aside from injuries of course) was not wrapping up the Chicago series early. To which you could make the counter-argument (and the basis of the question in this thread) that if they had played more aggressively to start Game 4 or after taking the lead in the third period of Game 6 against the Hawks, maybe they end things then. That one or two games might have made the difference.

yeah, totally agree: they took their foot off the gas in fame four and that was a big mistake. same with AV sitting back in the third period of game six after bieksa's early go-ahead goal.

(Wow, talking about 2011 in hindsight is depressing. Let's agree to disagree hahaha).

cheers.

hey, you guys notice that luongo is now 9th all-time in wins? and only one win away from catching glenn hall at 8th? crazy.

 

[Hit the post]

hey, you guys notice that luongo is now 9th all-time in wins? and only one win away from catching glenn hall at 8th? crazy.

He's STILL better than the guy we got in net right now (and has been for a fairly long time now).

Almost like the Marcel Dionne of goalies.

 

[mossey3535]

I think AV gets more than enough respect for what he did here. My issues with him were with, ironically, many of his game management decisions especially in the playoffs.

Although you can put score effect into it, IMO there was a big difference between the 09-10 and 10-11 teams who could often stage 3rd period comebacks or put their foot on the throat of opponents than 2011 and on where they were actually sitting on leads and playing more passively. Of course those post-2010 teams were also worse in terms of talent and we had guys like Kesler who had quick declines.

His system is definitely sound but if he's maintained the perimeter 'contain' defence in NYR I think he's forever doomed to lose in the playoffs. In the postseason when a team is able to trap or aggressively forecheck them it grinds the whole team down. In pressure situations opponents are more likely to slip out of the contain, and because he lets d-men chase the puck to an extent it's fairly unforgiving if somebody is out of position. Of course here is where the elite goalies that AV has always been able to lean on come in.

Another issue I have with AV is that he is so hands-off on the offensive side other than zone starts that when his teams are deprived of their main offensive strategy they often struggles to score because they don't really have a structure to their attack. Couple things I've noticed are that both here and NYR he's used a lot of strategies to stretch the ice and utilize team speed, of which the redline tip into the zone is a prime example. You look at NYR last couple playoffs, where they were most successful the other team was unable to shut down their guys like Kreider from coming in with speed. And of course teams have learned to exploit pinching d-men which is a feature of his system here in Vancouver.

I've often thought that if he had the ability to teach even a simple strategy like Tort's all hands to the front of the net it would really help diversify his team's ability to score in all situations. In some ways he hit on the perfect formula here by accident - his system got guys into the zone with speed but the Sedins could still play the half-court game with the best of them.

AV's consistency is a double-edged sword. IMO he has so much faith in his system and the abilities of his players that he simply neglects to teach certain things. Unfortunately those are the very things that come to the forefront in the playoffs and are masked in the regular season where you don't see the same team game after game.

Although he's not WD-level incompetent, when AV was here his line matching wasn't the greatest. He has faith in certain players and will trust them rather than reading how they are playing in the current situation - for example, he would leave the Sedins out for defensive zone faceoffs in the closing minutes of playoff games when Henrik was not having a strong game. Or when he played two guys who could barely shoot as his PP quarterbacks even though Salo had shown what he could do at the point in the previous round. Or when he played guys like Glass and Rome minutes that they should not have been getting.

He was also not very good at managing his goaltenders. I don't think you can argue that Schneider won a starting job but the way he handled them both in the playoffs was atrocious, and he could have done a better job in the way he communicated what was happening to both guys. He is lucky that all the goalies who were here were both excellent and willing to support each other. I still honestly believe that we might have won the SCF if he had pulled Luongo sooner in that blowout game. But he listened to Luongo and left him in. Despite being a very good coach overall he truly did some head-scratching things, I could go on all day.

 

[VanJack]

There's no way the Canucks would suck so badly in one-goal games, flop in 3-3 overtime, or give up more third period leads than any team in the NHL if AV was still behind the bench....even with the current roster.

 

[Jay Cee]

There's no way the Canucks would suck so badly in one-goal games, flop in 3-3 overtime, or give up more third period leads than any team in the NHL if AV was still behind the bench....even with the current roster.

AV was a great coach who should have been kept under all circumstances. It was clear no one got any more else out of the team, quite the contrary. He also had success pretty much at every turn in his career.

Look what we got in the alternative.

 

[jigsaw99]

AV had Byron Ritchie playing on the PP point for an entire season.

In love with players such as Glass and Rome.

Zero to no young players was develop under him (besides Mason Raymond who was poorly developed). He was tougher on younger players than WD who is pretty bad himself.

I don't miss him at all.

 

[AwesomeInTheory]

AV had Byron Ritchie playing on the PP point for an entire season.

In love with players such as Glass and Rome.

Zero to no young players was develop under him (besides Mason Raymond who was poorly developed). He was tougher on younger players than WD who is pretty bad himself.

I don't miss him at all.

Raymond, Edler, Schneider, Hansen.

Grabner and Hodgson both got opportunities as well. I haven't really looked at Grabner's usage, but Hodgson was seeing a hell of a lot more icetime under AV than any of the current youngsters have under Willie.

That's 6 players. When you consider how horrible Nonis' drafting was, and how Gillis' drafts are only now starting to bear fruit, is it really that bad?

 

[PM]

Edler, Bieksa, Kesler, Burrows, Hansen, Raymond, Schneider and Tanev all began their careers under AV. You can say that pretty much all of them, other than maybe Tanev, were developed under his watch.

 

[Hit the post]

Edler, Bieksa, Kesler, Burrows, Hansen, Raymond, Schneider and Tanev all began their careers under AV. You can say that pretty much all of them, other than maybe Tanev, were developed under his watch.

heh, Tanev even managed to play reasonably well under Torts.