haven't had a chance to read murat's latest piece - how is it? saw this tweet that he's doing an additional article for the series
Nice and long 2 part interview with Maurice that showed a little bit where Maurice's mind is at before the season along with some talk about systems.
The first part I think is a little less interesting. Murat asks about the PP, PK and 5 on 5 play and systems a little bit, Little's effectiveness as a top 6 centre, and the idea of separating Wheeler and Scheifele.
The 1st PP unit was originally instructed to rotate around a lot more than they did for most of their PP time last season. I imagine the rotations we saw when the PP started to struggle was probably the original look that the PP was supposed to have, where Scheifele would swap with Laine, but I think Maurice implies that there's supposed to be even more movement and rotations. Hopefully this means we'll see Connor used more effectively on the PP, I don't think any teams are afraid of him from behind the net and he really hasn't given them reason to be.
Paul Maurice on Adam Lowry said:
The things I like the most about him are it’s winning first for him and he loves playing in Winnipeg. That matters to me because those guys will become the fabric of your team — and he has.
...
He’s not going to outscore the other opponents, so the statistics aren’t going to look good, but is he going to take enough off your best that our best can be better than your checking line.
The most interesting part of the first article was probably regarding Little's effectiveness, particularly when Scheifele was out injured. They talk a lot about the development of young players, one part that I think is probably pretty accurate about the mentality of probably most players that come into the league
Paul Maurice said:
There’s going to come a point and time with all these kids that they rip off an ungodly number. I’m really excited about that day. And on that day he’s going to say, “See, I could’ve been doing that for the last seven years.” That’s a function of the confidence these guys have to have to get to that level.
I would be surprised if the vast majority of the players in the NHL haven't had a thought like that in their mind at some point in their careers.
He opened the second part with a question about Kyle Connor and Maurice implied that Kyle Connor is nearly as good defensively as Andrew Copp. Maurice also later implies that Connor is more effective defensively than Ehlers.
When asked who's going to get to the level Copp is at defensively first out of Connor, Laine, or Ehlers:
Paul Maurice said:
Andrew Copp is very strong on the one side defensively but Kyle’s not far off that, with a huge upside to his offence. He’s out of that mix. I bet you I’ve shown that guy nine, 10 defensive video clips since he’s been here. He just picks it up and he goes.
They talk about Copp and compare his development path as a forward going between centre and wing with Roslovic. Maurice talks about Copp when he came in playing centre, he was playing slow but when he went back to centre this year his pace was much improved, closer to how Maurice thinks he plays at wing with less responsibility.
They also discussed the defensemen, the Buff and Morrissey conversation was pretty much as anyone probably would've expected. I read it as Maurice expecting Morrissey and Byfuglien to be on separate pairs, but he's not going to form pairs until he's seen them all in camp (Niku, Poolman, Pionk, Beaulieu). I found this quote pretty interesting, I think this was the game where Dave Quinn and the Rangers players gave a lot of props to the Jets after the game.
Paul Maurice said:
We go into New York last year and I believe they played in Montreal the night before so we’re waiting on them. I start Scheif and I think it might have been KC and Wheels and he starts Pionk and Staal. I’m kind of licking my chops a little. I don’t know Neal very well. I mean, I know him a bit as a player but I’m thinking this is going to be a good night. We were down 3-0 after two.
They also talked about defensive systems and one thing that stood out was Maurice saying that 1) The Vegas Golden Knights are the most man-to-man team in the NHL, and 2) the Jets system calls for man-to-man play sometimes, but Maurice says on nights where they're playing man-to-man a lot they're not happy.
To me it sounds like the Jets defensemen revert to man-to-man coverage when a forward loses their assignment.
Murat's afterword summarizes his thoughts on the entire series of questions from both articles. I might be reading too much into it, but he comments on how Maurice's high praise of Connor needs to translate into "real, tangible results" this season, and to me it sounds pretty critical of that praise.
Murat Ates said:
Wholesale lineup changes — notably the separation of Scheifele and Wheeler to create two play-driving lines — don’t seem likely.
He thinks Maurice is leaning more towards giving Lowry more minutes, rather than Copp like some were probably expecting.
Overall I think it's an excellent interview, it's definitely worth the read. I think for me it confirmed some of the things I've been a little worried about regarding the coaching. I just don't see the defensive awareness that Maurice sees in Connor, and the interview makes me think that he's vastly underestimating Ehlers' ability defensively because of silly things like eye tracking and stick positioning.
I should point out that neither of those things (eye tracking or stick positioning) were directly mentioned in either part of the interview, those are just my suppositions because he talks about head movement and following players with their eyes and Connor's ability to anticipate plays as reasons why he's good defensively.
I feel like at some point we're going to start mocking intangibles the same way people do with Jonathan Toews with regards to how Maurice evaluates players.
