Secondary scoring still a concern for Sens

Do you put your best players together? This is an age old debate among the coaching fraternity at any level of hockey. Most coaches put the best players together for a team’s Power Play, and if they produce really well, they want to keep them together.

Unfortunately, the mere choosing of these players sends a loud message to the entire team that creates a hierarchy and the egos involved keep the “lesser” players from getting out of their box of mediocrity (scoring-wise).

It often happens that when a new player is acquired and added to a top line, the player steps up to the expectation level and becomes what his coach envisions. The player that most comes to mind is Matt Moulson who was no superstar in Junior and then he’s put on the top line and wow!!!

For me as a former coach, I look at it like this. Any bum can put the team’s best players together. A great coach creates a team brimming with confidence from one end to another, and then all the lines produce, not equally but enough to win. A one line team is really easy to beat with good coaching, especially in the playoffs.

The teams that win the cup are the ones whose 3rd and 4th lines shine. For a great coach, the regular season is the preparation for these lines to soar when it really counts in the playoffs.

We won’t make the playoffs, but the principles still remain the same. We won’t win very many games with three players producing 50% of the scoring. Yeah we can beat the Blue Jackets this way but what about the better teams? They shut down out top line and then just pick us apart like vultures. Sooner or later teams will figure out how to shut these players down, and if we don’t have the secondary scoring the losses will mount.

It’s almost human nature for a team with it’s top three players playing together to wait for those players to produce in any given game… even if they don’t do it consciously… the hierarchy is already setup with the salaries. So this is the kind of ego stuff that any coach has to deal with when he starts putting lines together and doaling out ice time.

I prefer to see a team that spreads out the goal scoring and concentrates on building secondary scoring over time. If a coach challenges his best players to turn prospects, so called “lesser players” into stars by playing with them, they will do that more often than not. Just about everyone of these players has scored goals in their careers so they are capable… it just becomes about managing what they have between their ears… what people call their confidence levels.

You are right, it is very unlikely Michalek keeps up that kind of shooting percentage. I would like to see the top line generate more shots/scoring chances as that will translate to more goals over the long than keeping up a high shooting percentage.

On the other hand, the players that aren’t performing well, are they well below their career shooting percentage? You have to expect a little bump from that.

57% really means nothing out of context. If other teams have a percentage closer to 25%, then the interpretation of that is very different to if the league average was 60% for example.

Watching the game on Saturday, I found myself wishing that Filatov played centre. A second line with him between Alfredsson and Foligno would be great.

My new theory about why Filatov got sent down is that the Senators couldn’t fit him on a line because his skillset doesn’t match up well with the rest of the line-up. My suspicion is that the Senators want him to shoot more and/or change his approach to working the boards so that he fits on the wing more comfortably in MacLean’s system.

You don’t see a lot of playmaking wingers, maybe Kariya setting up Selanne in their hayday would be an example. Along those lines, you could try a line of Filatov-Alfredsson with a grinder at centre like Zack Smith. Smith would take face-offs and cover the opposing centre in the defensive zone, but on offense Filatov would be the primary play-maker.

Anyway, just a few random thoughts.

There is alot of debate as to whether the NHL is a good place for players to learn the skills they need to play in the NHL. Florida is taking the approach that they are training their young guns outside of the NHL, and we are trying to do more of the training in the NHL. In their case it’s Huberdeau… in our case it’s Filatov and Z’jad. Although Filatov is older, he’s still developing (hopefully).

With the contracts being what they are, a guy like Filatov needs to produce when he gets called up… and he will get called up (one more injury). Otherwise. if he doesn’t produce, the one way contracts take precedence.

Now is crunch time for Z’jad, and it’s just too bad that he can’t be sent to the AHL, which is where he belongs right now… at least for a few months. Let him tear up that lague and then come back brimming with confidence.

He’s probably headed back to Sweden and my fear is that he will return next year with nothing gained from this year, because he needs experience with our game not the Euro game on the Euro football field ice.

and the announcers said that they’d talked to Brian Murray before the game and Murray said that he’d been “burning up the phone lines” trying to trade a defenseman for a top six forward.

I know you have to take it with a grain of salt, but if Murray’s trying to get a top six forward with the salary that comes with it, you’d think he’s trying to unload one of the higher paid d-men, i.e. Gonchar or Kuba.

And if he’s successful and does get a forward that can step right in to the top six, what does that do to the whole Zibanejad/Filatov debate?

Then again, the Columbus announcers might have no clue what they were talking about.

Perhaps secondary scoring is low right now due to the fact that Maclean has been shuffling lines every 4 minutes or so?

As I’ve commented elsewhere, I think he’s trying out all the possible combinations to see what works and who might have “chemistry”, towards determining who stays with the team for the season.

I’d suggest re-generating the #s using games #10-19 to see if this changes.