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Originally Posted by Flash Walken
The fact is, to get to 10th in goals for 5-5, they had to be 7th worst in Goals Against 5-5 which is where Hartley's team's found themselves in his final 2 years.
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Of course, that's grossly skewed by a year where we had the worst SV% in the NHL...
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The reason goals against were down for Calgary under GG as compared to Hartley wasn't save percentage, it was 5-5 shot attempts allowed, swinging from bottom 5 to top 5 in a single season of a coaching change. The point is that Hartley's system of play sacrificed defense (as illustrated by shot attempts against) for offense.
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This certainly affected goals against, though SV% and penalty killing did as well (There is no denying Hartley's PK was broken). However you seem to be confusing offense with defense on a very basic level. Hartley's teams spent time hemmed in the defensive zone because of how they played in the neutral and defensive zones.
Hartley's system absolutely had defensive issues. Gaps were loose and breakouts lacked structure. And yes, there is a fine line between a structured breakout and a stretch pass heavy system. BOTH coaches failed to walk the line and went too far in one direction. Good teams utilize the stretch pass and still have strong breakouts. It's a false dichotomy to suggest that you can't defend if you incorporate your defensemen's elite stretch passing ability as a breakout option. Further, our top defensemen were not the guys who struggled on the breakout, it was our bottom defensemen who more strongly benefitted from the structural changes.
Let me put it like this:
2015-16 Giordano had a score/venue adjusted corsi-against of 47.56 shot attempts against per 60 minutes.
The 5th BEST corsi team in the NHL had a corsi-against rate of 47.76 that year (Anaheim Ducks)
Saying Giordano was "sacrificing shot attempts against" is only partially correct. His shot suppression numbers in 2015-16 - UNDER BOB HARTLEY - were strong. Yes, they improved under Gulutzan, but that came at the expensive of offense.
The +/- the next year improved for a few reasons. Yes, the Flames had better shot attempt differentials and I'm not arguing that is a good thing provided it is coming organically. However You are grossly underselling the improvement in goaltending he experienced. Gio's
on-ice SV% went from to 89.54 to 93.25 - that's a stat independent of shot attempt differentials. His 5v5 on-ice SH% actually fell from 9.48 to 8.98 - but that's only telling a part of the story. Giordano was moved from the first PP unit to the second PP unit, and I observed was that we scored a lot of goals a few seconds after the power play would end - a 5v5 goal that was "visually" a power play goal. This led to the 5 man unit of Giordano-Tkachuk-Backlund-Frolik-Hamilton having an absolutely insane on-ice SH% at 5v5. The problem is that this depended on at least four of those five players to be on the same PP unit just as a PP wound down. It also meant Giordano couldn't be on PP1, nor could Tkachuk or Hamilton. That's three guys who were on PP1 this year and the result was that Backlund and Frolik saw their on-ice SH% fall off the proverbial map.
But back to 5 on 5 shot suppression, the top pair was never an issue under Hartley. The issue was that the lower pairs, especially the third pairs, were more dependent on puck support on the breakout than they got under Hartley. Gulutzan cleaned up the defensive structure - I am agreeing with you - but the benefiaries of this were
not Giordano, Hamilton, and especially not Brodie. The beneficiaries of this were guys like Engelland, Jokipakka, Bartkowski, and eventually Stone. We improved our defensive structure at the expense of our best two-way defensemen. This improved our shot suppression numbers but it did it because certain players could not function in Hartley's system.
I mentioned Giordano had a CA/60 of 47.56 in the final year of Hartley. He improved the next year under Gulutzan to 43.65 but this came at a significant drop in his offensive production. That first number with a 60 point Dman is a valid tradeoff in my opinion to that second number with a 40 point Dman. A 60 point Dman gave us depth scoring as it opened up the offense even without our top forwards on the ice. It's about tradeoffs.
On the other hand, a guy like Engelland had a very poor CA/60 of 53.36 in the final year of Hartley and shot up to 47.93 under Gulutzan. Gulutzan was instrumental in helping our third pair guys stay above water. The problem, is that our third pair was STILL a liability regardless of shot suppression numbers due to
1) The fact that Bartkowski was awful
2) Neither Engelland nor any of his partners were significant offensive threats like others on the team
while strong offensive threats - Brodie and Giordano and even Wideman - were no longer able to help the team produce offense to the same extent.
So yes - Gulutzan improved shot suppression - because the players who couldn't execute Bob Hartley's system no longer needed to execute Bob Hartley's system. That shouldn't be construed as Giordano or Brodie "sacrificing defense for offense" to nearly the extent that you suggest. And I give Engelland credit for his season this year - and Gallant's system and player usage was probably the best situation for him in his career. Kulak-Engelland was a strong shot suppression pair in 2015-16 but had poor on-ice SV% and on-ice SH% with a corsi-against of 38.91 - again, under Hartley. You don't compromise your systems to help the struggling players, you make adjustments to maximize your roster construction. Kulak's ability to make a first pass was the perfect compliment to Engelland's inability to make one.
So between Giordano-Brodie (47.69), Brodie-Hamilton (45.76), Kulak-Engelland (38.91), and even Jokipakka-Nakladal (38.05) we had some defense pairs that were suppression shot attempts against while playing offensive hockey. On the flip side were pairs like Russell-Hamilton (54.69), Russell-Wideman (57.42), and Engelland-Hamilton (61.02), Wideman-Engelland (57.45) who tanked the teamwide stats.
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I think the Flames are getting enough offensive contribution from the backend, it's just that they are woeful when it comes to forward scoring depth. Hartley leveraged this to sacrifice defense to generate more offense, but the best teams in the league aren't doing this. Nashville has the best group of defenders in the league, 4 that scored more than 30 points, but are in tough against a team with with 2x 30+ point defenders, and lost out last year in the cup final in part because they lacked scoring punch up front.
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Nashville is a president's trophy winner who are a win away from the WCF playing against a very good 110+ point team, who lost the cup final to a team with Sidney Crosby, Matt Murray, Evgeny Malkin, Phil Kessel, and a rookie Guentzal with a midas touch. It happens. You have to accept that we don't and won't have a generational talent as our #2C. While building around an offensive forward core like Pittsburgh or Winnipeg is a preferred approach, it's an unrealistic one because you need to stumble across talents like Malkin, Crosby, and Laine. Offense by committee shouldn't have been as great a struggle for us last year, and if Peters bothers to utilize his D, it won't be next year. No, we shouldn't have been the best offensive team in the NHL but I see no reason why this team shouldn't perennially be in the top half of scoring given that they've done that two out of two years when given the green light.
Further while those are all somewhat fair points, it's
not an either-or situation of leveraging defense for offense as you describe. Tampa has four elite and active offensive defensemen in Hedmen, Stralman, McDonagh, and Sergachev and this helps their elite offensive forwards in Kucherov, Point, Stamkos, Johnson, Palat, play to the top of
their potential. You need both, under Gulutzan we had neither, under Hartley we had one and it was enough to keep us in games where better goaltending would have made a huge difference.
Don't mistake any of this as me hand-waving the importance of teamwide shot suppression. I am saying that our shot suppression, when the right players were on the ice, was pretty good, under Bob Hartley with the caveat that there were areas it could have been tightened up away from the puck. My preferred solution then was to incorporate defensemen with strong shot suppression abilities - the removal of Kris Russell and the addition of Brett Kulak would have gone a long way even then - but instead we handicapped the bottom of the D-core with overly conservative systems and that resulted in a significant teamwide offensive regression. The team's solution was to keep around guys known for being poor on the breakout (and generally being non or negative impact NHLers) and try to support
them better even if it meant less offense.
I am of the opinion that you need an active offensive blue line to win in today's NHL. That's not to say I think we have a high-end forward core, but it does say that I think our forwards - especially Bennett/Jankowski and probably Backlund (who had a great year in 2015-16 despite not playing with Tkachuk) are probably better than what they showed with our conservative cycle heavy offensive systems.
The Flames need to hang on to Giordano, Brodie, and Hamilton. We also need to hang on to Gaudreau, Monahan, Tkachuk, and in my opinion Ferland, Backlund, Bennett and Jankowski too - who are part of the solution not the problem. That's not say they have elite offensive talent but these ten players at the very least are the ones you add a high-end offensive player to. There are tweaks to be made but the biggest one is getting back the depth scoring - something that will most realistically happen if we are getting offense from Giordano and Brodie (Hamilton is a guy that can produce in any system as he is a volume shooter with a wicked wrister). Getting offense from the backend does not mean you have to be the worst shot suppression team - it means your backend needs the horses which, with Brett Kulak cemented in the lineup, we now have even if we play less conservatively.
