[News] Flames name Geoff Ward and Ryan Huska as assistant coaches

[Nelson]

Geoff Ward Interview:

-a month ago, not on the radar (thought he was going to go back to NJ)
-came to Flames b/c of the people he was going to work with and the challenge that lies ahead

-with respect to why not trying to become a HC, cares more about relationships, working towards a goal together, likes to be part of a team


-worked at WC with Germany last 3 years
-very impressed by Bill Peters, same philosophy as Bill Peters
-heard good things about Huska
-went through HC interview process with Treliving 2 years ago at the WC
-a small town high school PE teacher by trade and started coaching midget and fell in love with it --> career coach with experience at all levels

Relating to players:
-relating to players: need to be genuine, get to know players on a personal level, have a vested interest in them, earn the respect of those you work with
-a personal relationship with players is much more important than it was 10-15 years ago

His role:
-understands he'll coach forwards and PP, in-game analysis, and in-game adjustments, but expects they'll take team coaching

PP coaching:
----design a PP to fit strengths of players;
----needs to see what strengths of individual Flames players, including if there are players that haven't been used on the PP before but should be used on the PP;
----will ask what players like to do on PP (their preferences matter too because he wants them to be comfortable and confident);
----get pucks and bodies to the net, get PK back on PK's heels;

How to play hockey:
----up-tempo
----needs to be a fast transition, get defencemen up into the play and supporting the attack (like Pittsburgh, Vegas, Washington)

[jlh2640]

Like both hires we will see what they can get out of this group

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by ForeverFlameFan

**Some of this is paraphrased/added words to make it understandable**

Geoff Ward on the 960:

...
- Philosophy on PP: Look at the strengths of your players. The biggest thing that he's always thought of, is you need to make the opposing goaltender work. Will give some players the chance to play on the PP that did not really get the chance to and could perhaps earn a spot on the PP. What's interesting about the PP is that if it's hot it could be better and if it's not it can be better. Always room for improvement...

This is a very pleasing response. My biggest criticism of the powerplay last season was how stationary the players were. It looked to me that their goal was always to beat the goalie with a perfect shot, and badly neglected the importance of getting the goalie out of position.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Phaneufenstein

I found this bit interesting:



https://www.nhl.com/flames/news/righ...ob/c-298864252

Yeah, I also noticed that. It makes me think that a big part of the Huska hire was concern about losing him. It suggests that he remains in Treliving's long-term plans for the team.

[psyang]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

This is a very pleasing response. My biggest criticism of the powerplay last season was how stationary the players were. It looked to me that their goal was always to beat the goalie with a perfect shot, and badly neglected the importance of getting the goalie out of position.

Yeah, one of his quotes was something like "We want our PP to take it to their goalie. Every player on the PK knows exactly where they need to be on every pass. But where you force them to have to make a decision is when you put pucks to the net"

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Can we please get this thread split when the announcement went live? I have no idea where to start reading and the first 200 posts of this thread no longer make any sense given the current title.

The red arrow next to the thread takes you to the first unread post. Not sure how anybody would read this board without using that feature.

[EVERLAST]

Originally Posted by cKy

Fixed that for you...

NyQuil......when your feeling sick but sociable.

[Matty81]

I like these hires, I don't know Ward that well but I saw a lot of Huska here in Kelowna. He led a solid team that was not close to being the best in the league regular season to a WHL title (with Backlund on that squad) and never had a losing record or missed the playoffs the other 6 seasons including one year where he only lost 11 games with a team that was not really that loaded.

His teams never underperformed, he regularly developed young players really well (with Dan Lambert to be fair) and we're not talking about top bantam picks, the Rockets regularly drafted late.

Track record with young players and particularly defencemen. In interviews always presented as an intelligent guy who works well with modern players.

Certainly sets the stage for one or a few of Stone, Brodie, Bartkowski and even Hamonic to be traded and some of the young dmen to come in for him to work with. You'd think that if they were sticking with the veteran d corps and leaving Kylington, Rasmus etc down next year they would not have picked Huska.

[EVERLAST]

I like reading about what's planned for the powerplay and making the goalie uncomfortable.

Hell yeah!!!! We haven't had anyone be able to do that for awhile.

Having screens and the ability to bump and crash and redirect shots sounds exciting.

I hope the players jump full on board with this.

[Toonage]

Huska says he wants an aggressive PK. Good. No more standing there waving sticks back and forth

[Madman]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1002289866829455360

[Strange Brew]

Since I don’t know much about these guys, I am choosing to be optimistic until given reason to be otherwise.

[Textcritic]

This should not be overlooked:

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Ward as the PP coach is intriguing.

In his time in Boston they were 9th on the PP over those 7 years there, and in his 3 years in New Jersey they were 10th.

If you can get a PP that is consistently top 10 that would go a long way for this team.

I would say it is fair to assert that Geoff Ward is a top-level powerplay coach based on these here numbers.

[Nelson]

Huska:

-excited to be AC

-responsibilities: defencemen, PK

-excited about responsibilities because get to continue working for young defencemen who will be pushing for spots and with more established guys; also excited to be on PK

-why so good at developing defencemen (Kelowna, then Stockton):
----got good defencemen to work with, who were motived to be the best
----then just put them in challenging situations so they could grow and succeed

-proudest moments getting to see players get called up and contribute to NHL team
-his primary goal was to develop players for the NHL, but he still wanted to win and trusted younger guys to help the team win; over time, they got better in those situations

-NHL role is different because primarily about wins/losses, not development; this means you cannot put players in difficult situations if they're not quite ready anymore

-PK:
----be aggressive
----take away time
----put PPs in uncomfortable situations

-with bench management, learned not to be quite so positive and go-lucky (he went a little too far that way when he was a 1st-year coach)

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

This should not be overlooked:

I would say it is fair to assert that Geoff Ward is a top-level powerplay coach based on these here numbers.

Wow. If I would have known those stats (9th overall over 7 seasons in Boston and 10th overall over 3 seasons in NJ), I wouldn't have had to look up all the percentages from all the years haha. That's a pretty good body of work, especially because they didn't always have great personnel in NJ. It just indicates this guy can consistently get great results out of a PP regardless of where he is.

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Ward as the PP coach is intriguing.

In his time in Boston they were 9th on the PP over those 7 years there, and in his 3 years in New Jersey they were 10th.

If you can get a PP that is consistently top 10 that would go a long way for this team.

Did you calculate these stats with some cool tool or was it in an article you read?

[Frank MetaMusil]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

This is a very pleasing response. My biggest criticism of the powerplay last season was how stationary the players were. It looked to me that their goal was always to beat the goalie with a perfect shot, and badly neglected the importance of getting the goalie out of position.

It's not even being stationary for me necessarily, Cameron had them on their wrong sides like a fool. Should have been Hamilton - Giordano, just like that. RH shot goes on the left point, LH shot on the right.

Any good coach knows it's far quicker for firing one timers.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

My favourite quote from the Flames article

"We want to play fast. A real up-tempo game. Quick in those 15-to-20-foot foot races.

"In the past, you had two scoring lines, a checking line and your fourth line had your tough guy.

"Today, and both the teams still playing are great examples, you need offence from throughout your lineup and you need to keep up. So you have to play with pace on all four lines because when you go out on the road and your fourth line is playing against somebody else's No. 1, it's not a concern.

"You need guys who can move around, when they deserve an opportunity to move up, can move up.

"The modern player can't be one-dimensional."

Biggest problem with the Flames last year was construction of the lines IMO. We had 1 scoring line, 1 checking line, 1 struggling young players line and 1 grinding line. Peters seems to realize things have to be spread out a lot better. GG completely failed on that front.

Look forward to seeing some of our young players get a chance. Even the kids that some people think are busts like Klimchuk and Poirier may still get some chances.

Pretty exciting IMO.

[savardandjokinen]

I’m excited about these coaches

I think Geoff ward will have a huge impact on Bennett, I think if there’s a type of coach to help him breakout it’s the type like ward.

[united]

I like the fact that based on the small sample of Ward's powerplays I've seen, he favours the far superior 4F1D deployment more than most coaches do (this is rapidly changing). Granted, not many teams are as heavy with left-shooting forwards as the Flames so that may force his hand. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing Giordano and Hamilton get the majority of powerplay time this year, with Andersson getting spot duty. He also likes forcing rotations among the penalty killers which creates gapping issues for teammates to sneak into. And, of course, players on their off-wings as any casual fan would've done last year.

I haven't focused much on Huska's penalty kill, but I like what I'm hearing. Successful penalty kills intelligently funnel in the neutral zone, and hard-press the puck carrier in the defensive zone. Doing that of course requires intelligent spacing - otherwise you get the Oilers' Swarm - but the Flames, with Backlund, Frolik, Tkachuk, and hopefully an additional forward, are set up nicely.