All Encompassing Coaching and Glen Cigar Thread Part V

[Ola]

I actually believe he will adjust the system he has done it before... When he first got here we heard the term "Safe is Death" to describe the system he would employ. He employed it when he took over and the team was awful at it so he adjusted the system to fit the personell. It worked and i believe he'll adjust again.

The only reason I believe he didnt adjust it this season is because frankly when would he have done it? They barley had any legit practice time and certainly no real training camp to even consider such a change.

I believe he will change... if he doesnt, he will be gone.

I dont Love him as a coach.. but i do believe he's earned to atleast be given another season.

I hope for this too.

Its getting harder and harder to dig up older quotes with the mass of information we have right now. But Torts talked alot about managing the puck better and playing more of a puck possession game at the end of last season. This year, there has been no word of that and we have seen nothing of it on the ice. There could be explanations for that. Like Torts believeing that -- due to the shortend season, and the mass of new players on the roster -- we never would be able to build a meaningful more creative game anyway.

But in the end, we have seen very little proof of (i) Torts second guessing his rather extreme approch compared even to the other similar teams in the laegue and (ii) him knowing how to drill in an offensive game in the NHL 2013. Torts has never done that and he has only been successful in the NHL pre the removal of the redline and last season when we lived on Hank while playing extremely destructive and shaving years of the life expectancy of our players on a game by game basis due to our shot blocking.

 

[HatTrick Swayze]

Something I keep seeing in all threads on here, and I’m paraphrasing, is that the Rangers need to “tweak the system to start scoringâ€.

I know we all wish this team played like the Pens, Hawks, or Red Wings. It would sure be a heck of a lot more entertaining I agree with that. But I disagree that the Rangers are a “few system tweaks†or 1 or 2 trades/signings away from that. To do that you need to develop an identity over years and have ultra rare, top end skill. Does anyone think the Rangers have the talent on the roster to play with those teams at that game? If not, does anyone think the Rangers will commit to the type of "retool" or "rebuild" necessary to achieve that? At best they would attempt to take another shortcut approach.

But beyond the fact that the franchise will not do such an overhaul in the way necessary to be successful, what does having that philosophy really get you? The teams I mentioned obviously do it super well, largely due to the generational talent on each roster. What about a team like Tampa, or the Caps. They’re exciting…what has that gotten them? I can only speak for myself, but I will take winning over being entertained any day of the week.

It may surprise many (surprised me a bit when I looked it up) that the best Ranger offense in the last 10 years finished 11th overall in G/Game. 05-06 right? Guess again. Last year. Under Torts’ “defense only†system was the Rangers’ best offensive year (relative to the rest of the league) in the past decade. Should we expect and aim for better? Absolutely. Clearly they have never been too close to a Cup in the last decade. But this approach has had the most consistent success.

Obviously, the Rangers are blessed to have the best goalie in the world. Hank would find a way to be successful on any team in any situation. But I really do question how “opening things up†will affect the teams Ws & Ls overall. With still limited talent, maybe consistently getting our G/Game to 7-12 in the league, what will the impact of trading down from consistently being top-5 in GA/Game (over the last 3 yrs) ultimately have on the team’s record? I agree with Hank we’d stay in the 7-10 range. But it’s still a trade off and I’m not convinced it helps the Rangers win more games. Which is (or should be) the ultimate goal.

 

[Fitzy]

I don't see the "offensive" coaching options out there. I see Ruff and "1-3-1" Guy Boucher.

 

[HatTrick Swayze]

And I should say, I'm not saying there are no tweaks that can be made to improve the system. Pressuring the points in the Dzone and spending less time behind the opposing net, for one. More of a commentary on the "we need to 100% open it up" point of view.

 

[Kwayry]

And I should say, I'm not saying there are no tweaks that can be made to improve the system. Pressuring the points in the Dzone and spending less time behind the opposing net, for one. More of a commentary on the "we need to 100% open it up" point of view.

That would be a great start.

 

[Kwayry]

I don't see the "offensive" coaching options out there. I see Ruff and "1-3-1" Guy Boucher.

James Patrick?

 

[3rd Guy High]

I don't see the "offensive" coaching options out there. I see Ruff and "1-3-1" Guy Boucher.

Just because you do a 1-3-1 doesn't mean youre not offensive. The rangers had a very aggressive forecheck this year. Does that mean that we're an offensive team?

It's all about creating turnovers and transitioning. Boucher does that very well.

 

[Ola]

XM guys stunned that Torts isn't gone today. 'Stale bored boring ... Committed to being average ... No transition game ... How can you create offense when your system doesn't even try to ... No activation of d-men ... McD offensive ability untapped ... Team headed nowhere ... No depth ... Stubborn coach who should be gone ...".

 

[cd211]

i actually thiink we have way more skill this year then last year.. and we actually scored a lot more goals in this playoffs and since the trade then i expected.. we have plenty of offense.. the big deciding factor in the playoffs is will power.. wanting to win that much more and be hungry for it.. like somone mentioned above you got to create that identity.. best thing to do is to keep the team as is and tweak it with a player or two.. not keep trading pieces..


torts i feel wouldve adjusted a lot but with the short season and the changes we made we couldnt adjust on the fly.. should be interested next year, where he def is under microscope..

the way kreider finished the playoffs is how he has to be next year all the time.. i think with him the way he was playing, a healthy clowe and a healthier staal, and we keep the same crew, we'll be in much better shape..

if we need top end young talent.. im all for trading MDZ, as long as staal is 100% ready to go with no setbacks.. MCD could handle PP duty, start grooming him..

I want eberle or Ryan but those a dreams.. would be hard with just MDZ..

 

[aufheben]

XM guys stunned that Torts isn't gone today. 'Stale bored boring ... Committed to being average ... No transition game ... How can you create offense when your system doesn't even try to ... No activation of d-men ... McD offensive ability untapped ... Team headed nowhere ... No depth ... Stubborn coach who should be gone ...".

Yep.

 

[cd211]

Yep.

very true.. if you watch him play he reminds me so much of a young scott Niedermeyer.. so fluid and calm with the puck.. guy will make more of an impact on offense/pp.. to me with the way we look on the left side, you got to think a trade is coming on the backend..

 

[aufheben]

Definitely reminds me of Niedermayer in some ways.

 

[kovazub94]

One word for me:

Accountability.

I've never seen a higher level of it ('94 aside) in my four decades as a fan. I for one have not tired of Tort's style. It's defense first, but most successful teams have similar styles....especially come play off time. All the top teams are better prepared to deal with physical playoff play. The Rangers absolutely need to be a more physically intimidating team. I think they will address that need. They have to.

Agree, and I'm really confused when people say that the team started to tune Torts out because there absolutely no evidence of that. The real evidence of the tune out is when players show no compete, repeatedly take undiciplined penalties and allow for prolonged losing streaks by not playing harder after a loss.

And another point - those hockey commentators that identify mismatch between the system and the current roster are almost in the same sentence acknowledge that no camp and roster turnover are the reasons, not Torts stubborness or incompetence. I personally think that Torts is better suited to be the coach who fixes issues with this team rather than anyone who is or could be available instead to implement a new system. Torts' stubborn? I bet it's the same people saying it now who earlier had bemoaned that Torts doesn't stick with set lines for any length of time (which was just proven as not true when Torts stuck with lines that worked once he found them during the late regular season stretch and through play-offs). And while I don't approve his approach to dealing with press - I can leave with it because it has no impact on his other responsibilities as a head coach. The only issue for me at this point is hiring a PP assistant coach because nothing consistently worked since Torts took over as a HC.

 

[haveandare]

I actually believe he will adjust the system he has done it before... When he first got here we heard the term "Safe is Death" to describe the system he would employ. He employed it when he took over and the team was awful at it so he adjusted the system to fit the personell. It worked and i believe he'll adjust again.

The only reason I believe he didnt adjust it this season is because frankly when would he have done it? They barley had any legit practice time and certainly no real training camp to even consider such a change.

I believe he will change... if he doesnt, he will be gone.

I dont Love him as a coach.. but i do believe he's earned to atleast be given another season.

Great post. This is pretty much what I was trying to say a few pages back. He changed the system to fit the players last year and it worked perfectly. This year, he tried to keep the same system and it was a relative failure.

Give him the time to readjust for the new roster, see how it goes. If he doesn't change, he'll be gone and I'll be fine with it.

 

[haveandare]

Brassard played what exactly? A season and a half under Hitchcock when he was just breaking into the league and suffered two season ending shoulder surgeries? Players grow. Brassard is a type of player that thrives on holding onto the puck and making plays. If you can't see that you're blind. I don't give two ***** what Corsi/Fenwick says. Youre all taking a "puck possession" system and thinking it means Corsi/Fenwick. Aren't those based on shots for/against? If anything, our shots for will go down under a system like that. Columbus sucked all those years. Of course those two players are going to have horrible puck possession stats. Corsi and Fenwick can be useful when in context. You're not taking the situation into context. Nash, although skeptical if it would be an easy transition for him, would love a puck possession system. He would spend less time hunting down the puck forechecking, relying on the other team to make a mistake and more time catching clean passes and/or having the puck on his stick. Wouldn't you want that?

Callahan is one of the few that would absolutely suck in a puck possession system. There you go, I said it, but one person does not define a team, captain or not. He doesn't have the poise or smarts to slow up and wait for a better play. He always wants to go 110% balls to the wall for better or worse. Which is not by any means a bad quality, but it does have it's downsides. Stop stat watching.

Richards, I agree, but why does that even matter? He will be gone.

You've got it all wrong. One person does not make a puck possession team. It's a coaches mentality. Just like one person did not make up the shot blocking strategy last year. It was a team effort. Otherwise you could say "oh well they still have an elite blocking forward in Callahan and an elite blocking defenseman in Girardi so why wasn't it as good this year?"

Detroit STILL plays puck possession. No coincidence they're in the playoffs AND going far again. Do they have a true #1 D? Not with Lidstrom gone, unless you really think Kronwall is such a dynamite offensive wizard. As a matter of fact, every team left in the playoffs plays some type of puck possession system. If you don't think the Bruins play one (although its a very grinding one) why don't you go watch them embarrass us by breaking out using their D and the middle ice very easily while we try to jam the puck up the boards instead of moving it back to the D.




He really thinks the Bruins played the same system?

They're still in the second round. They haven't even made it as far as the Rangers did last year.

 

[3rd Guy High]

They're still in the second round. They haven't even made it as far as the Rangers did last year.

Right, but many thought they would miss the playoffs while the Rangers would win the cup before the season. Relative success.

XM guys stunned that Torts isn't gone today. 'Stale bored boring ... Committed to being average ... No transition game ... How can you create offense when your system doesn't even try to ... No activation of d-men ... McD offensive ability untapped ... Team headed nowhere ... No depth ... Stubborn coach who should be gone ...".

This is what I've been saying forever. Our D have the offensive potential we just need someone to harness it.

 

[haveandare]

XM guys stunned that Torts isn't gone today. 'Stale bored boring ... Committed to being average ... No transition game ... How can you create offense when your system doesn't even try to ... No activation of d-men ... McD offensive ability untapped ... Team headed nowhere ... No depth ... Stubborn coach who should be gone ...".

How has this fan base become this spoiled after ONE year of success? Remember not making the playoffs? Remember being eliminated in the first round routinely? Yeah, there were problems this year, but geez, if you asked me more than two years ago if I'd take this season ending I'd jump for joy. The Rangers are relevant and aren't first-round chokers anymore. Torts goes to ECF then the second round and people want to start over. That sort of short-sightedness is a huge part of why this team struggled for so long.

EDIT: Just want to add that I agree with the problems with the transition game and D-men, but "committed to being average," and "team headed nowhere" is BS, as is being stunned that the coach isn't gone. What a spoiled outlook.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

How has this fan base become this spoiled after ONE year of success? Remember not making the playoffs? Remember being eliminated in the first round routinely? Yeah, there were problems this year, but geez, if you asked me more than two years ago if I'd take this season ending I'd jump for joy. The Rangers are relevant and aren't first-round chokers anymore. Torts goes to ECF then the second round and people want to start over. That sort of short-sightedness is a huge part of why this team struggled for so long.

EDIT: Just want to add that I agree with the problems with the transition game and D-men, but "committed to being average," and "team headed nowhere" is BS, as is being stunned that the coach isn't gone. What a spoiled outlook.

Dude, the Rangers have won 1 more series in 2 more years under Torts than Renney.

 

[BroadwayBlues]

How has this fan base become this spoiled after ONE year of success? Remember not making the playoffs? Remember being eliminated in the first round routinely? Yeah, there were problems this year, but geez, if you asked me more than two years ago if I'd take this season ending I'd jump for joy. The Rangers are relevant and aren't first-round chokers anymore. Torts goes to ECF then the second round and people want to start over. That sort of short-sightedness is a huge part of why this team struggled for so long.

EDIT: Just want to add that I agree with the problems with the transition game and D-men, but "committed to being average," and "team headed nowhere" is BS, as is being stunned that the coach isn't gone. What a spoiled outlook.

There does come a time that you need progress. Where just making the playoffs isn't good enough.

I do think the Rangers need to show a bit more sense of urgency. They have the best goalie in the league in his prime.
Might want to capitalize on that....

 

[haveandare]

Dude, the Rangers have won 1 more series in 2 more years under Torts than Renney.

The past two years they made it past the first round and lost to better teams, in the ECF and then in the Semis. I don't really care about totals of coach vs. coach, I care about now and recent history. If they can't make the playoffs, that's a huge problem. If they lose in the first round repeatedly, that's a problem. If they lose to teams that they're obviously better than, that's a problem. None of that happened this year or last year. I think it's silly to argue for a reset every time the team fails to win the cup. It's hard to win and it's based on luck to an extent, in terms of injuries and bounces. Last year, in a normal schedule, Torts cooked up a strategy that fit his guys and led to a lot of success. This year, with very little camp and practice time, he tried the same strategy with different guys and it failed. Let him cook something up again for these new guys now that there's a normal schedule again next year and see how it goes.

There does come a time that you need progress. Where just making the playoffs isn't good enough.

I do think the Rangers need to show a bit more sense of urgency. They have the best goalie in the league in his prime.
Might want to capitalize on that....

I think they need to show more urgency too. I just hate this idea of it being "stunning" that Torts isn't fired yet considering the last two years the team had. This end was disappointing because the team is held to a higher standard now after having a phenomenal season last year.

Also, you want to talk about wasting Hank's career - that's what changing coaches for the sake of it is doing. Say they hire a guy like Ruff, a new guy just for the sake of a new guy. Say he sucks, as I would expect him to. There's another year on Hank gone, and at the end, they're even farther back then they are now. Then they have to roll the dice on another coach, and maybe he'll work out, or maybe he'll also suck and another year is gone and the standards for the team are dropped yet again.

I say, keep Torts, tell him the game-plan must change a bit, tell him he must bring in a PP assistant. If he flat out refuses, then fire him. If he agrees to those terms, let him cook up a new strategy like he did during the last season that he had a normal amount of time to do so and see how it works. Things can definitely, definitely be worse than they are now, when losing in the second round to a better, deeper team, is a massive disappointment. Seems to me like a lot of people already forgot about that.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

The past two years they made it past the first round and lost to better teams, in the ECF and then in the Semis. I don't really care about totals of coach vs. coach, I care about now and recent history. If they can't make the playoffs, that's a huge problem. If they lose in the first round repeatedly, that's a problem. If they lose to teams that they're obviously better than, that's a problem. None of that happened this year or last year. I think it's silly to argue for a reset every time the team fails to win the cup. It's hard to win and it's based on luck to an extent, in terms of injuries and bounces. Last year, in a normal schedule, Torts cooked up a strategy that fit his guys and led to a lot of success. This year, with very little camp and practice time, he tried the same strategy with different guys and it failed. Let him cook something up again for these new guys now that there's a normal schedule again next year and see how it goes.

1) Last year, the Rangers won 2 series by 1 goal in 7 games against the 8th and 7th seeds. They could have easily lost to the Sens if not for a terrible call that put us on a 5 on 3 in game 6 that turned the series around. Had nothing to do with Torts. They would have likely lost to the Caps if Richards didn't score a 1 in a million goal and Ward didn't take a terrible penalty at the end of game 6. Then they lost to a 6th seed in the ECF. Not exactly the 2013 Penguins that they lost to.

This year, they got embarrassed by a team that would have been golfing barring an historic collapse by an ok Toronto team (they had like the 29th best shot differential in the NHL in the regular season).

2) All of the losses by Renney's teams came to better teams. The 2006 Rangers were a two man team that had both of those men injured. The 2007 Rangers lost to the Presidents' trophy winners and almost won, if not for a pretty fluky goal in game 5. The 2008 Rangers lost to a team that went 12-2 in the east that year and won the cup the next year.

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

Jim Cerny ‏@JimCerny 28m
it'll be Torts...he is remaining the coach IMO RT @denisepronti: @JimCerny Torts will not be at that meeting.Lindasy Ruff will.

 

[haveandare]

1) Last year, the Rangers won 2 series by 1 goal in 7 games against the 8th and 7th seeds. They could have easily lost to the Sens if not for a terrible call that put us on a 5 on 3 in game 6 that turned the series around. Had nothing to do with Torts. They would have likely lost to the Caps if Richards didn't score a 1 in a million goal and Ward didn't take a terrible penalty at the end of game 6. Then they lost to a 6th seed in the ECF. Not exactly the 2013 Penguins that they lost to.

This year, they got embarrassed by a team that would have been golfing barring an historic collapse by an ok Toronto team (they had like the 29th best shot differential in the NHL in the regular season).

2) All of the losses by Renney's teams came to better teams. The 2006 Rangers were a two man team that had both of those men injured. The 2007 Rangers lost to the Presidents' trophy winners and almost won, if not for a pretty fluky goal in game 5. The 2008 Rangers lost to a team that went 12-2 in the east that year and won the cup the next year.

I dont really care for "if" and "but" explanations. The results are what they are.

Last year, they had the best NYR season in decades. I don't care what circumstances brought them there. And, anyway, I'd argue that their success had a ton to do with Torts. The system that sucked so hard this year worked real well last year and let an okay team get the first seed and make it to the ECF.

This year, IMO, Toronto played well over their heads to even get that close to eliminating Boston. Boston is a better team by far - stronger, deeper, faster, coached better, built smarter. Toronto let Boston absolutely rob them for Kessel, who was a surplus scoring forward for the Bruins. Boston is built better and smarter and it's not even close.

As for the Renney losses, that's all true, fine. But Renney wasn't fired in the off season after those losses. He was fired when the team looked like garbage for most of a full 82 game season. If the team looks like that again next year, fire Torts, that's fine. Don't fire him in the offseason after a finish that was only hard to deal with because of the standards that were raised due to him coaching the team to huge success the year before.

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

Brooks is on the money: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/rangers/it_all_on_torts_6BJFtdSngaj0gwMePY37sJ

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

The 08-09 Rangers were an abomination. That roster was an absolute joke. No coach could have taken that team to the finals, not even Scotty Bowman or Al Arbour.