Today’s Daily Cup of Joe goes off the cuff a bit with a couple random Canes musings.
On Bill Peters
With the transition in the 2018-19 season and the resulting success, I think it is safe to say that the changeover from Bill Peters has been positive and that the team is on a better path right now. But I do not think that is to say that Bill Peters is a horrible coach. Like any other coach, Peters has his strengths and weaknesses. And at the end of the day, I actually think that Bill Peters is a good coach. The team Peters started with was nowhere near as good as the current roster personnel-wise. And more than anything, I think Peters strengths were not a match for what the team needed when it was time to push over the hump and into the playoffs. After too many years of losing and a culture that could not help but be tainted by it, what the team needed more than anything else was a significant change in terms of mentality and attitude. As more of a master tactician, I just do not think that leadership-leaning skill set was among Peters’ strengths and was ultimately what left him always a step or two short of pushing over the hump.
A benefit for Rod Brind’Amour
With Peters’ Achilles’ heel noted, I actually think that Peters could was actually a perfect head coach for Brind’Amour to learn under. As a coach who very strongly leans Peter Laviolette as a motivator rather than Bill Peters as a tactician, I believe that Brind’Amour benefited significantly from seeing Peters’ methods, details and process which were a bit of a different perspective for Brind’Amour. Though Brind’Amour’s style definitely leans Laviolette, I think working under Peters likely added some balance to how he goes about his job. Brind’Amour has made a few comments along these lines, and I think they are sincere and not just being respectful to a former boss.
Rod Brind’Amour and the transformation during the 2018-19 season
One of the celebrated successes of the 2018-19 season was the emergence of Rod Brind’Amour as a successful coach and leader in his rookie season as an NHL bench boss. His ability to lead was a surprise to exactly no one, but given his lack of head coaching experience, his coaching ability was a bit of a wild card.
At the end of the day, I think the 2018-19 season is a testament to the importance of people management and motivation over Xs and Os. That is not to say that tactical coaching is not important, and that is not to say that Brind’Amour did not also do well in this regard. But for me, the difference between the 2017-18 Carolina Hurricanes and the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes was unmistakably mindset, mentality and resiliency. In recent years, it felt inevitable that when the Hurricanes hit a rough patch one of them would eventually snow ball and end the season. The winter of 2019 was the exact opposite. Pretty much each and every time the Hurricanes needed to rebound, they did. That resiliency as much as anything is what pushed the team up over the cut line and into the playoffs for the first time in a decade.
Put more directly, the striking difference under Brind’Amour versus Peters was people management and motivation. Whereas Peters saw the arrival of Justin Williams and his initial press release and statements and then somehow arrived at co-captains, Brind’Amour knew very clearly who the right leader was for this team. Whereas arguably Peters’ biggest impact managing or motivating goalies was completely accidental when he chucked Eddie Lack under the bus (after the season was over), Brind’Amour mostly deferred to goalie coach Mike Bales and the results were magical. Brind’Amour did also make a fairly quick decision to jettison the Scott Darling experiment and get any distractions out of the picture. Whereas young players sometimes seemed to struggle to develop under Peters, most seemed to take a step up under Brind’Amour.
More succinctly, I think Brind’Amour has been a significantly better with the people management part of a coach’s role and that that has been the dividing line between him and Bill Peters.
An interesting juxtaposition
I think it is interesting to wonder what might have happened if somehow Bill Peters and Rod Brind’Amour were in opposite roles. As an assistant underneath Peters, Brind’Amour was more or less forced into a tactical role that did not play to his greatest strengths and was limited in his ability to use his leadership and motivational skills. Meanwhile, Peters was in a role responsible for the people management part of the job and having to delegate to some degree on the tactical facets of the job that seemed to be in his wheelhouse. Realizing that there really was no way to get to there from the starting point, might a Brind’Amour/Peters combination have been perfect if Brind’Amour was the head coach and Peters was a tactically-focused lieutenant?
Takeaways for the path forward
Interesting, some of the Canes biggest struggles during a successful 2018-19 season were in the tactically-focused area of special teams. Before the 2018-19 season started, I suggested that Brind’Amour and the team would benefit from adding a more experienced assistant coach to help him navigate the ups and downs of an NHL season. In retrospect, I think that assessment was incorrect. Brind’Amour with help from first lieutenant Justin Williams did a masterful job orchestrating a transformation in terms of mentality and mindset. And when the team most needed to find fortitude and push up from being down, it did.
But instead, the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes coaching staff could probably have benefited from a special teams specialist. On the one hand, I do not see why the team would let coaches go after a successful 2018-19 season. But on the other hand, I do think the team could benefit from additional help. With coaching staffs expanding in the NHL, there could be room to add a specialist to bring another perspective to special teams, especially the power play. (See yesterday’s Daily Cup of Joe on the power play.)
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the team does in that regard this summer. One approach could be for the current coaching staff to spend a bunch of time watching video and strategizing for how to make improvements. That is part of it, but I also think the team could benefit from adding outside help.
What say you Canes fans?
1) To what degree do you think Brind’Amour led the team’s transition versus the team just being better roster-wise and finally ready to make the next step?
2) Do you think the team would benefit from adding a more tactically-focused special teams consultant or two? Do you think the team will go this route?
Go Canes!
1. Definitely. The team needed a motivator, the fans needed someone who was earnest, direct and someone who cared. Bill Peters always came across as sarcastic, you could practically hear the smirk in every word of his. I’m sure he’s a good guy but he wasn’t one to build a culture and I never got the feeling he enjoyed being here or was particularly proud of his job. It’s a joy watching interviews with Rod. He’s earnest, speaks his mind, you can tell he’s committed to find any which way to win and to put Carolina back on the hockey map.
2. Roddie needs more tactcal help. The knock on him is that while he’s a great motivator conditioning coach and seems to hve a good read on the human side of the factor (he can relate to what players are going through better than anybody, ), he is not good with tactics, strategies and such, as evidenced by the downright miserable powerplay. I think hiring a capable tactician coach is going to be a heck of a lot cheaper than changing up the roster to improve the powerplay, and I think the candidate is already in the organization. I also worry a little bit about his almost one dimentional preference for grit over skill. At a basic level I think grit alone gets you much further than skill alone, but in order to go all the way you need a mix of the two, a team that has enough talent and variety to play heavy, fast, smart or stifling, whatever style is most likely to defeat the opponent.
That being said, I’m excited for next season and I’m sure Rod will make the right decisions for this team.
Bill Peters should be banned from the NHL for life for his decision to make two people captains instead of Justin Williams was neither (and not even give him the remaining A).
I honestly believe that Peters wanted team leadership that he felt he could control and Williams, and Williams relationship with RBA, was intimidating to BP.
That said, I agree that RBA received some valuable training while under Peters. But the combination of leadership of RBA-Williams is THE most important factor in this season’s success.
I think the idea of special teams improvement is necessary!
A new coach who is proven to be good there should be considered, and incorporating analytics into the mix could also help…
that said, I’m not sure about making a change (one new guy in, one guy out) is better than just adding an extra guy? Too many cooks spoil the pot! Is there room behind the bench for another guy?
What would be the dynamics?
One GREAT THING…they have a few weeks to decide what to do!
Yup, I said that the other day. Don’t throw any coaches away, just add a special teams coach. Somebody, forget who said it, said the special teams coach in Charlotte would be a natural add.
I don’t know how much say both coaches had in roster makeup, but there was a huge shift from the softer skill based guys like Skinner/Lindholm/Ryan/Rask/Nordstrom to a preference to a grittier style with Ferland/Martinook/Foegele/Manaleinen/McKegg.
The Canes were 28th with 1597 hits last season. They were 7th with 2073 this season. It just felt like a commitment to physically engaged hockey. And not just banging people into the boards, but just constantly being on top of the other players all over the ice. Backchecking in particular this year seemed completely different even from players that were still with the team.
It felt like Peter’s strategy was trying to outskill more skilled teams, while Brindy’s strategy was to be harder working than teams that didn’t work as hard.
I think that’s why Peters had success in Calgary’s regular season. They were more skilled than a lot of teams, and the results followed.
Great points. I did not know that we jumped from 28th to 7th in hits – that’s really telling.
I think the 2018-19 success was a combo of Rod’s style of player motivation and having more say with obtaining much needed grit for the roster.
I don’t think Peters had as much roster pull in his 3 years, and both he and Francis were too patient trying to play a grit style with young, unwilling perimeter players. That said, I also think Peters was the right coach those 3 years for at least instilling the x’s and o’s and in the end, helped the organization figure out who to keep and let go.
1) RBA (and the captain) led the team transition …including the improved roster. After being named HC, RBA said a few times [the players] “are not going to fool me”.
The choice between grit and skill is another false dichotomy. The best teams have grit and skill, often packaged into the same player(s). See Boston and Washington. That is what makes guys like Ferland and Niederreiter so attractive.
RBA named the preseason squads Grit and Grind because that is what was missing here. And since you can’t change everything at once, RBA focused on the most important elements. The results speak for themselves.
Now, without losing any grit or grind, build another layer of strategy and finesse on top of the now solid foundation.
2). Yes, add the strategic elements to the PP. the NFL has had special teams coaches for years. If it is an important part of the game, add a specialist.
It is not as important wether they stand behind the bench or watch from the press box (sometimes the wide angle view from above is necessary to see the shape on the ice) – but special teams are so important that I believe the NHL will go the way of the NFL on special teams. There is no harm in leading the transition, but rather great benefit.
1. The 2017-18 team was in bad need of a culture change, particuarly after Peters finally and completely lost the locker room about a third of the way into the season. That culture change started with the new owner – a man who hates to lose who had just bought a team that was doing just that.
RBA was a huge cog in the transformation of culture.
But I always go back to this, even with new faces, grit/grind, a motivating coach; the captain who should have been – with about 40% of the season behind we sucked, sitting in 27th place.
What turned the switch in early January to start the team winning? Once the winning started – well, a winning culture comes from winning. That seems obvious but we weren’t winning and we didn’t have a winning culture the first three months of the season. We can’t praise the transformation of this year’s team, in my opinion, by whitewashing or forgetting how poorly the team played early in the season.
2) The team is desperately in need of a revised approach to the PP – as we discussed here yesterday.
1) IMO I think the difference was RBA/Williams. They projected the we can do this attitude. The thing I did not like about peters is he was always crying about needing NHL proven players. He wanted a team full of Ovechkins. Who wouldn’t and most coaches could be somewhat successful with a team full of stars. Totally opposite with RBA, he let the AHL guys come in, supported them, told then hard work could make the difference and they followed RBA/Williams. So much more credibility then peters.
I truly did not know how well RBA would be but what a wonderful result. He is such a driver and I do not see that falling off due to a good season. It’s the way he is. People want to follow somebody like that. I see players buying in again. He walks the walk. Credibility. I just never saw Peters providing the same drive. Talent counts but so does attitude.
2) Yes, the special teams sucked. An additional coach who is good at that can make the difference. I hope they do add a coach specifically for that. Not sure if they will.