Climbing up in the standings

[Deer]

juniorcormier16 said:

Actually This Rocket team Can play very Well as a team If they want to The Question is Do they. We seen a lot of shitty games But then we seen some games where the Rocket Totally out played the other team Take Cb for example top team in the league and we beat them 3-4 times this season The boys can play and win but its up to them if they want to or not. playing the underestimated card . Not playing no card its the truth. we the fans did not base the team in the top 5 CHL teams. We the Fans did not overestimate our team The media did not us. I am not sayin the team is going to make this huge statement and like win a lot of there games in the 2nd half and then go on to the finals alls i am saying is that the team is really underestimated They beat some of the top teams in the league not only once. Imo the team is underestimated Cause they can play good hockey when they try.

The Rocket are finally playing like they were supposed to have been all season. The only reason anyone may have underestimated them at all is because they shat the bed for 2-3 months.

[stang07]

You are so right deer! The million dollar question is WHY?

[Superdog]

why?your head coach at the start of the year

[countsheep]

superdog said:

why?your head coach at the start of the year

Indeed, that's the reason.

It's not complicated.

[mboyan]

The head coach had nothing to do with the poor play of Lafleur....other than starting him in goal.

IMO, a lot of the problems lay in the failure of management to find someone to replace Gragnani as the QB of the power play, which failed miserably at the start of the season.

Not to say that coaching wasn't part of the problem (it certainly was), but the same system used last year was used to start this year, including the PP, so it couldn't be all coaching. Somewhere along the line, management has to take some of the responsibility as well.

[countsheep]

mboyan said:

The head coach had nothing to do with the poor play of Lafleur....other than starting him in goal.

IMO, a lot of the problems lay in the failure of management to find someone to replace Gragnani as the QB of the power play, which failed miserably at the start of the season.

Not to say that coaching wasn't part of the problem (it certainly was), but the same system used last year was used to start this year, including the PP, so it couldn't be all coaching. Somewhere along the line, management has to take some of the responsibility as well.

So exactly what "system" are you talking about?

And how does this "system" differ now that we have a new coach?

[North Shore]

countsheep said:

So exactly what "system" are you talking about?

And how does this "system" differ now that we have a new coach?

Last season the team rarely fore checked and played an awful trap system that good teams consistently blew through. In our end we rarely tried to establish a break out system but rather always chipped the puck up the boards and tried to pick the puck up in the neutral zone.

Since Chouinard has come on board the team is working much harder on transition and break out from our end. Initially it was painful because the first pass was often in the skates or behind the man, but lately this is much improved.

When the puck turns over along the boards there is usually a man moving through center to pick up a pass and start a rush. before we congregated along the boards or had someone sitting outside the blue line in the event we were able to chip it ahead. In that scenario we often had to win two battles along the boards to get the offense moving.

Now when we pick up the puck the guys look for a good first pass and start the attack. I think we are going to see faster more offensive hockey as the players get use to their positioning and passing improves.

On the defensive side in our zone the forwards are coming back better and helping out. Last year it was not uncommon to have someone sitting in the neutral zone, effectively leaving us short handed in our end. The extra man is back checking and is available to pass to when we do pick up the puck.

[bois]

good rundown rktfan...

our system under Yannick was downright dreadful to watch and quite ineffective

but our PP was better.. mostly because we had more offensive deth and a PP Quarterback in Grags

the passing still needs alot of work but is 100 times better than it was under Yannick

[countsheep]

gdc said:

countsheep said:

So exactly what "system" are you talking about?

And how does this "system" differ now that we have a new coach?

Last season the team rarely fore checked and played an awful trap system that good teams consistently blew through. In our end we rarely tried to establish a break out system but rather always chipped the puck up the boards and tried to pick the puck up in the neutral zone.

Since Chouinard has come on board the team is working much harder on transition and break out from our end. Initially it was painful because the first pass was often in the skates or behind the man, but lately this is much improved.

When the puck turns over along the boards there is usually a man moving through center to pick up a pass and start a rush. before we congregated along the boards or had someone sitting outside the blue line in the event we were able to chip it ahead. In that scenario we often had to win two battles along the boards to get the offense moving.

Now when we pick up the puck the guys look for a good first pass and start the attack. I think we are going to see faster more offensive hockey as the players get use to their positioning and passing improves.

On the defensive side in our zone the forwards are coming back better and helping out. Last year it was not uncommon to have someone sitting in the neutral zone, effectively leaving us short handed in our end. The extra man is back checking and is available to pass to when we do pick up the puck.

That's an excellent explanation, thank you very much.

Hockey is much more difficult to observe than, say, baseball or football.

In baseball, you have time to figure out how things happen, and what everyone is doing, and why.

In football, you can see the formations they're using on offence and defense, and understand the strategies.

But in hockey, things happen so fast that honestly, I've never figured out exactly what "the trap" is (I've heard many different explanations), or understood what people mean by a "system".

We need more of this kind of stuff on Rockettalk, rather than the petty arguments we've got ourselves into at times.

A beer for you, Rocketfan.