At just about every stop in his coaching career, John Gruden hasn’t had much of an issue getting his players to buy in to his messaging.
During his first season as bench boss of the OHL’s Flint Firebirds back in 2015-16, Gruden and some members of his staff were fired a little more than a month into the season — reportedly due to not giving the Firebirds’ owner’s son (a player on the roster) enough playing time.
But less than 24 hours later, Gruden and his assistant, Dave Karpa, were re-hired by Flint and given three-year contract extensions — due in large part to Gruden’s players (including the owner’s son) staging a protest due to their coach’s dismissal.
Upon making the jump up to the NHL ranks, Gruden helped execute Barry Trotz’s vision ofa stingy, grind-it-out club on Long Island — helping turn what was a roster hampered by lax D-zone play into a team that ranked in the top 10 in fewest goals against per game during his four seasons with the Islanders.
And now, as Kevin Dean’s projected replacement on Jim Montgomery’s staff in Boston, Gruden will be looking to get a new group of skaters to pull on the same rope in another directive — drawing more offense out of the B’s skilled blue-line corps.
While most of the narratives coming out of Montgomery’s introductory press conference last week revolved around the hope that his communication style will help encourage more young talent and draw more production out of this entrenched roster, it’s clear that Boston’s front office also believed that an X’s and O’s overhaul was also needed.
“Well, one of the things that kind of stood out early on was Jim’s philosophy of getting our defensemen to move a little bit more on the offensive blue line,” Cam Neely noted when asked about what stood out about Montgomery’s coaching style. “Whether they end up scoring the goals is going to be one thing, but they can create a little more offensive from being fluid on the offensive blue line.”
Montgomery will certainly be the ringleader when it comes to uprooting some of Bruce Cassidy’s systems in order to hopefully spark more even-strength scoring out of this group, but having a former fleet-footed defenseman like Gruden leading direct oversight over Boston’s D corps stands as a proactive move by the B’s new head coach.
“A lot is going to have to do with the way Jimmy wants to implement the type of systems,” Gruden said of Boston’s expected tweaks. “When he hired me, we obviously talked about that stuff. But I do believe one of the points that he made is that he'd like to get done a little bit more active but without losing that ability to defend — because that's Boston's M.O. You can still do both and grow on the offensive part to get the D more involved to get the puck to the forwards and then take some ice when it's available, but not force it.”
Gruden — who added that both he and Montgomery are still assessing whether or not Boston might do away with Cassidy’s zone defense and opt for a more straightforward man-to-man scheme — will adopt a D corps with plenty of room to grow on the offensive side of things.
While Boston was proficient in years past when it came to breaking pucks out and gliding through the neutral zone with personnel like Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk in place, the B’s struggled to translate that skill and skating talent over into the offensive zone — with the team’s inability to generate scoring chances via blue-line point shots and lateral plays up top leading to a predictable (and inconsistent) even-strength scoring output.
For Gruden, an emphasis on shot volume and more lateral play along the blue line stand as effective avenues to take in order to hopefully draw more scoring out of this roster — without necessarily having to sacrifice defensive integrity by advocating for more pinches or carrying the puck down into Grade-A ice.
“I think there's always a time to just get pucks to the net,” Gruden said. “When teams are out of the structure, that when there's someone at the net front, but other than that, it's always good to get some movement with three high up top and get the D moving a little bit more laterally and create some confusion to the D-zone coverage, whatever the D-zone coverage that the other team is playing."
“But you have to create some movement, some puck movement amongst the five in the offensive zone to create. So that's something — it'll be a challenge for us, but it's also I think it'll hopefully be exciting for the players as well and the defenseman especially.”
Of course, Gruden won’t necessarily have the B’s full defensive repertoire at his disposal to start the season, with McAvoy and Grzelcyk both expected to be on the shelf for at least a month, if not longer, to open the season.
Still, given the variety of skills present on a defense that also features a top-pairing regular in Hampus Lindholm, a stay-at-home option with still room to grow in Brandon Carlo, the offensive-minded Mike Reilly, PK specialist Derek Forbort, Connor Clifton, Jakub Zboril and more — Gruden believes he has quite the template to work wuth, and plenty of new faces that he hopes will buy in to his message.
“I think there's a way to evolve the D as far as still playing their position, doing it the right way but also knowing the right times to jump," Gruden said. "Obviously, it's situational too as far as where the score is at, without forcing it. So there is a balance. I think there's a little bit of the new and a little bit of the old in today's game that's effective. And that's the beauty of it is finding where each player can get comfortable on the back end to where they're not putting themselves in too much trouble.
“But also utilizing some of the skills that they may not have had the opportunity to use in the past. So it's just finding, and once I get to get a chance to really get in there and get to know them on a better basis, as far as their talents and their personalities. That's the enjoyment of it. There's always a way to get something more out of some players. So there's a balance there between the old and the new. But it's something if you be there to help them through it, there's always room to grow either way. And that's the exciting part about what we do.”
