Stecher gets power boost from shot doctor
Blue-liner finds himself manning team’s first PP unit and looking to give it some life
Troy Stecher hired a shooting coach last summer.
In a winter of discontent for a Vancouver Canucks’ power play that looks good on paper and bad on the ice, this is an encouraging development.
The league’s 26th-ranked man-advantage mess is just 3-for-38 the last 14 games for a 7.8 per cent efficiency rate, but a new spark could ignite those smouldering embers of first-unit potential.
Enter Stecher, who had never sought a shot doctor.
“I knew my shot was something I needed to work on and something I still need to work on — it’s probably the biggest flaw in my game,” said Stecher, whose 60 shots through 53 games include a spurt of nine in a recent five-game span.
“It’s technique. It’s understanding how to shoot the puck properly.
“I never really had guidance and the proper technique. Being a smaller guy, you always focus on other things, but I keep working on my shooting and I’m getting better. There are a lot of things with my shot. My hands come up higher and kind of square to my body instead of around. One thing I was told is that it’s like a watch — you snap the shot and if you had a watch, it would be front and then to the side.
“There are little things like that to hopefully make it better and I do think it has improved from the past two years, but it has a long ways to go, that’s for sure.”
The mobile, quick-passing, smart-thinking defenceman was promoted to point man on the first unit after Alex Edler suffered a gruesome concussion Feb. 4 in Philadelphia and Ben Hutton was given an audition.
Stecher isn’t Drew Doughty, Aaron Ekblad, Brent Burns, Shea Weber or anybody who can bomb it from the blue-line, or get a wrister with lots of zip through traffic. But he is crafty.
Stecher’s puck control, low-panic threshold and ability to find shooting or passing lanes may mean something when the Canucks open a crucial three-game California swing Wednesday in Anaheim. The Ducks have lost seven straight, fired coach Randy Carlyle and general manager Bob Murray has gone behind the bench.
The knock of opportunity for the Canucks may never be louder. For everything that changed since Feb. 2 when a healthy roster clobbered the Avalanche 5-1 in Denver — Sven Baertschi’s concussion-like symptoms, Thatcher Demko’s knee sprain in the warm-up against the Flyers and Edler’s scary exit the same game, Jacob Markstrom’s tweak, and Brandon Sutter’s lower-body ailment Saturday — the elements to make PP1 effective remain.
For starters, the Canucks need more even-strength drive to draw penalties and more creativity and shot selections to take away the predictability of deferring to Elias Pettersson or Brock Boeser for one-timers.
“It’s understanding who you’re on the ice with,” added the 24-year-old Stecher.
“You’d rather have Boes or Petey shoot the puck than me, but I’m going to do what I can. There was one (Saturday) where I fired a wrister at the net just to keep the other team honest. You don’t want to be one-dimensional.
“It’s understanding what the PK is trying to accomplish. I feel like I’m able to hold the line with more confidence and if they do disrupt it, it’s just going to be a foot race and not a clear-cut (break). You just play the odds. A lot of goalies don’t even see pucks and lot of it is reading and reacting.
“And any time there’s a puck on the boards, you’re going to have three guys pressuring it. If you can get the puck into the middle, they have to respect that and create more room for the flanks and me at the top.”
Power-play effectiveness goes beyond shot selection. It’s often the pass to set up the shot. As left-shot blue-liners, Edler and Hutton would naturally feed Pettersson to the far cross-ice dot. And as a right shot, it’s natural for Stecher to go the other direction and look for Boeser.
However, Stecher is adept at little flip passes at the blueline and he can disrupt the expected by faking to Boeser and putting a backhand saucer pass on Pettersson’s tape.
“I was watching film and there’s actually more space out there to hit Petey,” said Stecher. “It’s trusting that and having more confidence to make that play. It’s just trial and error.”
There are power-play options with Bo Horvat as the down-low, goal-line presence to take feeds and reverse for a shot.
There’s always somebody coming through the slot, but there could also be more.
What about a back-door play with Stecher dishing off and scooting to the side of the net?
The Boston Bruins have the third-ranked power play and diminutive defenceman Tory Krug offers a different dimension.
“It’s definitely fun watching Krug because there are times where he ends up being at the goalie, or sliding up and down for the backdoor,” said Stecher. “He’s very lateral east-west on the blue-line and with their personnel, all five are comfortable in their spots.
“That can throw teams off.”