Penguins culture on rise in Arizona
Former Pittsburgh assistant coach Tocchet uses some of same formulas of success
“I’d be lying if I said the Pittsburgh experience didn’t influence some of the stuff I’m doing here — the way you practice, the way you sleep and eat. Everything.” — Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet
When Rick Tocchet became head coach of the Arizona Coyotes before the 2017-18 season, he was unsure of his team’s identity.
It showed.
The Coyotes lost their first 11 games, took all of 21 contests to earn their first regulation win, and dropped 40 of their first 52, allowing 178 goals (30th of 31 NHL teams) in the process.
The final 30 games featured a seismic shift.
Finally blessed with some good health, Arizona’s identity crystallized, and the Coyotes went 17-10-3 the rest of the way, allowing the second-fewest goals in the NHL (73) to close out the season.
“When we started to get some healthy people, we implemented the defensive system I wanted — a more aggressive style than they were used to,” Tocchet said by phone earlier this week. “It kind of just started to make its own way. The guys took pride in it. After the game, guys started to believe, ‘This is how we have to play.’”
Tocchet and his defensive-minded Coyotes will visit the Penguins Saturday at PPG Paints Arena with a clear identity — although it’s different from what you might expect.
Not only have they become the NHL’s second-best defensive team at 2.43 goalsagainst per game, but the Coyotes have the league’s most opportunistic penalty kill, with a staggering nine short-handed goals through 14 games (7-6-1).
Suffice to say, Arizona has gotten plenty of (additional) buy-in from its players.
“They take it personal when teams score,” Tocchet said. “I can feel that guys get [ticked] off when teams score against us, which is nice.”
How Tocchet changed things around has a Pittsburgh twist, too.
Around the NHL, the Penguins are known for how well they treat their players. Co-owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle spare no expense when it comes to little things such as nutrition, strength and conditioning, and how the team is treated on the road.
Perhaps as a nod to how much of a copycat league the NHL can be, Tocchet, a former Penguins assistant coach, took some of what he learned in Pittsburgh and talked to Coyotes general manager John Chayka about implementing a similar system in the desert.
“We’re not a big-budget team, but there are certain things we can spend money on,” Tocchet said. “For me, it’s things like getting a new chef and making the dressing room a friendly place where guys can eat together.
“I’d be lying if I said the Pittsburgh experience didn’t influence some of the stuff I’m doing here — the way you practice, the way you sleep and eat. Everything.”
After a 1-4 start, the results have been pretty good for the young Coyotes. They’ve won six of nine and put together the franchise’s first five-game winning streak since 2011-12. The Coyotes have the league’s best penalty kill at 91.1 percent.
Their two most productive offensive players have been names you probably recognize: Center Clayton Keller has five goals and 11 points, while defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson has produced two goals and 10 points.
But they also have gotten big-time contributions from center Brad Richardson, who has three of those short-handed goals, and offseason addition Michael Grabner — once a Penguins trade target — who also has scored three times when down a man and ranks third on the team with nine points.
Defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson, acquired in a draft-day trade in 2017, has bolstered the back end and played to a team-best plus-8. Arizona’s goalies, Antii Raanta (2.10 goals-against average, .929 save percentage in nine starts) and Darcy Kuemper (2.61 GAA, .917 SV% in five), have been very good as well.
“I think you have to coach your personnel,” Tocchet said. “A strong part of our team is the defense. Raanta and Kuemper are really good goaltenders and we have to look for timely goals. That doesn’t mean we sit back. We have some good, young, fast players who transition well.
“But we really have to pay attention to details on the defensive side because we don’t have a pure goal scorer per se right now. We have to think of other ways to score goals — by committee.”
As a coach, Tocchet has continued to build on something else he stole from his counterpart with the Penguins, Mike Sullivan. When he was an assistant here, Tocchet always admired Sullivan’s decisiveness, and he openly admitted he wasn’t very good at that when he coached the Tampa Bay Lightning.
This season, Tocchet has a much clearer vision for how the Coyotes should play.
“I listen to my assistants, but I also know what I want to do,” Tocchet said. “I really learned that from Sully when I was in Pittsburgh. Sully gets the information, then he’s very decisive. I believe in a certain way to play, certain decisions, how to create a culture, and I think that’s helped me.”
The craziest number, of course, has been the short-handed goals. New Jersey led the league last year with 12. Nobody else has more than four in 2018-19.
“To me, it’s making really good reads,” Tocchet said. “But I’ll be honest with you: We’ve guessed right on a lot of things where it’s gone our way. We got a couple of two-on-ones and we’ve scored on them. Can it go at this pace? I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to go at this pace.
“Things have been going in for the guys, and it’s really given us a lot of juice. I think our penalty kill has kept us in a lot of these games because of the way they switched the momentum.”