The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Toronto offence thriving under Ryan
Toronto’s defenders spend almost as much time up ice and well into the offensive zone as they do in and around their own goaltender.
It’s not an accident. Positionless basketball is already a thing in the NBA. There are no guards, no forwards. Even centres cover the kind of ground guards previously owned.
But in hockey circles, defenders — with some noted exceptions — have traditionally stuck to about two-thirds of the ice.
Head coach Troy Ryan of Spryfield believes that is old-school thinking and his PWHL Toronto defenders are backing that up with the team success following that mindset.
Sure, there was Bobby Orr and Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque and Al Macinnis, who all went pretty much wherever they wanted on the ice regardless of position. Currently, Cale Makar is at least as valuable in the offensive zone as he is defensively, but wholesale positionless hockey has yet to come to the NHL.
Ryan is making it his business to bring it to the women’s game.
The head coach of Toronto and the Canadian national women’s team actually is a perfect fit in the PHWL, where they never shy away from trying something new.
Ryan also has the perfect complement to his plan and that was not by accident either.
GM Gina Kingsbury and Ryan had a very definite plan once they landed Renata Fast in the free-agent foundational signing period. It was to re-unite long-time national defence partners Fast and Jocelyne
Larocque in Toronto’s top defensive pairing.
So it was without hesitation that Toronto passed on a young forward with tantalizing skills in Alina Muller who would go third overall in the draft to Boston after Toronto selected National team mainstay and Fast’s mentor in Larocque.
With those two setting the tone, Ryan has all of his defence jumping into the rush and often times leading the attack.
Ryan does not believe in passive hockey — when there
is an opening, he wants his team throwing everything they have into it and that is regardless of position.
It was evident on Toronto’s first goal in its 3-1 win over Boston on Wednesday night that stretched the team’s winning streak to an incredible eight games.
Sarah Nurse worked her way across the offensive zone before firing a shot on Aerin Frankel in the Boston goal. Frankel managed to keep the shot out of the net, but the rebound was pounced on by Toronto defender Allie Munroe
of Yarmouth. Munroe didn’t hesitate when she saw an offensive opportunity to abandon her defensive position to ensure that opportunity resulted in a goal.
It was Munroe's first PWHL goal.
Conditioning his defenders, some of them like Larocque and Munroe who have traditionally thought defence first, last, and always, to make that jump has been a process.
Fast, on the other hand, has always been an offensive-type defender, so this suits her game to a T. But changing the habits of more traditional defenders and even more traditional defensive forwards like Stellarton's Blayre Turnbull to not only take these offensive opportunities but jump into them wholeheartedly at the risk of leaving themselves defensively compromised has been a process.
Turnbull admits there is a hesitation not to go back and cover when she sees one of her teammates coming down the wall pinching in to sustain an offensive push by Toronto. Her normal instincts are to go back and fill that void created by the defensive pinch, but that’s not what her head coach wants her doing.
“I think if you watch my game, you see I still err on the side of defence a lot of the time,” Turnbull admits. “I’ll dive in a bit but my natural instincts are to play more positionally defensively strong. But it’s something when I kind of forget about that and think about the flipside of that and all the offence we could have as a team, I think that makes it easy for me to get out of my old habits and try to add a little more to my game.”
Basically, it’s Ryan convincing both his forwards and his defenders to go for it and trust each other when the offensive opportunities present themselves.
“Even the old school mentality if a D joins the play at forward you have to cover for them. I think that’s crazy,’ Ryan said. “If a D joined the play it’s because we see offence so we go offensively. We don’t cover for them.
“Some players are still not used to that mindset,” Ryan said, “but we’re taking our chances on offence.”
An eight-game winning streak is pretty solid proof that it’s working.