Gruden says he’s happy with team. Should he be?
A quarter of the way through their season, the Hamilton Bulldogs are not where a lot of people expected them to be.
This was supposed to be the year the rookies of two years ago were veterans, the growing flock of NHL draft picks were flexing their muscles and beginning to dominate the league and the wins were piling up. All this was part of the pitch when the organization made its bid to host the Memorial Cup, you’ll recall. This team was going to be a championship contender.
Yet today the Bulldogs have won eight of their 17 games, sit right in the middle of the standings, have scored fewer goals than anyone else in the league, have a poor power play, a middling penalty killing unit and are now facing some injury issues.
If they’re better than they were a year ago at this point when they had 10 wins and scored 30 more goals, they’re doing a convincing job of camouflaging it. And yet …
“We’re happy where we’re at,” head coach John Gruden says.
OK, we’ll bite. Happy in what sense?
“We’re three games above .500,” he says. “We’re on pace to (have a) winning percentage higher and stronger than last year with a depleted lineup. That’s not including what we might do down the road.”
Gruden says guys are playing hard, they’re grinding out close wins they wouldn’t have earned last year and they’re not cheating the game. On top of everything else, they’re getting chances to score even if they’re not finding the net. Call it lack of execution or unlucky bounces or whatever. But if they keep at it, things are bound to change eventually.
So is the coach onto something or just on something? Is this team actually better than its record proclaims or exactly as mediocre as it appears to be?
Before answering that, we’ll first take issue with that misleading winning percentage stat. They’ve lost more games than they’ve won when you include overtime and shootouts. So, no, they’re not really three games over .500 except when using hockey’s intentionally obfuscatory math. In fact, they’re on pace for one fewer win than last year.
The biggest issue facing this team, however, is scoring. They can’t do it. Nine times they’ve scored two or fewer goals. Only four times have they put as many as four pucks in a net.
This is unexpected since they have guys who’ve done it before, and with an extra year of experience, maturity and strength those players should be having an even bigger impact. Except most of them have gone the other way, at least statistically.
Matt Strome had 34 goals last year. He has five so far this season. Mackenzie Entwistle had 12. He has none and is now injured again. Will Bitten had 23. He has three. Not one of the team’s five NHL draft picks are statistically ahead of last year’s scoring pace.
The slack from the loss of some departed players simply hasn’t been picked up. Worse, GM Steve Staios traded away defenceman Cole Candella for draft picks in September. His 15 points in Sudbury would put him atop the Bulldogs scoring list.
That means they’ve got to stress defence. Goalie Kaden Fulcher and his backup, Nick Donofrio, have been terrific which has helped win some of these tight games. But it’s a tough, tiring way to play. Especially when you often have three games in three or four nights.
“Maybe we’re not blessed with a tremendous amount of pure goal scorers but that’s OK,” Gruden says. “I’d rather win with a bunch of kids who want to work and get their noses dirty and do it as a group.”
It appears he has no choice. So, embracing this is the best option.
The positive in all this is that pretty much everyone in the OHL makes the playoffs and the Bulldogs are at absolutely no risk of missing out. Once there, this lowscoring, grinding-for-wins style could end up serving them well.
Remember, Hamilton scored a bunch last year but once they lined up against Kingston in the playoffs they were held to two goals or fewer in five of the series’ seven games. That’s the optimistic view. Until then however, it would certainly make things easier if the next quarter of the season saw some actual offence emerge. If only because even the best defensive teams need to score a few goals to win. Especially in this league.
As Gruden admits, winning consistently the other way is just really, really hard.