A while back, we explored how a successful power play (PP) can teach us valuable insights into personnel management. While the goal of any PP is to score goals, the way in which different teams go about accomplishing this can vary greatly. Some teams look to generate offense off faceoffs, some off the rush, and others off of set structures in zone. What matters most is putting the personnel (players) in the best position to succeed as often as possible.
This same principle applies to the penalty kill (PK), where the primary goal is to stop the offensive team from scoring goals. There are hundreds of ways to kill penalties – with different in-zone structures, forechecking concepts and so on. What matters most is using the personnel you have in the most effective way to achieve this desired outcome. For this one, we are going to look at a personal example that occurred to our team this past season while I was coaching at Tufts University.
Penalty Kill Philosophy in Action
In the second half of the season, around late January/early February, we (as a coaching staff) decided to make a switch in our penalty kill philosophy. What mattered most to us at the time was not the structure of our PK, but using the correct personnel on it.
Up until that point, our PK had been underperforming and we believed we could absolutely be better. We were using a set number of players on the PK and relied on some of them for the power play. While it’s easy to point the finger at them and think “they’re just not good on the PK” we came to believe that maybe we, as coaches, were not putting them in the best position to succeed. Relying on a smaller subset of guys for both PP/PK and five-on-five, while solely relying on others for five-on-five, was likely creating an imbalance within our team. We wondered whether we were overusing/overworking certain players while underusing/underworking others.
After deliberating on how best to improve the PK, we decided that we were going to essentially divide the team in half. We would use one half of our players on the PP only. Most of these guys were playing on the PP prior to this decision. We would then use one half of our players on the PK only. Most of these guys were being relied on for five-on-five and seldom more, maybe some PP/PK time here and there when needed. We felt that this would (ideally) create natural roles for everyone within the team and allow for every player to take ownership of a given special teams assignment. Little did we know, we were onto something that would alter the trajectory of our season.
More Intentional Personnel Management Leads to Results
Up until this point, we were underperforming on the PK and sat in ninth (out of ten) in our conference standings. We had four regular season games left where we would need to win at least two, likely three, to work our way back into the playoff picture. Our PK was operating at roughly an 80% clip, which was towards the bottom of the conference at that time as well. The first two games after this change were on the road against two of the top four teams in the conference. The first night we won 2-0, killing every penalty. Including an extended five on three against as well as a five-minute major. The next night we killed another five on three against and won 2-1. We were back in the playoff mix.
The final weekend of the regular season included two home games against two more teams ahead of us in the standings. The first night we conceded a PK goal against at the tail end of a five on three where our fourth player had just come out of the box. Regardless, we were able to close the game out and won 3-2. This secured us a spot in the playoffs. The last regular game of the season was the next day, with a chance to earn sixth place and take home a win on senior night. We wound up on the winning end of that game as well, shutting out our opponent 2-0 and securing sixth. We finished the regular season on a four-game winning streak, earned a berth in playoffs and killed off 16 of 17 penalties to end the year.
Having a Role is Important
So, what’s the lesson here? By no means is this an attempt at saying our staff knows everything and executed perfectly. Potentially we could have recognized this dynamic sooner and made that personnel adjustment. We likely could have done a number of things differently – as any team who does not win a championship can. The old adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees” comes to mind here. Focusing on the details of the day-to-day, I think it is safe to say that we overlooked something bigger: our personnel.
The lesson here pertains to how we use our personnel, whether it be on a hockey team or within a business. This is ultimately one of the most important aspects of any group dynamic. Everyone can and should have a role where they feel valued and able to contribute to the overall success of the team. To me, this is exactly what occurred when “dividing” the team into two groups. Everyone was given a role that they now had the opportunity to embrace. Whether they liked the role or not was secondary. What was most important is that they had one and knew what was asked of them. To the credit of every player, particularly those that had newfound roles, they embraced their opportunity and made the most of it.
Across all different aspects of sports and business, there are similar opportunities to assign roles and delegate ownership. As a leader, it is particularly important to do all that you can to make your players/people feel important and valued. The more they feel this, the more they are willing to give their best to the team.
Post image: By j_rho, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
