Game Changers, Part One: No red line a green light for speeders

Connor McDavid’s blazing speed was never more evident than in junior hockey, when he played for the Erie Otters. In one of his final games against eventual OHL champion Oshawa, he left three players in his skating wake to set up a goal. It was nothing out of the ordinary.

Making the jump to the NHL, the 19-year-old’s speed is even more impressive. Now, the Edmonton Oilers captain is beating the best players that pro hockey has to offer on a nightly basis. He’s not the only one, but McDavid has become the poster boy for the new NHL: the next generation of skilled, well-trained, high-speed hockey players.

As a result, the game has never been faster.

“The generation that’s taking over is a new one in my opinion,” said Edmonton Oilers coach Todd McLellan. “They haven’t played under the old clutch-and-grab rules. They never were exposed to it ever — no matter where they were at their age. They’ve always played free hockey. Some of the older players (in the NHL) that have played 10 years in the league are in-betweeners and some of the really old guys that aren’t playing anymore, obviously that’s the only way they knew. So I think that free play is prominent in their development and also the tactics coaches use in that free-play world is the only thing they’ve ever known. So they’re fast and they like playing that way.”

For someone who follows junior hockey, it was an intriguing comment.

How has this new generation been developed without the red line? How much has the game changed? What kind of philosophical shifts have coaches and general managers had to make? How has the defensive game evolved with players moving faster than ever?

Yahoo Sports spoke to coaches and GMs – many of whom are former NHLers – across the Canadian Hockey League to find out how the game is changing.

Part 1: Life Without The Red Line

It’s been more than a decade since the red line was removed in the NHL for the 2005-06 season. Back then, the league had just weathered another lockout and the need for an exciting brand of hockey – filled with goals – was a good way to bring fans back to the rinks. There was also (another) crackdown on obstruction, with officials trying to open up the ice as much as possible for players to skate unimpeded.

The rules were also adopted at the junior level and below, creating a trickledown effect. As a result, many of the young players in the NHL today have never had to worry about things like a two-line pass.

“These young guys like Connor McDavid, the only way they know how to play hockey is by getting a little bit more open ice and being able to freewheel,” said Seattle Thunderbirds head coach Steve Konowalchuk, a 14-year NHL veteran.

When Kelowna Rockets head coach Jason Smith was playing in the NHL, it wasn’t uncommon to have two top lines of skilled players, and two more checking or “grind” lines to fill out the forwards on every team.

“Very rarely will you see players succeed in the pro game that can’t skate now,” said Smith, a defenceman who played 15 seasons and more than 1,000 NHL games before retiring in 2009. “There was a time where if you had really good hands and a real good hockey I.Q. or knowledge of the game you could get by with being a below-average skater. Now skating is something that is pretty much the most important trait to have as a young player.”

Windsor Spitfires general manager Warren Rychel agrees. When he’s out scouting for talent at the lower levels, the first thing he looks at is skating, with hockey sense listed as a close second. In the past, he said, being positionally sound might have been able to mask poor footwork. Now, if a player doesn’t have the skating, there’s very little chance of making it at the higher level.

The amount of physicality has also changed since Rychel played in the NHL during the 1990s. That might have been the height of the clutch-and-grab era with players impeding each other in any way possible.

“Now there’s no holding, no mugging, so a guy that can skate can think his way through because there’s nothing physical,” said Rychel, who played eight seasons in the NHL. “Before, you couldn’t go to the front of the net without getting cranked. You would be held, you would be viciously cross-checked. Now a small guy can go in front of the net at any time. Anyone can go and stand in front of the net, and that wasn’t the case 10 or 15 years ago.”

The ice surface hasn’t changed, but with players now bigger, stronger, and faster has the game become too fast?

“I always thought ‘No’ because it was so exciting and I was a big fan of it,” said Halifax Mooseheads head coach Andre Tourigny, an assistant coach with the Ottawa Senators last year. “But what do we do about the injuries? I don’t know how we prevent those injuries with still keeping the speed. It’s tough. I don’t have an answer.”

A faster game means any kind of incidental contact can be dangerous. Increased awareness about CTE and brain injuries has made concussions a major concern at every level of the game.

“Every year guys are going into the boards harder and harder,” said Rychel. “If you hit a guy by accident you could get severely injured or concussed. The rate of speed is so high now that there are lots of accidental hits in our game now because everyone is moving so fast that result in injury.”

Former NHL defenceman Derian Hatcher is on the fence about returning the red line, but thinks something should be done to slow the game down not only for player safety, but to improve quality.

“I think for defencemen it’s almost dangerous to play right now,” said the head coach and co-owner of the OHL’s Sarnia Sting. “The game is so fast and guys are coming at you so fast. I think the red line would put a lot more creativity back in the game as well and it might slow it down a little bit, but slow it down in a good way.”

Konowalchuk feels that the removal of the red line makes for an “ugly hockey game.” He said players can get away without even having to pass anymore. Now all you have to do is shoot the puck as hard as you can to a player at the far blue line and as soon as it’s tipped, your team is on the forecheck.

“I think it’s taking the thinking out of it

and I think it’s taking the skill out of it,” said Konowalchuk, a former NHL assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche.

“In one way it makes the puck go back and forth fast, but it takes away from a lot of skilled plays. With the red line in, you’re forced to carry it up the ice and make a few passes.”

Not everyone agrees.

“Your player isn’t going to have more skill with or without the red line,” said Tourigny. “If you remember when the red line was there, you had teams with a really good trap in the neutral zone and when they got the puck they didn’t try to do a lot with it. They were chipping the puck because they didn’t want a turnover.”

Rychel, who is not in favour of seeing the red line return, said he’s seeing the same kind of zone stretching and tipping pucks at the minor hockey level. The days of three players skating up ice together making passing plays are becoming a thing of the past from what he’s seeing on his scouting trips.

“Watching games even at the minor midget level, the puck is going everywhere now,” said Rychel. “Especially north-south. It’s going 200 feet faster than ever with a little tip at centre ice. Unless it’s a controlled breakout or a power-play breakout, you don’t see a lot of guys coming together up the ice. Now it’s a chip and a (defenceman) pinches, and a mistake that makes it a 2-on-1.”

At the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, a paper looking at zone entry data concluded that a player carrying the puck over the blue line was roughly three times more likely to score than a player dumping the puck in. In a game now focused on puck possession, it found the chances of a team recovering a dump or tip-in to be very low.

After the NHL removed the red line in 2005-06, scoring immediately increased to an average of 6.16 goals per game. Since that time, however, the average has been steadily declining as coaches continue to figure out ways to keep the puck out of the net. Last season, the average was down to 5.42 per game – the lowest it had been since the lockout.

“We’re crying for goals but every team in the NHL, every coach’s job in the NHL relies on goals against and winning games,” said Rychel. “So they’re bringing all five guys into the slot and blocking shots. This is starting to happen in bantam. They’re back and they’re getting lower, they’re giving that point shot up and willing to block it rather than give a high-slot shot up to a forward.”

Tourigny said taking the red line out forced him to change his entire coaching philosophy. With the red line in, he was less concerned about the neutral zone and his goal was to shore up the defence as much as possible – trap well, close out the opponent and try create transition. He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about offence.

“It became important for me to build speed in the neutral zone to have a good forecheck or even better possession on the entry,” said Tourigny. “That’s why I’d be lying if I said we would generate more offence or puck possession with the red line, it’s the reverse.

“As a coach you have more control over goals against than goals for. You can have a strategy offensively, but at the end of the day the talent of your players is number one.”

Tomorrow: Game Changers, Part Two: Coaching Generation Next