Coaches must accept players' early struggles in new defensive structures

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2022-23 regular season by former NHL coaches and assistants who will turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. Mark Recchi and Phil Housley will take turns providing insight.

In this edition, Recchi, a Hall of Fame player who has been an assistant with the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils, discusses what coaches are seeing and thinking in the first month of a season and how patience and institutional knowledge of their teams is vitally important to prevent overreactions positively or negatively.
As coaches we always look for developing trends early in the season, and one that never seems to fail is how chances against are up and defensive structure has obvious cracks early in the season as teams are attempting to get settled.
I've always thought that through the years, especially when you get new coaching staffs and bring in new players through trades or free agency. People have to get used to systems and structure and how they are supposed to play.
Systems and structure don't vary greatly from team to team in the NHL, but it still takes time to build that cohesive structure to where you're not thinking, you're just playing and fitting into the system and structure.
What you see at this time of the season is a lot of breakdowns, a lot of 2-on-1s. I've watched a game every night and there are a lot of odd-man rushes. That will tend to tighten up as the year goes on.
The trend is even more pronounced this season with 10 teams, nearly a third of the NHL, which have new coaches. It creates a whole different look for those teams.
With the Dallas Stars, they're a little more offensive now under coach Peter DeBoer, looking to drive more offense and score more goals than they did last season. It's not as conservative, but it's not always going to work as they incorporate their structure into the push for more offense.
Jim Montgomery is known as an offensive-minded coach, and he's done a good job with the Boston Bruins.
Bruce Cassidy is a good coach. He's brought structure and a different voice to the Vegas Golden Knights. Some teams need that. I think Vegas did after missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season.
You're seeing more structure and discipline from the Philadelphia Flyers under John Tortorella, but it's inconsistent. It's the same with the Detroit Red Wings under first-year coach Derek Lalonde.
But on the whole with a lot of teams this early in the season, it's about players working out kinks. They want to produce so badly early in the season to get into a groove that they get onto the offensive side more, sacrificing defense, and that leads to chances the other way.
Eventually the coaches have to rein them in a little bit. As the season goes on it gets tighter, and as coaches we know that and we realize we have to live with it too, even if we don't like it.
But players also know they can't play run-and-gun hockey for 82 games and be successful. You're asking a lot of your goalies, leaving them out to dry too often. The teams that play that way and can't fix it, it's fool's gold.
I remember the Buffalo Sabres in 2018-19 started out well, going 17-6-2, but they were getting outshot and outchanced regularly. It didn't feel sustainable, and it wasn't. They went 16-33-8 the rest of the way.
There are examples of that every season. There will be this season. We just don't know who it will be yet.
It's not easy as a coach to deal with it, but you also have an understanding as a coach that if your group is going to be able to tighten it up or if you have real reason to be concerned.
For example, when I was with the Pittsburgh Penguins, we knew that group would tighten right up. We just knew it. Sure, it took a little bit of time, but with that experience we knew it was coming. It was just a matter of managing it as much as we could in the early part of the season.
When I was with the New Jersey Devils it wasn't the same feeling, but there were so many goalies there that we were fighting an uphill battle all the time. You just never felt comfortable.
Institutional knowledge helps. Coaches can't be comfortable ever, but we can feel at least somewhat at ease when you trust your group.
Since I mentioned the Sabres already, I figured I would finish with them too, because from what I have seen from them this season it certainly looks like it's anything but fool's gold.
The Sabres look for real and I think it's sustainable. They're being led by a group that plays a very hard, structured game. Coach Don Granato has done a great job. The players believe in him. They believe in themselves and what they're doing.
You see a guy like forward Tage Thompson, the huge step he's taken there. Defenseman Rasmus Dahlin as well. It took them a little bit longer to get it going in their careers, but they bought in and it's paying off now.
It seems like the Sabres have a plan, that Granato has the players on board, has their attention and there is trust both ways. They're at times no different than any other team this early in the season, working out the kinks, pushing for more offense instead of cracking down defensively, but the Sabres look to me like a team that will tighten up.