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Lightning must make special teams special

Assistant coach Craig Ramsay stresses the value of aggression on power plays and penalty kills.

By DAMIAN CRISTODERO

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 30, 2001

SUNRISE -- Talk about obvious.

Asking how important special teams are in hockey is like asking if the reindeer are important to Santa Claus. The big man may get the headlines, but he's not going anywhere without something to power the sleigh.

It is the same for a hockey team, which is pulled by special teams toward failure or success.

"It is," Lightning associate coach Craig Ramsay said, "a vital part of what we're trying to accomplish."

For Tampa Bay, that is to shrink the difference between goals scored and allowed. The Lightning was outscored 280-201 last season. This season, coach John Tortorella wants to limit the opposition to 230 goals or less.

Special teams -- the penalty kill and power play -- are the best ways to do that. Saying it and doing it are different things. Tampa Bay's special teams were brutal last season. The power play coughed and wheezed to 12.5 percent efficiency. Only the expansion Wild was worse. The penalty kill was 17th out of 30 teams at 82.9 percent.

Rule of thumb: If power play and penalty kill percentages add up to 100, you're doing okay. The Lightning came in at 95.4.

"I don't think they were mentally prepared to be as successful as you had to be," Ramsay said. "If you've never had success, I don't think you're ever going to be 100 percent certain what you're doing is going to work."

How, then, to reverse the trend?

Ramsay, the special teams architect, said the key is not to revamp the basic plan but to get the players to better execute. That means aggressive play, though in slightly different forms, on both the power play and the penalty kill.

"It's desperation on both sides," Ramsay said. "That's something a little easier to sell on the penalty kill. But the power play has to be desperate on any loose puck to win the battles because of the effort of the other team."

Sounds simple, but the Lightning didn't do enough to win the battles for the puck, especially with the man advantage. It also lost too many key faceoffs and didn't shoot the puck enough. Shots mean scoring chances and, especially with a man advantage, chances to pick up rebounds.

"We don't have to do anything unbelievable," defenseman Andrei Zyuzin said. "We just have to do the little things right."

That includes being patient if the first foray into the offensive zone goes wrong.

"What happened last year is we had two minutes on the power play and tried to score a goal in the first 30 or 40 seconds," Zyuzin said. "We just have to go in there and settle down and be cocky in their zone."

Dave Andreychuk should make that easier. The left wing's 236 power-play goals are tied with Brett Hull for second all time. And at 6 feet 4, 220 pounds, he can shield the puck with his body and create a play.

It is a work in progress. Going into Saturday night's preseason finale against the Panthers at National Car Rental Center, the power play was at 14.7 percent efficiency (5-for-34).

Particularly distressing was the inability to score on a two-minute, five-on-three advantage early in the first period of Friday's 3-2 loss to Florida at the Ice Palace.

"I think we were out of synch," Andreychuk said. "We were pressing and that's not a good thing to have on a power play. We have to relax and play our positions and use each other."

The same can be said of the penalty kill, which was working at 84.6 percent (22-for-26). This is a specialty for Ramsay, who scored a Sabres-record 27 shorthanded goals and in 1985 won the Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward.

Ramsay said even shorthanded "you can outman the opposition."

In many cases, Ramsay advocates swarming the puckhandler. It leaves people free in the defensive zone, but it's a chance he is willing to take.

"If they beat us, then they win," Ramsay said. "By being more aggressive, you're going to give up situations. But over the course of a season, if you can do that, you win."

Good goaltending evens the odds, as do short shifts to keep the legs fresh and moving. It also is important to clog the slot to force the puck outside and lessen scoring chances.

If the opposition has the puck behind Tampa Bay's net, center Tim Taylor said it's best to think twice before giving chase because at that point, "It's four-on-four. If you try to get at him, somebody is open."

The best plan is to stay out of the penalty box. The Lightning was the NHL's sixth-most penalized team last season.

"Our discipline has to be a lot better," Andreychuk said.

Now that would be special.

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