The Colorado Avalanche have struggled mightily in finding a suitable system that uses their strengths, and-you know, “wins games”. But just looking at the philosophy Barry Trotz has implemented in Washington would be a great boost to the Avalanche.

There are a lot of old coaching clichés that are heard so often over the season that we start to tune them out. One in particular though has becoming increasingly prevalent in the last couple seasons and that’s GM’s and coaches saying, “The team needs to regain their identity.”

Usually this is just a euphemism for the team needs to get their shit together and play the systems correctly and with the right mindset. However, it has also began incorporating the team’s overall philosophy. For example, when Joe Sacco was in charge, the Colorado Avalanche’s identity was supposed to be a scrappy defense-first team.

Last year the oldest tenured coach in the NHL left a defense-first team (the Nashville Predators) for a very offense-first team (the Washington Capitals). That coach — in case you didn’t catch the hints — was Barry Trotz. Now were going to take bit of an aside to talk about Trotz.

I admire everything about Barry Trotz as a coach’. To keep myself from getting all sappy, I’ll present why in bullet point form:

He coaches to the team’s construction. In Nashville with no real scorers but some world class defenseman and goalie, it was defense. In Washington it’s been a more balanced two-way game.

The way he changed Alex Ovechkin’s game shows how much the players respect him. Ovechkin still isn’t perfect defensively, but now he at least enters the defensive zone and puts in the effort.

He is very vocally still defense first — however he strongly believes that defense is just about getting the puck back as quickly as possible

That last point is huge, and he expanded on it in an interview before he started coaching in Washington: “One of the things people think about defense is it’s just backing up… That’s not it at all. Defense is about getting the puck quickly so you can do something offensively.”

And he’s been true to his word. The year before Trotz came to Washington, the Capitals scored 235 goals while giving up 240. Under Trotz the last two years the Capitals have allowed 203 and 193 respectively. The most impressive part though is in the last two year, even while the Capitals significantly improved defensively, their goals scored increased. Last year they scored 242, and this year an outstanding 252. All while having the second best defense in the league.

How It Applies To The Colorado Avalanche

I like Barry Trotz for many reasons, but his view on defense is the future of the game and something the Colorado Avalanche are trending the opposite direction on. This year when the Avalanche decided they needed to get better defensively, they collapsed to block shots and give the puck carrier time and space in a trade to not get beat to the front of the net (which still happened a ton).

But that’s not the way defense is played now a days, and for a reason. Yay the Colorado Avalanche blocked the most shots in the league, that’s awesome Peter Mcnabb; too bad they’re still the 6th worse defensive team in the league. And because the Avalanche spend all their time passively sitting back, hoping to do the goalies job, they’re not ever regaining the puck.

And for everyone out there who is going to tell me the Avalanche are an offense-first team with all their good offensive forwards, I want you know they were 10th last in the league in scoring this year.

Here’s the thing, and I know a million people have already said this, but you need to have the puck to score. And sitting back and blocking shots doesn’t really create all that many turnovers. In fact I would argue it creates more scoring chances for the opposition by giving them time and space.

If the Colorado Avalanche want to win they need to play defensive first, and that doesn’t mean dump and chase, it doesn’t mean 50 blocked shots a game, and it doesn’t mean just chipping it out of zone: it means working to get the puck back when you don’t have it.

The Avalanche can call themselves an offense-first team all they want. However, it’s hard to be an offensive team if you never have the puck.