As forgotten hair metal band Great White once said, “Once bitten, twice shy.”* You can apply that to Canucks fans, who are wary of new head coach Travis Green after being bitten by Willie Desjardins.
You could see it as soon as Nic Dowd’s ice time started to creep up over the last couple weeks. The comparisons to Desjardins, and his unfathomable affinity for bottom-six or even bubble players, began to roll in.
It’s like the old SAT analogy questions:
Jayson Megna : Willie Desjardins :: Nic Dowd : Travis Green
The truth, however, is that the comparison doesn’t hold up. Green isn’t at all equivalent to Desjardins, even if a surface-level look at the ice time of his players might make you reach that conclusion. The biggest difference is in how Desjardins and Green have deployed their favoured bottom-six forwards.
The issue with Desjardins and depth players like Jayson Megna, Michael Chaput, and, before them, Linden Vey, is that they were used in situations that were not commensurate with their skill level or on-ice results. Vey got heavy use on the power play, despite never producing enough to justify it.
Both Chaput and Megna ended up playing on the wing with the Sedins, which made no sense whatsoever. At one point in the 2015-16 season, Derek Dorsett was averaging more ice time than the Sedins when the Canucks were down by a goal. It didn't make any sense whatsoever.
That is definitely not the way that Green deploys his forwards. As much as you may want to criticize Green’s overuse of certain players, he does one thing that Desjardins did not: he uses role players in a distinct role.
Desjardins was notorious for rolling his lines without any regard for line-matching, whereas you could argue that Green is overcommitted to line-matching. Early in the season, he used Brandon Sutter, Derek Dorsett, and Markus Granlund in a pure shutdown role, matching them against the best forwards on the opposition.
With Sutter and Dorsett out of the lineup, Green has turned to other forwards to form a makeshift shutdown line. That has included, at times, Granlund, Brendan Gaunce, Jake Virtanen, and Loui Eriksson. When the Canucks traded for Nic Dowd, he was added to the mix and Green has come to rely on him more and more in that role.
Despite playing just thirteen games with the Canucks, Dowd is already third on the team in defensive zone faceoffs. He’s won 55.4% of those draws. Green previously heavily relied upon both Bo Horvat and Brandon Sutter for defensive zone faceoffs, to the near-exclusion of all other Canucks centres, so that provides a big reason why Dowd is on the ice so much.
Essentially, Dowd has filled in for Sutter in the shutdown role and will likely get less ice time once Sutter returns, if he’s not removed from the lineup entirely. He’s not being used as a top-six forward; he’s being used as a defensive shutdown centre because the team is currently missing the two centres that Green has depended on this season for that job.
That’s very different usage than the way Desjardins deployed players like Chaput and Megna. Does that mean that Dowd should play in 3-on-3 overtime, as he did against the Leafs? Of course not. That was a mistake and one Green needs to avoid in the future. But it’s not the same mistake that Desjardins repeatedly made.
Desjardins gave players ice time they didn't deserve by moving them up the lineup into roles for which they were ill-suited. Green puts players into roles that fit their respective skill sets.
I don’t agree with every decision Green has made this season. Far from it. But comparing him to Desjardins just doesn’t make sense.
*Side note: Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter wrote “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” and the original version is so much better than the Great White version that became a moderate hit. Just wanted to say that.
