Wilson's shuffling tough on Thornton

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Nov 1, 2007 | by David PollakSTAFF

SAN JOSE -- Consider the different linemates that Sharks center Joe Thornton has been skating with this season.

Jonathan Cheechoo and Patrick Marleau were the first. Then Cheechoo was out and Torrey Mitchell was in. Later, Ryane Clowe replaced Marleau. Then Michalek took Mitchell's place. Joe Pavelski appeared every so often. Somewhere along the way, Jeremy Roenick showed up. The list goes on.

It all gets so confusing.

And raises questions: Why don't NHL coaches give forward lines more time to gel? Why can't coaches be more patient?

"Patience," said Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock, "is an interesting thing. My mother had lots and I have none."

"In a perfect world," said Dallas Stars coach Dave Tippett, "you could just put your lines together and everybody does their job and it just flows right and you win all the time. That's a perfect world, that's not reality."

Quick success wanted

Let Sharks coach Ron Wilson define his reality.

"I don't have the time to wait for a guy to play well," Wilson said this week. "It might take only one guy or two guys that can ruin everybody else's effort by not being alert, by not being involved. Your job as a coach is to recognize that right off the bat. You go down and say it's got to be better, then when it's not that next shift or two -- boom! -- you change lines."

The constant mixing and matching of Sharks' forwards has become a flashpoint for San Jose fans who are unhappy with the team's 6-5-0- 1 start. Many online critics put the blame on Wilson for his constant reshuffling of lines.

But while hockey has a tradition of famous lines that stayed together season after season -- Detroit's Production Line in the 1940s and 1950s, Buffalo's French Connection in the 1970s -- coaches will tell you that was a different era.

Performance is the primary -- but not the only -- reason that coaches say they mix up lines as often as they do. Play well, play more; play poorly, not so much.

"The only motivation that a coach has is ice time," Wilson said. "It's the absolute only thing that a coach is in control of during a game."

Other reasons for the constant rearranging of lines? Size, matchups on a given night, an opponent's strategy.

Scott Bowman guided three NHL teams to nine Stanley Cup titles, more than anyone else. While coaching Montreal in the 1970s, he would keep his two top wings -- Guy LaFleur and Steve Schutt -- together and vary the center.

"If we wanted to play them against a power line of another team, then I would use Jacques Lemaire, who was a good two-way player," said Bowman, now a consultant with Detroit. "If the other team was putting a checking line out, then I would use Pete Mahovlich, a really good player, but not as good defensively as Lemaire."

Players, in general, say that they're happy to work with whatever linemates the coach wants. But it can be a point of friction. Marleau, for example, acknowledged last August that though he understood Wilson's reasons, he would have preferred more stability at times.

Coaches have heard it all. And don't seem to care.

"That's how losses happen," Dallas' Tippett said of keeping unsuccessful lines together at a player's request.

Detroit's Babcock said that "it's real important that you have a feel for what your players think, but they know full well that if they're not going, you get a deaf ear pretty quick."

Wilson was equally unsympathetic.

"What I'm responsible for is putting us in a position to win," he said. "If a line isn't holding up its end of the bargain, they're not entitled to continue to play together."

Wilson and other NHL coaches say their decision to mix up lines is made on instinct, not by following any particular formula.

The Sharks coach compared himself to a safecracker.

"I don't have, like on a piece of paper, the combination that automatically opens the San Jose Sharks," he said. "You've got to get a feel for it and then you hear a tumbler click and that's the line to go with on a given night."

Sometimes, he said, dropping a player off a top line can spark production. Take Cheechoo, for example.

"Right now, Cheech is struggling in scoring," Wilson said. "And when you start pressing, sometimes it helps to go play on another line where there's less pressure."

Under pressure

Playing with Thornton, he added, "is a double-edged sword. It's a tremendous opportunity, but it's also a tremendous weight. Because if he's setting you up and the puck's not going in the net, all this pressure builds and you start to get tight.

The idea now, Wilson said, is to have Cheechoo concentrate on other things.

"You kill penalties and you have some grind shifts and you forecheck a little bit," the coach said, "and then once you feel comfortable and have forgotten about scoring, you get back out there with Joe and you start scoring. Then it flows. That's generally what I've experienced."

Wilson said one reason Thornton has worked with so many linemates is the fact he can handle more ice time than other forwards.

"I might be thinking, Joe could play 24 minutes a night and Milan could be effective at 20 minutes -- and I have the evidence to know," Wilson said. "For right now, let's say I know Jeremy Roenick can be effective for 13 or 14 minutes for obvious reasons."