Now that the Worcester Railers 2022-2023 season has been over for a few weeks and the warmer weather is taking over hopefully enough time has finally passed where we can look back on the many failures of last season and not get too angry or depressed about it.
Mathematically the Railers failed to make the playoffs on the last day of the season when they collapsed in the third period of their final regular season game against Adirondack, but the seeds of that failure were really planted in early December when some of the key players from their early season success were no longer available.
Every ECHL team has to deal with roster turmoil over the long regular season, but the big difference between the Railers and the teams that qualified for the Kelly Cup playoffs is while those teams found ways to maintain what success they had or got better in adding players, Worcester did neither of those things.
And perhaps worse, it appears the Railers’ hockey operations didn’t try very hard.
Seemingly worried that roster changes would affect the dressing room hockey operations was reluctant to bring in new players that might upset the chemistry the team had, ignoring the obvious fact that games are not won in the dressing room, they’re won on the ice. If you’re losing on the ice, which the Railers were doing, it doesn’t matter how well the team was getting along in the dressing room.
Phrases like “wouldn’t know the system” and “we have a lot of guys injured” were muttered all winter as reasons to not bring in new players as the losses piled up. If you’re losing with the guys you have, how much worse can new players do?
Next season that has to be the number one change. No matter how well the team starts the roster should always be looked at to find areas of improvement. And if that means helping a player get better, then do that. If that means finding someone else and moving on from the first guy, then that needs to be done.
Worcester plays in the toughest division in the ECHL, surrounded by teams that are well supplied of players by their affiliates or have general managers that constantly look for opportunities to get better. And if the Railers don’t follow those examples it’s going to be a long time before they make any sort of run toward the Kelly Cup.
One easy area to look at to improve is the defense. As a group, the kindest thing Worcester’s defense over the last few seasons can be called is “below average”. To be blunt, that’s giving the group far too much credit. They would look a whole lot worse without the great goaltending that Worcester has gotten over the years. Time and time again netminders Ken Appleby and Henrik Tikkanen bailed out the blueliners with great saves this season.
Most of the defensemen on the roster aren’t physical enough to be able to clear opponents from the front of their net, they don’t win many puck battles, and they oftentimes lose track of opposing forwards in the Worcester zone. Now some of those shortcomings could be overlooked if the defense put up a lot of points, but they don’t do that either.
The lack of forwards backchecking consistently was an issue too, with the Railers giving up far too many quality chances to opponents trailing the play, streaking into the Worcester zone unmarked and collecting pucks through wide open passing lanes.
Even when things all worked out and the Worcester defense was able to gain control of the puck the forwards transitioned to offense so quickly that many times they left the defenders outnumbered in their own zone and unable to get the puck out of the defensive end, resulting in turnovers and high-quality scoring bids by the opponent.
The Railers penalty kill was another big problem. While it got better as the season went on it still allowed far too many scoring bids by playing so passively. Giving the opposition so much time to make plays just about never works out, either by allowing a better quality chance against or by forcing a penalty killer to block booming slap shots.
Blocking shots as a primary penalty kill will only result in hurt players in the long run, and we saw plenty of that over the season.
We also saw far too many extra-attacker goals against the Railers for the same reason. By not pressuring the puck carrier opponents were able to eventually find clear shooting lanes or got the puck to the front of the net by intentionally shooting it wide to be claimed by forwards ready to get the puck to the front of the net while Worcester repositioned.
But don’t get the idea it’s all on the defense. Far too often the team played “dump and chase”, which is not a long-term successful offensive strategy as all it does consistently is give up possession of the puck. Once it becomes clear that’s a tactic you’ll be using a lot defenses prepare for it, and within short order the puck is headed back to your own goal.
It would be great to see the number of times the Railers used dump and chase with their goaltender pulled. Worcester gave up 16 empty net goals. My guess is most of those are due to attempting to dump the puck into the offensive zone and failing to gain possession.
The Railers did manage to score seven late-game goals with their goalie pulled, but only earned points in two of those games.
So in the four months to go to the start of next season hockey operations needs to figure out a better plan for replacing injured or under performing players, come up with a viable offensive system that removes the need to play dump and chase so often, work on a more aggressive defensive scheme for when facing an extra attacker, and needs to recruit defensemen that can play a better, more physical game.
And the clock is already ticking.
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