Phantoms' Head Coach Scott Gordon Focusing On 'The Process' During AHL Preseason
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms came out and laid an egg in their preseason-opening 8-1 loss to the Charlotte Checkers Friday night, but head coach Scott Gordon wasn't overly concerned with the final score. Entering his third year behind the bench as the Phantoms' head coach, Gordon knows that it's "all part of the process."
AHL preseason poses different challenges than in the NHL
The American Hockey League's (AHL) preseason is vastly different than that of the NHL's.
For starters, AHL teams still have a few or even several players they expect to be on their roster by opening night next week still battling for jobs in the NHL. Then, taking into account the amount of roster turnover at the minor-league level and how many newcomers have just recently turned pro it's a little easier to understand how quickly an AHL preseason game can unravel in a perfect storm of poor decision-making and adversity.
That's exactly what happened to the Phantoms Friday.
"It's easy to feel good about a week of practice when there's no opposition and little resistance against you," Gordon said after last night's loss. "We tired to put in our system play and put in some pace to the practices, but with a little bit more pressure in a game the execution of plays didn't happen. And we had some players that are new here that are probably going to take them a little bit longer to adjust."
While Phantoms forward Danick Martel didn't shy away from airing his frustration at his team's lack of compete level Friday, Gordon erred on the side of caution in pointing out that with such a mixed bag of players in the lineup - some returning players, some newly signed AHL veterans, some rookies and some ECHL-level players - that mistakes were bound to happen.
The mistakes came in bunches in the first period. Penalties, poor defensive coverages and some breakdowns in the systems play resulted in five goals against in the opening period of play Friday night.
The Phantoms got on the board in the second period after a good play by rookie forward Mikhail Vorobyev, who hustled to put pressure on a forecheck and forced a turnover before retrieving a puck behind the net and feeding Derek Whitmore in front of the net for the team's lone goal.
"Obviously, Vorobyev is a very talented player and he's going to be really good," Gordon said, adding, "But he's also coming to North America and doesn't speak a lot of English. He's worked really hard. There's a lot of good pieces here. The 8-1 score doesn't look good, but we know we have some talent here. It might take a little bit of time, but we're still excited about the team we have."
Gordon further explained that the Phantoms didn't make things easy on themselves by often complicating things in situations that didn't need to be complicated. Whether it was not shooting the puck, not getting a puck out when it had to be, or trying to make plays that weren't there.
"It's all a part of the process here, and we just have to come back and be better tomorrow."
Yet another way the AHL preseason differs from the NHL preseason is simply the amount of games being played before the regular season. While the Flyers are wrapping up their eight-game preseason schedule Sunday against the Boston Bruins, the Phantoms have just two AHL preseason contests - the pair of games against Charlotte this weekend - to get ready for their season opener on October 7th against Hershey.
"It's a little different for us, because we have more practice and they have more games so they get the opportunity to be more game-ready and more game-conditioned than we do," Gordon explained. "But I feel pretty confident that we'll be in pretty good shape after the first two games and we'll have our full lineup like every other team in the league. Last year too I think we were blown out in the first game, and it was tight in the second game. Nobody wants to lose 8-1, but it happened and we have to be ready to play tomorrow."
So what exactly is Gordon and the Phantoms' staff looking for out of the two games this weekend?
"The biggest thing I think is game conditioning is what's important out of these two games. I guess the best part when you lose 8-1 there's a lot of mistakes that can be shown and you can learn from to say 'this is the difference of not having success and having success'. We'll obviously watch some of it [Saturday] and when we come back on Monday we'll have an opportunity to not only go through stuff in practice but sometimes seeing the picture is better than actually practicing things. You can talk about it all you want, but at the end of the day when you see where you are and what the difference of right and wrong is it becomes more black and white."
