One of the biggest changes for the Terriers this year from a strategic perspective will be a switch from a man-to-man defensive scheme to a hybrid zone scheme. Parker discussed the move during a recent sit-down with The Daily Free Press.
On the switch
“We all kind of sat around all summer deciding what we wanted to do to change our d-zone coverage — what’s the best approach and which one should we choose given the personnel we’ve got. We kind of looked at NHL teams, teams in our own league, teams in the Olympic competition. We saw a lot of different looks in that, and we’ve come up with a kind of hybrid type of zone coverage. We used to play straight man-for-man. Some schools play straight zone. We’re gonna play a little bit of both. It’s definitely gonna be different. It’s gonna be more focused on protecting the grade-A area and not worrying about people out in the corners.”
On how big of an adjustment it will be
“I think it will be a big adjustment for the guys that are here because we’ve played man-for-man all the time. I don’t think it’ll be as big an adjustment for the freshmen. The freshmen have probably played more of what we’re playing. What we’ve introduced this year, they’ve probably played that in the past. What we’re using is something that’s almost universal. It’s nothing unique. We haven’t created anything. This is something that, for decades, most schools have used.”
On this compared to the changes BU made in 2007-08
“Yeah, that went really sour. But that was a real drastic change to what we refer to as a layered look. We wound up standing around way too much in that, probably because we didn’t know how to teach it well. There are schools that do it really well and pro teams that do it really well, but we didn’t. That’s not what we’re doing. We’ve gotta be more aggressive than we were in the layered look.”
So it’s a more subtle change?
“Exactly. You’re not gonna really notice much. When you watched us play the layered look, it was a big change. This will be a subtle change.”
I guess we will wait and see whether the goalies carry a 3.5 gpg average or a 2.0 to see how it works.
defensive coverage near net a real problem for B.U. last year.
RalphB ’66
They used to expose the center by spreading too thinly on the wings. Teams that had great, fast puck movement (BC, Maine, etc.) exploited that. It would spread our D thin and hang Kieran out to dry.