One of the things Colorado Avalanche coach Patrick Roy became known for in his first year on the job last season was his aggressiveness when it came to pulling his team's goalie for an extra attacker when trailing late in games.
While most coaches tend to wait until the final minute in a one-goal game, and maybe stretch it to a minute-and-a-half when down by two, Roy regularly decided to go for the extra attacker with a minimum of two minutes to play in pretty much every game his team was trailing, whether they were down by one or two goals. As the season progressed, he became more aggressive and would at times decide to go for the extra attacker with three minutes to play, including in a playoff game against the Minnesota Wild (it ended up working, as the Avalanche tied the game then won in overtime). If they were down by enough goals, he would even go as high as four or five minutes.
On Friday night in Winnipeg, Roy upped the ante, even for him.
With the Avalanche trailing, 5-1, and set to go on a 5-on-3 two-man advantage, Roy decided to lift goalie Semyon Varlamov with more than 13 minutes to play in the game to give his team a very rare 6-on-3 advantage, as shown in the screenshot above.
It didn't result in a goal, and the Avalanche went on to lose 6-2, but this really isn't the wrong call. It was a small window where Colorado had an opportunity to maybe get back into the game with a couple of goals, and the worst case scenario is you end up losing by five goals instead of four.
There is enough data to show that coaches tend to be a bit too conversative when it comes to going for the extra attacker and that doing it earlier could lead to a couple of more goals and maybe an extra win or two over the course of a season. Just last season the Avalanche won three games and took a fourth to overtime in games they were trailing and that Roy went for the extra attacker with more than two minutes to play. Earlier this season the Detroit Red Wings overcame a two-goal deficit to beat Pittsburgh in the final three minutes when Mike Babcock lifted Jimmy Howard with 2:55 to play.
But Roy's move on Friday brings up another interesting thought: Should coaches pull their goalie when they're on a two-man advantage at certain points in the game? Roy is certainly not the first hockey coach to do something like this, but it's still extremely rare to see at the NHL level. When former NHL player Uwe Krupp was coaching the German national team at the 2007 Deutschland Cup against team USA he did it on two separate occasions in the same game (once in the middle of the game and once in the final five minutes) and watched his team score both times.
It's one of those strategies that isn't going to turn a bad team into a good team, and if it backfires it's unconventional enough that there is sure to be backlash and criticism directed at the coach. But it could still be something that allows a coach to pick up a couple of extra points that they might otherwise be leaving on the table in a given season . At least until the rest of the league picks up on it and starts doing it.
