In Tuesday night’s win over the Colorado Avalanche, 19-year-old forward Filip Chytil spent the entire game on the wing. The 2017 first round pick should stay there for now.
Developing talent for the long term is arguably the toughest part of coaching an NHL team. Juggling 18 different personalities that all require certain approaches and motivations. For some players, tough love in the form of a healthy scratch will push them better than positive reinforcement in video review.
As for the development of Filip Chytil, the New York Rangers have quite the conundrum. In the team’s first five games, the Czech center played heavily sheltered minutes, he averaged only 12:17 of ice time with 57.7 percent of his zone starts coming in the offensive end. This as a whole makes sense, this is a marquee talent the team views as a long-term building block.
The key for New York is not messing up the foundation of Chytil’s game as a center. In terms of the responsibilities, a center is more valuable than a winger. The pivot has to manage things in the defensive zone, the rest of the system is contingent upon their positioning.
Against the Colorado Avalanche, Chytil played on the wing in the Rangers’ top six. Although the team insisted during the preseason that he was a center and that’s where it needed him, there is an argument to be made. At least in the short term, there is more to be gained from Chytil playing on the wing.
The short-term residual effects of getting Chytil into the team’s top six has positive effects. The long-term goal should still be having him play center but in the interim, get him exposed to heavy minutes
Lineup structure
In placing Chytil into the Rangers’ top six David Quinn set up a series of cascading effects. First, this was likely just a single game choice based on his decision to healthy scratch Pavel Buchnevich for a game. The coach didn’t like where Buchnevich’s competition level was at and it gave Chytil a promotion.
Whenever the Russian comes back, it’ll likely slide Chytil back down to playing third line center. However, in moving Chytil up, it does two other things. First, it pushes Jimmy Vesey down to the third line, a role he is better suited for. The Harvard product is a poacher and dependent on his linemates to create offensive opportunities for him to capitalize.
This, in turn, gives the four lines a greater level of balance. While the fourth line played about five minutes of ice time in the entire game, it pushed the top three lines. New York dictated the flow of the game against Colorado, especially when Chytil was out on the ice.
The result
While Chytil himself did not get on the scoresheet against the Avalanche, he was on the ice for a significant chunk of the game against good competition. In playing alongside Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes, the former first-round pick was a strong possession player. While possession is not a sole indicator as to how well a player is doing, it does provide a measuring stick.
This line combination had a Corsi For percentage (CF%) of 66.67 percent. This means that when these forwards were on the ice together, New York created 66.67 percent of the shots in the game. That is a ludicrously high figure when you consider that the average player has a CF% of 50.
While this was just a one-game sample size, there is no way to fib that kind of dominance. It’s pretty simple if those three are on the ice, the Rangers are creating the scoring chances and the other team isn’t. Sure, there is the chance that the other team has fewer shots in the game and still wins, but over the course of an entire season, the team that has more typically wins.
The Rangers had 43 shots on goal in the game, six of which came from this group. The other encouraging thing about the performance was chances against. The reason that Chytil was so heavily sheltered in the first few games of the season was the perceived inability in the defensive zone.
The logic being that young players develop their defensive attributes last because of how amateur hockey is played. At that level, there is not a ton of defense and it’s more oriented around showy offensive plays.
The Rangers do not have to lose to develop their players if playing Chytil on the wing gives it a better chance of winning, it’s worth considering. Playing 16 minutes per night on the wing is more helpful than ten as a center in a sheltered role.