What Nashville Can Expect from Andrew Brunette
The Panthers' former head coach just got a job with the Nashville Predators only a year after his departure from Florida. Let's see what Nashville can expect and Florida's reaction to the news.
We need to talk about Bruno.
The former Panthers interim head coach whose dismissal (if you could call it that) after last season’s playoffs was seen as a bit shocking by fans and media throughout the hockey world once again is in the headlines. This time, it’s not for his odd departure from the Panthers and his re-surfacing in New Jersey as either an heir-apparent or a veiled threat (depending on who you ask) to Lindy Ruff or his DUI charge for running a couple of stop signs in his golf cart (thankfully, no one was hurt and there was no accident; brief aside: this proves my theory that you can take a man out of Florida but you can’t take the Florida out of the man). It is instead because he’s moving on up and getting another chance as a head coach in the NHL with the Nashville Predators.
Brunette has a bit of a history in Nashville. He played on the team during their inaugural season back in 1998-99 (the only season he would play for the Predators) where he played under then-head coach (and the now-GM of the Predators), Barry Trotz. (Another interesting sidenote: the captain of that ‘98-99 Predators team was former Panther Tom Fitzgerald, the backup goaltender for those Preds was future Panther Tomas Vokoun, and another player was another former Panthers head coach, Bob Boughner.) This is Trotz’s first major move as general manager of the Predators after taking over from the retiring David Poile and it’s a move that hockey media and several fans hasve seemingly praised upon the break of the news. It was a shocking bit of news for sure, but us Panthers fans know that these types of things can sometimes come out of left field (Brunette probably isn’t too upset that he’s not the one being shown the door here). The response from Nashville fans (at least on Twitter) hasn’t been negative either as they seem to be excited with what Brunette may be bringing them, especially after John Hynes’ era of mostly mediocre play and failure to get the most out of his players (apart Roman Josi winning the Norris although that season started with Peter Laviolette still behind the bench and Juuse Saros becoming a Vezina finalist last season), so what can the Predators reasonably expect from Brunette? Can he translate some of his success in Florida over to Nashville or will that one year in Florida prove to be a fluke?
Let’s start by going over some of the results that Brunette had in Florida. Whatever your opinion was on what happened in the postseason (which we’ll get to, I promise), one thing cannot be denied: the 2021-22 Florida Panthers were fun to watch. This was a team that often had a lot of possession, scored lots of goals, gots lots of chances, and also were more than happy to sacrifice some defense and structure in order to get those chances. When you tuned in to an Andrew Brunette Era Panthers game, you knew you were going to get an offensive bonanza and that there would be a lot of goals on both sides. The Panthers under Brunette had an otherworldly 4.11 goals per game in their season with Brunette in charge, a mark that led the league and came so close to hitting the 4.41 goals per game of the 1995-96 Pittsburgh Penguins. They allowed the 13th highest goals against per game with 2.95, a not amazing mark, but still pretty solid. In terms of shot attempts, Brunette’s Panthers dominated both Corsi and Fenwick metrics as they led the league in Corsi For, Corsi For%, Fenwick For%, and Fenwick Against, while being second in Corsi Against and third in Fenwick For (Note: if you are unsure what any of those terms mean, I’ve attached the glossary from Hockey-Reference at the bottom of this article). The Panthers also led the league with 230.4 xGF (they scored 218 actual goals during the season) and only allowed the 11th most xGA (171.1). Hockey-Reference also has a metric called “AxDiff” which is the actual goal differential minus the expected goal differential. If the number is positive, it means the team is “converting or stopping an inordinate amount of chances compared to league average” and a negative value means that the team is getting good chances and not finishing them: the Panthers’ AxDiff in 2021-22 was -2. Yea, they could have been even better in the regular season under Andrew Brunette. It’s just how loaded that team was and while these numbers likely won’t be replicated in Nashville, Brunette will likely continue to coach with a more free-flowing and offensive style, making this Predators team exciting to watch for next season.
Now before any Preds fans start planning a 2024 Stanley Cup parade, there are some caveats to all of those numbers and information in the last paragraph. The team may have led the league in High Danger Chances For (with 706), but they allowed the 5th most High Danger Chances Against (597) and the only reason why that number got overlooked was because the goaltenders were making critical saves, leaving opponents with a mere 9.7% conversion rate on their high danger chances. The problem with this is simple: goaltending can be quite fickle. Relying on it to play incredibly well for a long stretch of time and save a bunch of conceded high danger chances is an extremely risky maneuver. The Panthers’ offense was also almost entirely built on puck possession and generating chances off the rush by catching defensemen out of position either in the neutral zone or when pinching. The problem is once the playoffs started and teams became more structured in the neutral zone and kept defensemen back rather than have them more aggressively pinch into the offensive zone, this effectively neutered the Panthers’ offense as the only way they could really generate pressure in the offensive zone, shots, and goals was blazing up the ice quickly, using space to make creative dekes or passes, and then fire the shot home before the defense or the goalie can even realize what hit them. Without the space to make outlet passes through the neutral zone and pick up speed, the Panthers were effectively pinned in their own end (this was never more apparent than with Ben Chiarot on the ice who put up a nightmarishly awful -15.9 Relative Corsi%, 13th worst out of all players in the 2021-22 playoffs). With the offense completely out of sync and the power play being disastrously awful (the Panthers only had 1 power play goal in the entire postseason), the Brunette-led Panthers were effectively toast. They couldn’t possess the puck. They didn’t get to the dirty areas and crash the net the way you have to in the postseason, showing an unwillingness to pentrate opposing defenses when attacking. The power play was entirely reliant on playmakers like Jonathan Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov getting space to operate, and they got none throughout the postseason. Brunette also appeared out of his depth in the postseason, unable to keep pace with other coaches’ adjustments and too timid to shake things up with his own team until it was too late.
Another debate that some fans (more Panthers fans than Predators fans seemingly) have is what type of style this Nashville team truly wants to play. After all, the Nashville Predators have more or less always been a team built on strong defense and goaltending. The now-GM of the Predators, Barry Trotz, gained a reputation as one of the strongest defensive coaches in the league who preaches about strong structural play and keeping the opponent off the scoresheet. In a way, Nashville has operated for years on the philosophy of “you can’t lose if you don’t concede”. Trotz also had his fair share of success in his coaching career, the vast majority of which was spent in Nashville as he was the head coach there from their inaugural season up until 2015. He won a Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018 and was instrumental in convincing Alex Ovechkin to backcheck and play defense, no easy task. He also took a middling New York Islanders squad and brought them to back-to-back conference finals appearances on the strength of… wait for it… strong structure, great goaltending, and dominant defensive play. Yet, his first major move as GM seems to be hiring a coach with a more new-age approach, more focused on offensive production, passing, and puck possession rather than another doorbolt-esque defensive mind. Some in the Nashville media are all for it and much of the fanbase seems to be excited and I fully understand their enthusiasm. While there are some questions as to how good of a job Trotz can truly do as a GM (being a great head coach doesn’t always translate into being a great executive. Just ask Mike Holmgren or Phil Jackson), I think he’s made a solid hire here. The Nashville Predators want to be a more fun team; they want to open things up and play more of an attractive offensive style. They hired somebody who can coach them to do that in Brunette. The positive for Brunette is that it seems that he’ll be given ample time to figure out the ins and outs of being an NHL head coach (unlike in Florida) and if he wants to tweak his defensive coaching or find a way to make his offense more adaptable in the postseason, he’s got a great source of knowledge to go to in Trotz. Will the Nashville Predators be as barnstorming as the 2021-22 Panthers and win the Presidents’ Trophy? Probably not. Is Brunette’s style able to translate to the playoffs if and when Nashville get there? Probably not right now, but he’ll have time to fix that. While I don’t think that the Predators will be as dominant offensively or as dynamic as the Andrew Brunette-led Panthers, I think that Nashville fans can expect a fun team that will score plenty of goals, probably also allow a fair bit of goals, maybe get them back to the postseason, and maybe they can win a round for the first time since 2018.
Here’s the link to the Hockey-Reference advanced stats glossary with definitions for some of the terms mentioned earlier in the article: