The Next Steps: Morgan Frost
It’s fitting that the series which started with a look into Cam York’s ideal development would move immediately to looking into Morgan Frost. In many ways, they’re two sides of the same coin. The ceiling for both players is incredibly high. But the journey for both will look incredibly different.
While York’s game is ripe with opportunity for natural development which I expect to occur as he gains experience, Frost’s game is in desperate need of heavy structural development. I said that structural development carries greater risk than natural development in that first article, and I stand by it here.
Frost is a longer bet to reach this ceiling than York is. But I also think his form of structural development is a little less risky than most. He’s fighting an uphill battle, but not one altogether different than the one Travis Konecny faced before his 22-23 season.
In York, you have a prospect who operates with a near-perfect understanding of hockey’s macro-game and plays with a sense of strategy. But he lacked the experience to always make the perfect reads. He has an excellent grasp of the big picture but needs to improve on his execution in the small moments. He makes a ton of good plays that serve a deeper purpose and needs to turn those good plays into great ones.
In Frost, you have a prospect who has both the talent and experience to make perfect reads even in tense situations… but one who operates with no sense of strategy at all. He is the master of “great plays that lead to nothing,” because his great plays are never serving a deeper purpose.
As I’ll get into, I think this problem is partly correctable. But I also think it’s a warning to evaluators and fans everywhere to be careful with applying the term “hockey sense” too broadly. Often, there are different types of players even on the mental side of the game.
Making good in-the-moment reads isn’t tied to having a broad sense of strategy that guides your game.
As we move on, you won’t see a section dedicated to natural development. The natural development of Morgan Frost is kind of a moot point. It pales in comparison to the structural changes he needs to make.
The other reason is that Morgan Frost is running out of time to make natural developments. Natural development, depending on who you ask, typically runs until you’re 23 or 24 for skaters and until about 26 for goalies. I tend to lean towards the latter side with skaters and assume 24.
That means Frost has 1 year of natural development left. That’s the bad news.
The good news? Structural development has no expiration date. And if Frost gets this right, he will see incredible returns. Much like Brad Marchand who had already gone through his natural development but needed to completely restructure his game in order to reap the benefits of his talent.
They don’t all turn out like Marchand, but that’s why Marchand was an exception. That’s why most players who break out in their mid-to-late 20s do so.
Without further ado, let’s get into the special traits that brought Frost to the point where he’s an NHL player worth spilling words about.
Skating
Frost is the total package as a skater. He was once thought of as a prospect who lacked top-end straight-line speed, but that’s outdated information. Frost has a top speed to match Konecny or Tippett when he wants to use it.
The key part of this clip isn’t necessarily that he skated by guys. There are a number of ways to get initial separation on a player without using top-line speed, and Frost knows all those tricks (as we’ll get to later.)
The relevant part of the clip is that none of these back checkers have hope in the world of catching him. Some had to pivot, which certainly makes the proposition of recovery more difficult. But others didn’t even have to pivot, such as the last defender in the frame. Even he can’t recover to stop Frost from getting to the net.
In all of these clips, once Frost gets initial separation on a player? They don’t have a chance of catching up. That’s speed.
Most Flyers players are getting caught in a different zip code when Konecny turns on the jets, but Frost stays level with him and that’s what sets up the rush play that leads to the goal.
Still, it isn’t about the speed with Frost. It’s nice to have. It occasionally proves itself useful. But despite the rhetoric on draft day, speed doesn’t define a player. It’s useless unless you use it properly, which could be said about any attribute.
Frost’s edge work is his defining attribute as a skater, and it is high-end. Trying to cover Frost in tight spaces is a dangerous affair, in which you’re more likely to end up with your face on the ice than to actually get the puck from him.
Just ask that guy. Or, Adam Pelech.
Really, Pelech is one of two defenders that Frost evaded with his edgework. If that initial cutback wasn’t so cleanly executed, the first defender would have pressured him. Instead, he stopped before he got close enough to make that decision a viable one.
He’s incredibly explosive off of his edges, meaning he doesn’t just wrongfoot pressure but also separates afterward.
Puck skills
The thing that Morgan was promised and prophesized to have since draft day is there. His skill level is astronomical. When he’s given the slightest opening, he can slice through NHL defenders as if they’re traffic cones.
Dangling through forecheckers in order to facilitate an exit remains one of his favorite activities, and he’s very good at it.
Instincts
On Twitter, I’ve occasionally speculated that Frost’s greatest weakness is actually the strength that many claimed would propel him: His hockey sense. I didn’t believe confidence was enough of an explainer for the up-and-down nature of his game.
After doing the tape review for this piece, I caught myself being overly broad.
There are things about Frost and his sense of the game that are special. They even look special at the NHL level. And they all follow a common theme. Here are a couple of examples.
If you want to beat players 1 on 1, often, it happens before a casual observer even recognizes there’s been an engagement. Frost gets that.
He isn’t just fast and light on his edges. He’s also a master at reading and understanding the lanes he’s given to skate through. He can create lanes by playing with his footwork, throwing in fake leans and hesitation steps as ways to conceal his intent and make the defender open himself up. In this previous draft, it’s a talent mastered by Patrick Kane and Erik Karlsson, to name a couple of examples.
When he has the puck, vision isn’t an issue. He has an excellent sixth sense for his nearby outlets.
He also plays with a lot of confidence. That’s the kind of pass on the breakout that unconfident players simply don’t make.
He snuffs out this pass attempt to Kucherov, steals the puck from him, then instantly identifies his best outlet (Farabee.)
These are high-level instincts at work.
As an F1, he remains extremely dangerous. His speed and clever stick work help him here, but it’s ultimately his instincts that win the day and propel these results.
He forces goalies into turnovers, which is always a pretty good indication that you’re good at forechecking.
He’s a master thief when someone is carrying the puck in his presence, and it’s led to more than a few moments like these.
He plays puck battles with perfect technique, understanding how to win inside position and use his body to box out the other player.
All in all, I don’t think anything summarizes the Morgan Frost experience quite like this play.
Of course, I’d be remiss not to point out this response:
This isn’t me picking on anyone. Actually, Franko makes a good point.
It would be willfully ignorant to dismiss the skill that Frost displayed in that play. I mean, come on. He put the puck between the first defender’s legs, then faked a cut inside and spun around a second. That sure as shit does not happen every night in NHL games.
BUT.
At the end of the day, a backhand shot that had no hope of scoring? That is the kind of play you see every night.
A more strategic player would have played for time and waited for support to arrive. If he delays long enough, then he can hit a trailer and produce a much more dangerous chance. If he does that, there’s a pretty good chance there is no room for this kind of complaint.
But Frost plays almost entirely on impulse and instinct. All of his reads are simple and can be made in the moment. He makes snap decisions well. He plays for the next play but never goes any further than that.
I suspect he’s always had this weakness. In the junior leagues, he could circumvent this weakness by simply playing slower and giving himself more time to plan while he carried the puck. He had the hands to buy himself as much extra time as he needed.
In the NHL, it’s a lot harder to not have this weakness exposed. But he has worked on mitigating that weakness, and it is possible to hide this wart in his game. It just takes some creative deployment.
The initial evaluations were right when they said that Frost had a high-level hockey sense, but he doesn’t have high-level hockey IQ.
Some players, like Sean Couturier, have both. But some players only have one. Frost is a very instinctual player. He’s at his best when he only has minimal time to think, and relatively simple reads to make. Give him the right guidelines, and he’ll provide excellent results. Beyond what you could expect. But don’t ask him to make up his own guidelines.
That’s why almost all of his damage came off the rush this season. In transition, all of Frost’s best attributes shine. His skating and his hands. His extremely high-end instincts. The game is simple on the rush. The reads are easy, and the positioning is intuitive. Morgan, simply put, can’t screw it up by thinking.
Playmaking Talent
I’m choosing my words very carefully because I’m setting up the crux of this article when I say his playmaking talent, and not something more concrete like playmaking ability.
At this stage, Frost’s relative lack of assists is enough to prove that there’s something that just isn’t quite clicking. As I went through his tape, I realized that it actually has nothing to do with bad luck or bad deployment or bad power plays or anything.
It isn’t anyone else’s fault. It’s Morgan’s fault. 100% of it is his fault.
If Morgan was a great playmaker, then he’d create chances at enough of a volume to overcome bad luck. That’s what every great playmaker does. Nobody has great luck, except Kevin Hayes from October to December.
If Morgan was a great playmaker, then even his bad linemates would find themselves producing more than they usually did. Sure, that bar may be low. Still, the bar would be higher than it was before playing with Frost. That’s what great playmakers do.
If Morgan was a great playmaker, then he wouldn’t be on a bad power play because every single top power play in the NHL is run by a great playmaker on the half-wall. He’s the missing piece. If he wants the power play to be better, then all that needs to happen is: he needs to be better.
Now, I don’t want anyone to mistake me here. Morgan Frost is an extremely talented playmaker. He has the potential to become a great playmaker in the NHL. Someone who does all of the things that I just laid out.
But it isn’t anyone else that needs to change in order for him to realize that potential. It’s him. This is good news. This is, in a sense, liberating. His destiny is in his control.
You can’t watch these plays and get the impression that he’s limited by his talent level.
https://twitter.com/Flyers_Clips/status/1676148233607815172?s=20
So, how do we maximize Morgan Frost?
Getting the most out of Morgan Frost is actually a relatively straightforward proposition. It starts with moving him out of the center position… immediately. Every day that he plays center is another day that he wastes his talents, cast in the wrong role because that’s the position he played in the OHL.
Playing center means a lot more time playing a more methodical, strategically savvy game. They’re the first forward to touch the puck in the defensive zone, which is more about game management than any actual playmaking ability.
Game management is not Frost’s forte, because that requires playing slower. For Frost, playing slower is playing worse.
If he’s on the wing, then he can pick up a puck in the defensive zone and immediately think about how to spearhead a rush: which is the stuff he’s really good at. Excellent, even by NHL standards.
That’s why his 5v5 production was so excellent.
Morgan Frost, despite being stapled to the bench for two months because his coach didn’t like his vibes, was one of the better producers at 5v5 play in the NHL. Not one of the best, but being the 70th most efficient 5v5 scorer is first-line production.
The reason he was so good in this area? 5v5 is the fastest way of playing in the modern NHL, and rush attacks are at their most abundant. Rush attacks mean minimal thinking and minimal thinking means Morgan Frost is in his element.
This is back in October when he sucked to high heavens, and he still executes with immaculate precision on the rush.
What held him back from being anything more than a 55-point pace guy was the power-play, where his production was completely nonexistent. The common refrain is to blame the Flyers’ power play for sucking, but that doesn’t explain it. The Flyers have a bad power play because they don’t have someone like Morgan Frost stepping up to create on the power play.
What can’t happen is everyone expecting everyone else to create for them. Someone has to realize: “I have the ability to do this, and so I should do it.”
Morgan Frost has that ability, so he should do it. In his case, the first question to ask is: Why hasn’t he done it so far?
The answer to this question is exactly the same: When Morgan slows down, he gets way worse. At 5v5, the play slows down during established offensive zone sequences. Morgan Frost was a non-factor in the cycle. It had nothing to do with his size, either.
It had to do with plays like this where his great idea was to charge to the net front and stuff the goalie’s pads with a hopeless shot attempt. No wonder he wasn’t getting power-play assists. He was too busy trying to be Chris Kreider.
When play is established in the offensive zone, you can almost predict beforehand where Frost will be. And it won’t be in the right places.
It’ll look something like this. He’s technically stationed to play the bumper here, but there’s a good example of why he shouldn’t be.
Once transition stops and the ice shrinks, the game’s best cycle creators have an effective array of stations to set up in. If their team has control of the puck, they set up in their “spot” and wait to go to work. If their team doesn’t have control, they’ll deviate as the forecheck structure dictates and then float into their spot as soon as the option becomes available.
Morgan Frost is a playmaker. His ability to pass and handle the puck is his ultimate separating traits in offensive zone situations. He has the vision to identify priority targets and the passing acumen to hit them in small windows.
Seriously, he makes plays like THIS casually:
When a playmaker sets up in the offensive zone, where do you see them?
On the periphery of the zone, typically. They either hang along a half-wall or the blueline or behind the net. The best playmakers can do their job from all 3 locations, but they all have their preferences.
- Artemi Panarin deeply prefers the half wall and likes the blueline. He can make plays behind the net but tends not to gravitate there.
- Sidney Crosby can make plays from any of the 3 spots. But he has a distinct preference for his station behind the net.Â
- Nikita Kucherov is sort of the opposite of Panarin. His ultimate spot is the half wall, but he prefers to work from the wall down. He’ll gravitate behind the net when he has to move from his wall.
- Nathan MacKinnon prefers the blueline. He’s usually the third high player in Colorado’s 2-3 OZ play. This allows him to use his skating and hands to beat players 1 on 1 and attack downhill. When he isn’t attacking downhill from his spot at the blueline, he’s usually behind the net or somewhere close to the goal line.
- Mitch Marner is similar to MacKinnon, but he simply reverses polarity. He gravitates behind the net or on the goal line after wreaking havoc as the F1 but often floats out vertically to be the high forward in a 2-3 structure if he isn’t there.
- Connor McDavid is a race car running on cocaine. He’s addicted to motion. Just give him the puck, and he’ll wheel around the offensive zone and simultaneously touch all 3 popular locations. He’ll make whatever plays open up as part of his crackhead skating patterns.
McDavid does nearly all of his goal-scoring damage off of the rush or on the power play. His playmaking pattern is the primary culprit for that disparity. Since he’s nearly exclusively on the perimeter at 5v5, he’s always in a position to set up others rather than shoot himself.
If you want to score, go to the net. That’s the saying you’re used to. Here’s the missing piece of the saying. One designed specifically for the playmakers.
If you want to make plays, go to the perimeter. And find the guys who want to score with the puck.
So where does Morgan Frost go?
Well… he, uh…he goes to the net. I’m not sure why he goes to the net. It’s probably a manifestation of the same dichotomy with Morgan. Brilliant hockey sense, horrendous hockey IQ.
He could have put himself in a position to be an outlet for Provorov and then buy time with his feet until a passing lane opened. Instead, he jams himself up at the net front and accomplishes nothing while the play goes the other way after a Provorov turnover.
Provorov booting it may make the play a moot point, but if he’s on the perimeter, he at least has a chance of getting to that loose puck while it’s still onside.
Here, he blocks his own team’s shot because he thinks he’s Joe Pavelski. To make the play even more hilarious, he perfectly reads the clear attempt in the neutral zone and flags it down. Then he dekes out a forechecker and sets up a re-entry with a saucer pass.
Morgan Frost giveth and taketh away, ladies and gentlemen.
He doesn’t stop to think… Hey, wait, I’m a playmaker and not Auston Matthews.
Then the bad habit formed. And because “go to the net” is such an accepted piece of dogma, nobody bothers to disabuse him of the notion.
If Morgan wants to make plays, then he has to go to the puck. Where does the puck gravitate to? The perimeter. So if you want the puck? Go to the perimeter. Along the walls. It’s the people who can take those pucks along the wall and find middle ice who truly drive play.
He’s not particularly dangerous in front of the net or in the slot. He’s fairly adept at tipping pucks, but I wouldn’t call it something he’s uniquely good at. He’s not much of a net front presence in any other way or fashion.
So the most common offensive zone sequence for Morgan Frost involves going to the net and never receiving the puck.
He’ll waste some time, accomplish nothing, and the puck will be out of the zone… usually before he’s ever had the opportunity to touch the puck and influence the offensive sequence.
Even if he gets a shot off… so what? Is Morgan Frost the guy you want to take the best shots? Or Owen Tippett?
The playmaker is never in a place to make any plays.
Rather, he’s forced to hope that someone will make a play for him. Either a brilliant feed to the slot or threading a shot through to his stick. But that’s the kind of thing he should be doing for other people.
Right now, It’s a rarity that he actually understands his role in a given sequence.
This is the case on both the powerplay and 5v5. There’s a reason that his scoring in the two areas is so disparate.
The Flyers power play sucks and certainly doesn’t help Frost. But he doesn’t help the power play either.
A lot of attention is given to his entries, but in reality, he’s always been good at entries. By far the Flyers’ best. That they struggle even when he’s the entry man is more indicative of how little support he has.
Entries are about the only time he creates chances on the power play.
When he beats the first layer and gains the zone, he can’t just leave the puck for a winger to make a play along the wall and get it back to the point while the team sets up. Good power plays can do that. The entry isn’t just secured by the puck carrier, but by the first pass recipient after the initial carry.
The real reason Frost struggles with the man advantage manifests after the entry. It takes the shape of absolutely nothing because that’s what Frost accomplishes.
The power-play is a place where the offensive abilities of players are put under a microscope. Whatever you do, the volume is increased. With greater opportunity comes greater exposure. That is both, and in Frost’s case, bad.
Take Nikita Kucherov. In his natural state, he’s one of the league’s premiere playmakers. Arguably its best playmaker, and certainly the most precise. He sees all the openings. He creates openings or enlarges his windows with misdirection. And he hits those windows, no matter how small or fleeting they may be.
He lurks on the perimeter. He collects the puck. And he sends the puck to scorers on the inside as much as anyone else.
When Kucherov is on the power play, he does all those same things at a greater volume because fewer people will stop him.
Frost does on the power play as he does whenever he’s contained in the small area of the offensive zone. That is to say: nothing.
He rarely gets a puck on the half wall, even when he’s placed on the half wall. Instead, he collects a pass. Throws the puck on the perimeter. Then rotates, and likely finds himself at the net front or at the slot soon thereafter. And then nothing.
Because he isn’t Chris Kreider, and even if he was, there’s no Artemi Panarin to make that role meaningful. If there was a Panarin in the room, it would be him. But he’s too busy standing aimlessly in front of the net to do anything remotely Panarin-like.
There is no easy solution to this. Frost simply has to re-engineer how he thinks and operates in the offensive zone.
He has to go to the perimeter and get the puck, then look to bring the puck inside through either a pass or carry. Again, I think a move to the wing will make this easier.
If he’s a winger, he’s more likely to be F1 on the forecheck. And as Charlie O’Connor has mentioned in a tracking project that dates back to Frost’s rookie season: Frost is a uniquely dangerous F1 player.
Those abilities didn’t evaporate. They still showed up when he actually played the role of F1. As a center, he just doesn’t get to play that role as much.
And he spent a lot more time playing F3 or F2, the more natural support positions of a center. Per Charlie’s tracking, Morgan was quite bad at that. I expect that to be completely unchanged. He probably still sucks.
See, the support role is one that rewards a methodical playstyle that looks at the forecheck as a whole and makes complex decisions about where their help is most needed and where pressure is best applied. It’s a matter of thinking.
Don’t ask Morgan to do any thinking, damn it!
The F1 role, however, is a matter of instinct. The only decisions you need to make are how and when you’re going to pressure the puck retriever. It’s a simple read. Morgan makes excellent simple reads, even in compressed time frames.
Becoming the F1 on a more frequent basis also means that Frost is naturally forced into a more perimeter-stationed role when his team has the puck. usually, they’ll recover the puck because of his efforts on the perimeter.
It’ll be more natural to linger on the perimeter and to make plays into the inside.
Morgan will still have to focus on this. He’ll have to apply conscious effort to limiting his net drives to when he has the puck or when he’s 100% confident that the puck will go to the net.
But becoming a winger makes that easier.
Easier, but not easy. This won’t be easy. But if Frost can pull it off, he still has the upside of a top-tier NHL playmaker.
The Watch and Learn section
In these articles, I’m going to start pointing out NHL players who have a similar profile to the Flyer prospect or player I’m examining. And I’m going to point out how their game style could be something of a road map to the subject of the piece.
For Morgan Frost? Two names jump immediately to mind: Mitchell Marner, and Brad Marchand.
Dynamic playmakers who can create with their feet and their puck-handling ability, but ultimately prefer to wreak havoc as an F1 and play make out of their puck retrieval sequences along the wall.
Like Marner, Frost needs to be thinking about creating off the rush whenever the opportunity presents itself. But when that option isn’t there? He needs to transform into a puck hunter. A relentless F1 who creates scoring chances by passing from the goal line.
Marner understood this intuitively and became a 4th overall pick who put up 61 points as a 19-year-old and then never looked back. He got the idea instantly. But not everyone does.
Like Marchand, Frost needs to be willing to sit down and look objectively at his game. He needs to be willing and able to make significant structural changes.
If he can do that? Well, talent sure as hell isn’t an obstacle.
Mandatory Credit: Flyers PR
