I have gathered much from watching hockey to the point I understand a lot of the strategy, but two things have been bothering me and I'd rather ask you guys than google it.
1. What is a circus trip? Through its use I have guessed it is the longest road trip of the season? Is it a division trip where you can ride a lot of buses? Or is it the first long trip of the season?
2. I don't quite get how the "last shift" is important. It seems to me teams shift when they can, but last shift gets talked about like the coach has some control over and its somehow better at home? Why is this?
Already answered, but for #2 there's a few ways this give the home-team an advantage:
1) Making sure that, based on the scenario, you can match up against the opposition best per the scenario. It's not necessarily as simple as line v line, but your end, opposition end, and neutral zone can be taken into consideration. I.E. if the opposition ices their "energy" line that's merely okay in terms of defense and attack, while you may want to ice your top scoring (if they're not gassed) in the attacking end, but in your defensive end you may play a line that's good for getting and maintaining control of the puck.
2) Face-off issues. If you have a face-off wizard on your team (Yannic Perrault comes to mind--those who remember him), and your team *needs* possession, if they ice their best guy you'd want to match them up. However, if the opposition ices the equivalent of Andrew Shaw, you might might not need to go guns-blazing face-off wise and can put in someone who has a mere statistical advantage. It can also mean that if you're up against a faceoff wizard and are not under a scoring threat, you may stack up on players that can get control of the puck and be willing to concede the draw. Plus, you can play statistical anomalies--like if, say, Kero is rested and is just winning everything at the right attacking blue-line dot. You might want him there at that point in the game.
All in all it depends on how the coach wants to control the game at the dot given the scenario. When you're the away team, once you make the "final" change, you have to react to whatever the opposition throws against you. That can either mean trust in a "weaker" line, or frantic changes post-faceoff to get the "best" match.
Q has some terrible changes.... drives me nuts... he gets change happy at times and it does hurt us.
But he has also won 3 Cups in 6 years, so I give him a few derp changes.
There are times when Q matches and it completely out-coaches the other coach (like Anaheim). There are other times where Q outcoaches himself.
Fortunately the former is more common.
