Originally Posted by Murph
Great post SP, here’s my take...
The Flames are a counter-attacking team by design. I think management and the coaching staff took a look at the players they had, and rather than try to play the "Western Conference style" of rough and tumble, wear-‘em-down hockey, they decided to go another way. Rather than try to be something they weren’t and inevitably fail, they decided to play to the teams biggest strengths:
- team speed and,
- fast, offensive defensemen.
A counter-attacking style is one that plays to these strengths. Pressure the puck with one man while everyone else clogs the middle of the defensive zone with bodies and sticks. Then let the other team try to get a puck through and when you get the bounce you’re looking for, be it a blocked shot, a turnover, or a save with possession of the rebound, haul ass up ice as a single unit, defensemen included.
Aside from it being obvious when you watch the games, there are four stat lines that I think emphasize this:
- Blocked shots – as SP points out, we lead the league in blocked shots
- Turnovers – The Flames are 4th in the league in takeaways
- Shot selection – As SP points out, we have higher than average number of shots from the high slot – shots that are likely to come off the rush.
- Points by defensemen – Giordano, Brodie and Wideman are all in the top 20.
In deciding to play this way, management and coaching have accepted that the teams Corsi stats will be poor (not that they care about Corsi) – but the results also point to the inherent flaw in the way Corsi stats are calculated. Corsi gives equal weight to a shot that hits the net as it does to a shot that doesn’t (i.e. one that is blocked). It is this flaw in the way Corsi is calculated that leads to the poor comparisons that are made between the Flames and the Leafs/Avalanche that SP mentions.
The reason why I think it was a managment/coaching decision to play this style is the emphasis that Treliving placed in the offseason about improving the goaltending. I know it's not revolutionary, but he is on the record as saying that it all starts with the goaltending and he also said that improving the goaltending was his number one priority of the past offseason. You can't play the style described above if you don't have solid goaltending. And imagine that - when this year's Flames get good goaltending they win, and when they don't, they lose.
The long and short of it is – barring an injury to one of the top 4 defensemen, I think the Flames have the horses to play the style of game that they have chosen to play. And so long as they get good goaltending, I think the results so far have shown they’ll make the playoffs doing so.
My two cents…
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