Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
It seems to me that the Flames main problems are:
- Having breakouts forced to the outside resulting in sustained possession against.
- Ineffective forechecking resulting in easy zone entries for opponents.
- Defensive zone turnovers during puck retrieval and breakout initiation.
- Lack of offensive production outside of the first line.
Solutions:
- Three skaters in the defensive zone for breakouts when against a two-man forecheck.
- Green light head-man passing between the red line and offensive zone blue line.
- Activate the defense more when on offense.
- Defensively, stack the blue line and limit Smith's puck handling. When Smith has the puck behind the net, it's only really safe for him to move it along the boards. Having the skaters initiate breakouts opens up the short passes towards the middle of the ice.
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Good points, I’ll try to elaborate on the bolded using this play that led to the first Dallas goal. I don't think it's a case of not knowing what to do when the walls are taken away - their strategy of dealing with that kind of forecheck is to swing it in the opposite direction, but it's just not fast enough much of the time. And if a puck skips over a blade or a pass fanned on, goodnight Suzy.
You can tell that Hitchcock was expecting the Smith breakout and was well prepared for it. Smith only has two options to pass to. They send in all 3 forwards - Pitlick attacks Smith behind the net to force the puck to one side (Brodie) while Faksa is positioned strongly on the boards to take away that option.
Roussel will veer towards Dougie on the attack just to make sure Smith doesn't try to reverse it to him, then cuts right to the middle to take away the cross-ice pass. Brodie actually had a good idea here - he used the “puck off the boards behind the back” trick to momentarily make Pitlick get into Faksa’s way, and for a moment Brodie has some space.
Dougie, reading off Brodie, cuts behind Smith, anticipating the D-to-D pass behind the net. All Brodie had to do here was kick the puck up to his blade and dish it off quickly to Dougie, and two Dallas forecheckers would have been stuck on the weak side with the puck quickly advancing back up the ice.
Of course, that didn’t happen. Brodie misses the puck with his skate, gets double teamed here, and Backlund did not give him proper puck support on the wall. In addition, Dougie, who was expecting the aforementioned setup, realizes far too slow that both his teammates have actually lost the puck battle and is left in no man’s land.
So how do you improve this breakout when teams have figured it out? People who point to a lack of forward support have it correct - there is puck support, just not the proper kind suitable for this play. Backlund's role here (as shown by the 2nd image above) is to give puck support to whichever defenceman gets the pass on the wall, to help chip it out to the wingers.
What I think he
should be doing, as well as all the other centers, is presenting himself as a 3rd option in the slot. In the PGT I pointed to
Justin Bourne's TheScore article on why that was a way better option than just hoping to rifle it around the boards and out. It's just not feasible to forecheck both defenders, the goalie and the center all at once, and the Flames should be capitalizing on that.
My suggestion here when Smith has a forechecker on him behind the net is to have the center follow the puck down low instead of turning to the boards, then swing past the front of the net in the opposite direction to whichever the other team is trying to corral the puck. You can swing past in the same direction as well (green arrow) but you’d be advancing the puck starting from a position closer to the two strong-side forecheckers, a much riskier position.
Because you've effectively trapped 3 forecheckers in deep and have speed coming out of your zone, this kind of a breakout should only be contested in the neutral zone by the two dmen still hanging back while getting no help from their forwards. This should free up 1 dman to join the rush as well.
