Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I am a firm believer that these issues come down to the speed at which the Flames are executing. When I watch the power play what strikes me most is how immobile the players are. When they are in the offensive zone 5 on 5 the Flames are usually moving and cycling all over the place, and this creates havoc. But then on the man-advantage they become motionless, and the puck movement as a result also slows.
I have mentioned elsewhere that I don't think this is a personnel or a tactical issue. The problem looks most like they are constantly overthinking things. Having a **** power play for so many games almost certainly has gotten into the players's heads, and the solution might just be to play through it, because once it clicks all the ingredients are there for the power play to be lethal. Hell, it WAS lethal with virtually the same personnel through most of last season, and again for a good stretch of games this year.
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This. Exactly this. It really has nothing to do with a booming point shot or one timer, because even if they played to that type of shot, the puck gets there so slowly the PK has lots of time to set up a block or the goalie gets over in time to make a fairly routine save (both of these things happened last night - Gio and Brodie got blocked on point shots and Janko's one timer was easily stopped.
It's not a coincidence that the Flames' better chances were in scrambles in front of the net, caused by the puck moving in quickly and then getting played to the front.