Quote:
Originally Posted by blender
There are a lot of good points being raised here, but I have to say that the Flames on their 7-game streak were absolutely playing aggressively.
The games in Tbay, Florida, Carolina saw the team attacking, generating offense and scoring in bunches.
They looked great.
I agree with the assessment of the way they have been playing lately, but to suggest that is by design like some are saying (including Button) doesn't ring true to me.
I don't know what the answer is, but I believe there is an execution issue for sure.
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The tough part is it's easy to give them too much credit for a hot streak. When a team is just feeling it, they can pretty much do no wrong - they're gonna be attacking, moving the puck quickly, and finding open plays left and right. But 90% of the league has stretches like that.
I think the biggest difference is the mentality when things aren't flowing well, and I think Vegas provides a pretty stark contrast to the way we play.
Our mentality seems to be "take your time and make the right play." Our players hesitate all the time with the puck, they circle back, they get set behind the net. And that's all great for maintaining possession and limiting turnovers, but it also lets the defence get set up as well.
Vegas's mentality seems to be "make a play quickly, even if it's not the best play." They fire the puck up the ice quickly, they make a lot of quick passes in transition, and every time they get a chance the puck is on net. They commit a lot more turnovers and make more mistakes, but they also generate a lot more speed.
I think that core distinction manifests itself in a lot of areas of our game. As soon as Vegas gets the puck, their forwards get moving in a hurry, because they know the puck is moving right away. Even if the pass is off the mark, they're generally moving faster than the other team so they recover the puck a lot. It also creates a lot of dangerous rush plays, because everyone's looking to pass the puck fast, and everyone's getting open to receive a pass fast. And it makes it really hard to get your D set when you're under attack 2 seconds after you lose the puck.
Contrast that with us: our puck carriers hang onto the puck longer, so the other skaters getting open need to slow down to time their routes better, or they end up having to stop at the blueline and wait. Because we end up moving slower, the guys making the passes have tighter windows to make those passes, so on an off-day we mis-fire and ice the puck a lot. And when we double back and reverse the puck a bunch of times in our zone, the forwards can't generate speed because they're not sure what breakout we're trying to start, so we end up with stationary wingers at the half boards chipping the puck out.
Watch the second Gaudreau goal in this clip (t=39s) from a few years ago:
That speed of puck movement is what we're missing. You need that mutual trust between the players that they're going to attack quickly to pull that off. Gaudreau trusted that Brodie would look up the ice quickly, so he cut aggressively to the blueline. And Brodie trusted that his forwards would get open quickly, so he looked up the ice immediately. It only works when everyone understands the need to play fast.
I'm not suggesting we bring back the stretch pass as our primary breakout, because that brings with it a whole host of drawbacks. But our current style of play just doesn't generate dangerous chances enough. In this era of speed, the right play done slowly becomes the wrong play in a split second, and I think we err on the side of caution far too often.