Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
They aren't slow, Bingo, but they do play slow. When every break out is pass or skate to the wall, then pass up to the blue line, then pass back to the middle, you've pretty much just surrendered initiative. As a consequence, we don't generate fast break chances very often. And when you take away those two on ones and those situations where you've caught a defender in a panic, you're depriving yourself of some of the best scoring opportunities.
It is honestly amazing that we do generate as many shot attempts as we do given our breakout is metaphorically a mule rather than a thoroughbred, but we have very definitely sacrificed quality in favour of quantity.
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I think part of this actually has more to do with the way we defend than the way we break out of our zone.
Look at the Flames - we don't give up a lot of 2-1s because of how other teams breakout. We give them up because of neutral zone turnovers and giving away the puck at the other team's blue-line.
The problem here isn't just the breakout (which has it's own issues) but actually how passively we defend in the neutral zone.
Very little pressure on the puck carrier, our d-men back into their own zone and give the other team easy entry into our zone, and then we are never catching other team's going the wrong way or on a change because they can easily get possession in our zone.
That's why we don't get odd-man rushes - we don't generate neutral zone turnovers.
I also think this forward group is slow and it's a big part of this teams problems, I'd qualify only Gaudreau, Bennett, Backlund, & Lazar as quick/fast forwards. Only having one quick guy per line is a problem with our roster composition. The Hartley team that had lots of odd man rush opportunities wasn't more skilled but was clearly faster (Gaudreau, Backlund, Byron, Raymond, Glencross, Jooris, Granlund)