Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
The powerplay needs a serious shakeup, but I am frequently surprised by how single-minded so many posters are about its problems. The drop-pass was not a zone-entry staple, and more to the point, it is a strategy that pretty much every team employs in various situations. Entries were a problem in the early part of the season on the powerplay, but this is something that improved as the season wore on. The Flames powerplay really failed in execution once inside the offensive zone.
This and Troy Brouwer's fixture on the powerplay are among the most well-worn myths on the board.
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I totally agree with you.
In my opinion, the greatest weakness of our powerplay was that there was hardly any cross-ice passes. When you execute cross-ice passes, the penalty killers are forced to respond and it opens up new lanes that the puck can go to or a potential attempt at a one-timer. What I noticed that the Flames were doing was simply passing between Gaudreau on the left half-boards to Gio back to Gaudreau and if Hamilton was open in the slot, the puck would get to Hamilton and he would usually fire it. This worked sometimes but it got very predictable and the problem with this play was that penalty killers wouldn't have to move all that much aside from rotating their body from Gaudreau to Gio. To add to this, Monahan and Tkachuk hardly touched the puck when we obtained solid possession on the PP and this removed options for the Flames to disrupt the other teams' PK positioning.