Quote:
Originally Posted by Kovaz
I think the idea of a dominant player on each D pair is close to the truth, and it's definitely a problem of stylistic fit. But to me it's more about aggressive vs. passive play, and counter-intuitively enough I think two aggressive D or two passive D fit better together than one of each.
Gio and Brodie are both very aggressive defenders. They pinch aggressively, they attack the puck, and they stand up at the blue line. The downside of that aggression is, when they misjudge the play, they get beat. The key is that usually, they can at least disrupt the attacker momentarily. When your partner is also an aggressive defender, that disruption is often enough for the partner to sweep across and steal the puck. How many times have we seen Gio make a questionable pinch and the puck gets chipped by him, only for Brodie to win the race across and completely snuff out the play? Or vice-versa?
Hamonic's problem is he plays extremely passively a lot of the time. Rather than gamble that he can win the race, he'd rather play it safe and back off. So you see a lot of plays where Hanifin will pinch aggressively, same as Gio, get beat, and because Hamonic is backing off, the forward has time to recover the puck and it's a 2 on 1. It looks like Hanifin just messed up and Hamonic got hung out to dry, but it's not so clear cut. The problem is that they're out of sync as a pair. Hanifin could have backed off and then they defend a 2 on 2, or Hamonic could have attacked the puck and stopped the rush altogether.
I think Andersson does a much better job of reading his partner and anticipating the pinch, so he'll cover across aggressively which fits better with what Hanifin wants to do. And I think Hamonic would be a better fit with a more passive partner. But having Hanifin defend passively every time really doesn't play to his strengths and sets him up to fail, as does playing Hamonic with a partner that wants to attack the puck.
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Great post. Beyond all that I think it makes a huge difference who your F3 is with respect to 3-on-2s rather than 2-on-1s. If it's Backlund or Ryan, usually they will catch up. Bennett and Lindholm are also solid, although both have a tendancy to get caught deep at times. Monahan and Jankowski make me uneasy because even though they're positionally solid, they play that same passive style that seems so out-of-sync.
I think when Backlund was on the wing he was
really struggling because he wasn't the F3 very often, and so his best aset was being mitigated, and this had a trickle-down effect. Moving him back down the middle was a good plan.