Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Exactly. When they move the puck like that, and have the D engage - what some have called their transition game, for lack of a proper term - they are not only effective, but dominant.
The baffling thing is: why can't they continue to play like that? Why do they revert to the completely ineffective strategy of standing still, passing it backwards, 'moving as a 5-man unit', and chipping it in?
It is baffling. and I don't think there is one simple reason for it.
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Confidence is part of it.
But I also feel like it had to be a coaching decision.
They went from playing that way for 50 games with great success, to just not playing that way anymore for the rest of the season after a week off. Like a switch had flipped.
Then I literally feel like 100 games (last 30 of last season, 70 of this year), two playoff series, and qualification round passed by and all of a sudden in game 6 of a playoff series it’s like the switch flipped again and they are playing that same aggressive style that they had so much success with early in the 18/19 season.
Honestly I don’t think it can be that the players just suddenly “decided” to give a damn and completely change their breakout and forecheck strategy. It had to have been the coaches trying to make them play a heavy, low event, playoff style game that they thought would be more effective in the post season.
My biggest disappointment of how the game went last night with them being done in by poor coaching; and poor goaltending is that we don’t get to see if they could have played that Style and been effective again in a game 7.
Because it worked last night until coaching and goaltending just cut the legs right out from under them. Makes me question the strategy of this coaching staff and GM because even though it’s a cliche “you don’t buy a racehorse to just strap a heavy wagon to it”.