One of the biggest adjustments I hoped Darryl Sutter would make and he did. I was hoping to a see less aggressive forecheck and we saw it yesterday. I don’t think I saw one instance of inefficient forechecking, no chasing. There was the occasional flush out, but you could see F1 and F2 dropping back further which added another layer of defense to the neutral zone resulting in a less overtaxed forwards and defensemen. The D were able to stand up at the blueline more as they had more support and opposition wasn’t coming at them full steam ahead. So all in all it resulted in more difficult entries, less zone time, less odd man rushes and ultimately less shots on goal (18).
So hats off to Darryl Sutter for recognizing that this needed to be changed as it was just too difficult of a style to maintain for this personnel. They’re not the fastest group, so overtaxing them leads to exhaustion and the first thing that shuts down when your tired is your brain, so you end up making more mistakes from lack of attention to detail. That’s the most important change I noticed yesterday. It makes for a more boring brand of hockey, but like I’ve said in the past, I’ll take boring wins over infuriating losses any day.
Good to see that the 4th line is finally contributing at a consistent level, that’ll help. Not sure how much longer this team can rely on this though as the other 3 lines are still having trouble finding chemistry. If Darryl can finally figure out a better fit for all 3 lines, then that’s probably the last major adjustment that’s left to figure out. Then this team should really get on a roll.
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