Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulie Walnuts
Because Florida played the game really fast it was get the puck and go.
The same thing in Colorado.
These guys are struggling because we want to play more controlled cori stats.
You can still get your corsi stats by playing a rush game.
We lack the team speed to play that way it seems.
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I think you're on to something, but I'm not entirely sure what. There's two different ideas you're suggesting here:
1) Huby needs to play fast to be effective. We said the same thing about Bennett and he thrived in Florida. So there's something there maybe.
2) flames play a slower system. This could be true. What is "fast hockey"? Four things right?
- speed of transition
- quantity, quickness and length of passes
- anticipation
- foot speed
I'm not sure Sutter told them to play slow. He actually talked a lot about needing to play fast and we saw that in 2021-22. But then something happened in 2022-23 and the team looked slower. The team brought in players who like to play fast (Huby/Kadri) and the team stopped playing fast. And I'm willing to concede that the lack of quickness to their game probably resulted in less goals and that contributed to missing the playoffs.
But why did they play slow? I think blaming the system at a high level is too easy and also meaningless. What about the system stopped working with new players?
Is the system too complicated? Are we asking too many players to play two-way hockey, which limits the ability for quicker transitions and long passes? Is not allowing players to cheat for offense actually just inhibiting anticipation and foot speed? What exactly are we seeing?
I think some of it is simply confidence and thinking too much, which results in less ability to anticipate. So part of it is a vicious cycle / virtuous cycle. If they were playing better, they would automatically be playing faster through better anticipation, which means they'd be playing even better.