Quote:
Originally Posted by GullFoss
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.
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I don’t think Huberdeau could play any faster, he’s already having trouble playing at the current pace which was a big criticism Darryl offered him last year.
I’ve said this before and will continue to say it, Huberdeau needs to find a way to evolve his game. If he’s not going to produce in transition, then he needs to check for his chances like the other lines are expected to. That’s how this team was built, it’s how they’re coached and it doesn’t appear things will be changing any time soon. So it’s up to him now to put on the work boots, start playing with more pace, go out and make things happen instead of waiting for things to happen.
That’s why he looks invisible right now. He has no other avenues to fall back on when his bread and butter has been taken away. It’s not all that different from when Gaudreau had his struggles back in 2020, but his game evolved in 21-22 and he was able to find other ways to produce when opponents took away his bread and butter, that was a big evolution to his game. Throw in the defensive component to his game and his line basically became an unstoppable force.