[D as in David]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

It's Huberdeau when he plays aggressive and takes risks instead of playing passive.

You can almost see the internal battle with him at times, even just last night.

There was a shift in the third where if he really pushed on the d-man I think he could have generated a turnover because he kind of had the d-man flat footed in the 1-2-2 forecheck, but you could see him kind of hesitate and back off from not wanting to be beat.

But then in OT he made a play where he was really aggressive (led to the Sharangovich chance) and I was like "Woah that's a play we haven't seen much from him to actually pressure the d-man like that" but it was a really risky play too that was a bit lucky to not go the other way.

Part of how this team is being coached right is clearly for the forwards to play a safe game. They are taking very few risks, they are generally really doing a good job of covering for one another, and paying attention to detail defensively. The system seems to want d-men to take more risks though and forwards to play a bit more passively.

But I do think for guys like Huberdeau, Kuzmenko, Pospisil, and maybe even Kadri to an extent it does not come naturally to them at all.

It's getting results so far but I do wonder how sustainable it is long term because at some point you need to take a little bit of risk to generate offense.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Flames were coached to take more risks in OT against out-of-conference opponents.