Special Teams - why so bad and how to fix them?

[DeluxeMoustache]

Flames special teams are among the very worst in the league. Just wondering what the armchair coaches at CP are seeing as flaws and ways for improvement

PK

Stopping cross seam passes seems like a challenge.

The overall commitment does not seem to be where it was last year. Bouma used to block everything but seems to do a lot less of that now. Maybe there is some other strategy but it clearly isn't effective

They say your goaltender has to be your best penalty killer. This can be true, but there is only so much a goalie can do for cross seam passes that are tap ins. This improved when Ramo found his groove, I thought, if only for a few game stretches at a time. With Hiller, outside of the relief effort in San Jose, I have trouble recalling him being a wall, and have seen deflating goals go in. His blocking style and lack of rebound control require perfect positioning and sharp D who can box out the other team, and the Flames D are not good at this with large skilled opponents

That is the last point. Regehr and Sarich made it miserable to be in the crease. It seems a lot nicer of a place to be this year.

PP
It has improved. Net front presence is always a concern. I think Ferland has tried at times to get in front. If someone blessed him with this mindset and Dave Andreychuk hands we may have something

Here is my one suggestion. Johnny is not as effective on the PP as he could be because of how he is used. Johnny spends a lot of time with the puck on the half boards. I think that Johnny is good in smaller situations - 1 on 1, 2 vs 1, etc., particularly on the rush where the defense is not stationary in a set configuration. But when the other team is set up, and he is on the outside, he is looking to find a good pass, not creating an opportunistic situation by exposing somebody on the other team, because they don't over commit to one individual due to their structure. Most of his goals are scored in tight, and he often is a perimeter PP QB which doesn't leverage his unique ability to maneuver in tight spaces due to his lateral mobility. Sure, he is skilled but he is often not making a difference.

[MarkGio]

Gaudreau is a terrible puck hog on the power play. He holds onto it for 2 seconds longer than he should and gets forced to turn it over.

The PK is a system issue IMO. Too much focus on blocking point shots.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

PK needs better goaltending and better face-offs and we could use a mobile, big, strong, net clearing bruiser of a defenseman.

PP needs better net front presence, more depth of skill players and better face-offs. I think Hamilton was being underused early and obviously Wideman was being overused during his struggles. The continued progression of Bennett will help the PP eventually. Ferland has been a decent net front presence but we probably need two power forwards in an ideal world. Decent chance we get a skilled forward or power forward this draft.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

Gaudreau is a terrible puck hog on the power play. He holds onto it for 2 seconds longer than he should and gets forced to turn it over.

The PK is a system issue IMO. Too much focus on blocking point shots.

Yeah. Maybe Johnny should dish to whomever the QB is and dash to find a spot in open ice where he creates an outnumbered situation

[Bandwagon In Flames]

They are both issues with the system. The PP has had plenty of success since Wideman was held off it (and only because of the suspension, Hartley doesn't have a clue). Wideman has had at least 100 shots hit a forward or the boards and then leave immediately leave the zone. Players like Raymond and Colborne were given PP time while Bennett was given very little. Hartley is finally starting to smarten up now that we're basically out of the playoff hunt. But with the likes of Brodie, Giordano, Hamilton, Gaudreau, Monahan, Bennett on the team there is no excuse to be bottom half of the league in PP success, let alone dead last.

The PK is still terrible because our system dictates that the other team gets as much zone time as they want as long as they stay to the outside. Well that doesn't seem to be a great idea because it's impossible to block every single shot and rebound unless there are 5 Russells on the ice.

[dino7c]

From December on the PP is mid-pack...start was ridiculously bad

[N-E-B]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

Gaudreau is a terrible puck hog on the power play. He holds onto it for 2 seconds longer than he should and gets forced to turn it over.

The PK is a system issue IMO. Too much focus on blocking point shots.

Gaudreau can hold on to the puck as long as he wants to. He's by far our best forward. If there's nothing there why wouldn't he hold on and wait to make a smart play?

To me their biggest issue is zone entries, not Gaudreau.

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

There was a really good article on the flames PK a year ago.

http://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/574209

I don't think the approach is much different. It may be personnel. Bouma was the flames most used forward last year but missed more than half this season. Byron was used a lot last year and frolik is in his place.

I think the biggest part is just execution. The cross seam passes are in part from players over committing and in part bad sticks.

I also think the face off issue contributes. The flames are so bad on faceoffs it adds a tonne of time in their zone.

[MarkGio]

Originally Posted by N-E-B

Gaudreau can hold on to the puck as long as he wants to. He's by far our best forward. If there's nothing there why wouldn't he hold on and wait to make a smart play?

To me their biggest issue is zone entries, not Gaudreau.

Who do you think does most of the zone entries? It's a man advantage, so why not take advantage?

Every time the D pass it to Gaudreau, he Skates along the half wall, and then turns it over rather than passing it to the point. Obviously I'm a Gaudreau fan so don't feel persecuted on his behalf, but its an issue that I've noticed on the pp.

[Samonadreau]

Gaudreau is a magician with the puck but does seem to have issues with getting past the 4 man wall at the blue line on the pp zone entry.

Also seems as though they are never entering on the rush and have 3 guys standing at the blue line waiting for the guy with the puck to go across the line.

[Samonadreau]

Coincidence that the PP is much better without Wideman.

[red sky]

We need a Dave Steckle type of player to win those key PK draws. Derek Grant appeared to have some skills on winning draws, perhaps he could be used in that mold.

[Parallex]

There's to much wrong to just single out any one thing IMO. Personally I think we need a really fast forward out there on the PK. Just my opinion but I think if we had someone blindingly fast out there on the PK we'd win more races to loose pucks to subequently chip them out and we'd put more pressure on the oppo when they're cycling the puck.

[Bandwagon In Flames]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

Who do you think does most of the zone entries? It's a man advantage, so why not take advantage?

Every time the D pass it to Gaudreau, he Skates along the half wall, and then turns it over rather than passing it to the point. Obviously I'm a Gaudreau fan so don't feel persecuted on his behalf, but its an issue that I've noticed on the pp.

Not sure what you're seeing but the Flames powerplay doesn't involve skating the puck in. It mostly consists of dump and chase and keep chasing because the goalie played it out of the zone. The Flames are a team that scores off the rush, not off the cycle and yet our PP system is the latter.

[Wood]

It's all about the face-offs

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Wood

It's all about the face-offs

This site has good data.

http://faceoffs.net/stats/team-faceoffs

There is not much difference between the best and worst faceoff teams (8.7%). You might expect a small difference like this a random event that should have one of two outcomes 50 % of the time.

AZ the best team, wins about 33 faceoffs a game out of 62 total faceoffs. A difference of 4 per game.

The site allows you to filter for different scenarios.

Ex. Short-handed

Here we see the worst 5 teams at shorthanded faceoffs:

NJ 40.8%
CGY 39.5%
COL 38.7%
VAN 38.5%
CHI 38.0%

Does this correlate to PK success? . . .

http://www.sportingcharts.com/nhl/st...rcentage/2015/

NJ has 9th best PK
CGY is 30th
COL is 22nd
VAN is 14th
CHI is 17th

Of the top 10 faceoff teams, 6 are not currently playoff teams.

I leave it to people better at math to take this point further.

[codynw]

I suggest not fixing them until sometime after the draft lottery.

[polak]

Edit: Faceoffs are also a massive problem on both.

The PK is much harder to pin point since it seems like it just doesn't work. Nothing about it is effective.

The biggest problem with the PP is that poor zone entries which usually don't work unless Gaudreau is rushing up the ice with speed from the Flames blueline. While exciting, this puts pretty much the entire success of the PP on one guy and if he's having an off shift it really shows and we end up dumping and chasing. Once we get the zone there are still plenty of issues.

Second biggest problem I'd say would be blasting the shot from the point straight into the defender. Not only is this completely stupid, it often leads to a chance the other way. It's like the Flames pointmen think they can blast the puck through the shins of the defenders from 5 feet away. Just a waste. As we can all probably tell, this has improved dramatically without Wideman on the Powerplay but it's still an issue and probably the most frustrating one as shooting it at the defender and hoping it finds a way through has to be an under 10% success rate. Just a garbage play.

Third biggest problem is the cross ice passes from everyone besides Gaudreau. They just simply need to be better or more simple. If you don't think you can make the pass, then just don't try and pick a different play.

Honestly there's really nothing good about the PP or the PK. This is Hartley's biggest failure this year. I don't care if it's actually on Gelinas (how he has the job still I dont even understand), it's Hartley's team and if there is any aspect of Hockey where a good coach with a good playbook and mind for X and O's hockey can make a difference, it's the PP and PK. Where does our coach put us? Last Place.

Sucks. We could really use some size down low on the PP to get more of a cycle going since a PP isn't really somewhere you can easily score on a rush.

[TheKurgan]

PK - We suck at faceoffs, our goal tending is bottom of the league, and we are terrible at clearing the puck.

PP - Faceoffs and zone entry seem to be our biggest problem. Once we are set up we cycle the puck pretty good.

[MarkGio]

Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames

Not sure what you're seeing but the Flames powerplay doesn't involve skating the puck in. It mostly consists of dump and chase and keep chasing because the goalie played it out of the zone. The Flames are a team that scores off the rush, not off the cycle and yet our PP system is the latter.

Weird. I only notice a dump and chase on the second pp unit or as a last attempt to get a clean entry. Usually the first attempts are:

-- Pass to forwards along the boards just outside the blueline
-- Forwards drop pass to defense, who then enter the zone.