Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Yup. There is being slow, and there is playing slow.
The Flames were not a slow team during the 82 game regular season. But they were in the playoffs. Did they forget to sharpen their skates? Or did they change their playing style?
The latter seems somewhat more likely.
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Re: Bolded.
I disagree.
No, we weren't the slowest team in the league, but we were average at best. For a few reasons:
1) Mike Smith typically slowed down our breakouts with his overplaying of the puck. For every clean stretch pass he threw, there were passes to our D in prone and stationary positions, or giveaways to the other team.
2) We did not have any gamebreaking speed at forward. Even Gaudreau, Bennett and Backlund, our quickest regular forwards, do not possess the raw speed to create real separation from a focused defender. Our fastest forward was probably Austin Czarnik, who only got into about 50-ish games and pretty consistently in a limited role.
3) Every line besides the fourth had at least one player who would never be described as quick or fast in terms of footspeed. Monahan. Tkachuk. Jankowski. Neal. And even though his foot speed was probably there, Hathaway's execution was more on the slow side. Now in the regular season the intelligence and anticipation ability of guys like Monahan and Tkachuk allowed them to surprise opponents on the forecheck and close off breakout angles, but given a game to adjust to our forecheck, the Avs' were able to elude these players (and Neal/Janko) and make clean breakouts, rendering them at the mercy of their own footspeed.
4) On the backend, we were a mixed bag. Giordano and Brodie are fast by regular season standards, but they were matched up against Nathan MacKinnon, a player who made them relatively slow. This was compounded by the fact that few of our forwards were fast enough to win a foot race with, again, Nathan MacKinnon. Tkachuk suddenly became a defensive liability in this head to head matchup, and even Backlund's above average footspeed and IQ proved underwhelming because of how elite MacKinnon is.
Our second pair is another story. Hanifin skates fast, but doesn't appear to think the game as fast as even Kylington or Valimaki. Hamonic has stretches of the season where he plays a fast and aggressive style, and at other times he lacks the confidence to do so, which is probably because his feet aren't particularily fast. In the playoffs he was not playing fast because he didn't have the confidence to do so. Playing fast without the footspeed to back it up just results in getting burned, and the Avs' quick forwards clearly exploited this. On our third pair, Andersson thinks fast but is not actually fast in terms of foot speed, though he's clearly starting to show that he's better than either Hanifin or Hamonic in these areas. Valimaki both thinks fast and is fast, but only got into a game or two. Kylington, who is overwhelmingly fast and probably to a gamebreaking extent was a huge part of our team speed in the regular season last year... and he did not draw into a playoff game last year. And Fantenberg was just a whatever bottom pair vet, average in terms of overall execution... but even he would be an upgrade on Andrew MacDonald in all areas of "speed" from what I've seen in the preseason. And finally Stone is not fast, in either sense of the word.
In a conference with guys like Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid, who can log 25 minute games effortlessly come playoff time, the Flames don't really have an answer. And I say that as a big Brodie, Giordano, Backlund fan. The vet trio is fast... but they're not truly elite (Brodie's a great skater, but even his excellent acceleration is a tier below). Kylington actually
has elite speed. And the skill and vision to utilize it effectively. I think it's in the team's best interest to emphasize putting out the best roster, and Oliver Kylington would be part of that. Anything else would be a repeat of when Matt Bartkowski was handed a roster spot over the obviously superior Brett Kulak, or when Tanner Glass was handed a roster spot over Mark Jankowski... just more in a series of boneheaded early season blunders.
