I’d be really curious to see somebody do this for an entire game to see what adjustments are made. We always come back stronger in the second, so I’d like to see if that’s mostly execution or strategy adjustment
srof12
Really great breakdown. I’m not sure how they go about fixing this. It seems like we need to tone down the aggressiveness slightly, but not too much as to lose what makes this a good team.
Johnborkowski
I did notice early in the game Seattle’s defensive play was great. They were pinning us in our own zone and not leaving a lot of space on the ice. Obviously, special teams played a huge role in the W. Definitely need to work on the DZ exits.
Either way – rooting for Seattle tonight.
uticadevil
Smart guy. I like how he pronounces Ziegenthäler
TomLikesGuitar
That’s a really good analysis of our offensive zone issues. I hadn’t noticed how over-aggressive the team is on the forecheck, and the clip at the end where Seattle has possession and we have two guys above their dots on both sides of the ice is brutal.
That said, not analyzing the whole game is doing a disservice to his analysis of our DZ issues IMO. Like, yeah… that’s a bad sequence where Jonas tries the same play three times, but honestly, I would LOVE if our biggest D zone fault was the team trying too hard to repeatedly force exits on the wall.
—-
The problems as I see it are a lot more complicated…
To start, our players are doing FAR too much positional D zone cycling when off the puck. The next game, watch, like, a single winger when we are hemmed in and look at the amount of effort they are expending and amount of skating they end up doing on that shift in the defensive zone.
You’ll see shit like… both D jostling a guy for the puck in the corner while a winger comes down to defend the net front and the center streaks up the strong side boards for a breakout pass. And then if the other team, idk, moves the puck to the other corner… well suddenly that netfront winger HAS to go pressure the guy in the low corner while that D man races back over, etc… you get the idea.
The goal there is clear… Lindy wants the team to be fluid as FUCK in the defensive zone so they VERY quickly get the puck and transition to the breakout. There is no D zone positional establishment where players are regularly handing off assignments to cover their guy or shifting back into position after enough time in the d zone, because that requires players to be reactionary in the defensive zone and our system is just 100% about pace and aggression.
When that works against a team it is fucking beautiful. We end up consistently suppressing any and all opposing offense in our zone and are EASILY able to generate great rush chances and/or establish ourselves in the offensive zone off odd man rushes. It’s a huge reason why our analytics were off the charts early in the season.
But the PROBLEM with that is that when it **doesn’t** work (which it *absolutely* won’t against the best teams in the playoffs), you end up exhausting all of the players by having them constantly *chasing* in our own zone and, when players fail to « intuit » who they should be covering, you see them giving up crazy good chances with players wildly far away from where you’d expect them to be on the ice.
—-
Anyway, I’ve never coached a team and I’ve never played a single pro game in my life and never will… so what the fuck do I know? lol
All I know is that I don’t think the team looks good at all lately relative to the talent we have, and it’s hard to not blame the coaching staff for that.
LaHondaSkyline
Forget overpaying for Meier. Fitz should hire this guy to break down film and fix the broken parts of the Devils’ game….
6 Comments
I’d be really curious to see somebody do this for an entire game to see what adjustments are made. We always come back stronger in the second, so I’d like to see if that’s mostly execution or strategy adjustment
Really great breakdown. I’m not sure how they go about fixing this. It seems like we need to tone down the aggressiveness slightly, but not too much as to lose what makes this a good team.
I did notice early in the game Seattle’s defensive play was great. They were pinning us in our own zone and not leaving a lot of space on the ice. Obviously, special teams played a huge role in the W. Definitely need to work on the DZ exits.
Either way – rooting for Seattle tonight.
Smart guy. I like how he pronounces Ziegenthäler
That’s a really good analysis of our offensive zone issues. I hadn’t noticed how over-aggressive the team is on the forecheck, and the clip at the end where Seattle has possession and we have two guys above their dots on both sides of the ice is brutal.
That said, not analyzing the whole game is doing a disservice to his analysis of our DZ issues IMO. Like, yeah… that’s a bad sequence where Jonas tries the same play three times, but honestly, I would LOVE if our biggest D zone fault was the team trying too hard to repeatedly force exits on the wall.
—-
The problems as I see it are a lot more complicated…
To start, our players are doing FAR too much positional D zone cycling when off the puck. The next game, watch, like, a single winger when we are hemmed in and look at the amount of effort they are expending and amount of skating they end up doing on that shift in the defensive zone.
You’ll see shit like… both D jostling a guy for the puck in the corner while a winger comes down to defend the net front and the center streaks up the strong side boards for a breakout pass. And then if the other team, idk, moves the puck to the other corner… well suddenly that netfront winger HAS to go pressure the guy in the low corner while that D man races back over, etc… you get the idea.
The goal there is clear… Lindy wants the team to be fluid as FUCK in the defensive zone so they VERY quickly get the puck and transition to the breakout. There is no D zone positional establishment where players are regularly handing off assignments to cover their guy or shifting back into position after enough time in the d zone, because that requires players to be reactionary in the defensive zone and our system is just 100% about pace and aggression.
When that works against a team it is fucking beautiful. We end up consistently suppressing any and all opposing offense in our zone and are EASILY able to generate great rush chances and/or establish ourselves in the offensive zone off odd man rushes. It’s a huge reason why our analytics were off the charts early in the season.
But the PROBLEM with that is that when it **doesn’t** work (which it *absolutely* won’t against the best teams in the playoffs), you end up exhausting all of the players by having them constantly *chasing* in our own zone and, when players fail to « intuit » who they should be covering, you see them giving up crazy good chances with players wildly far away from where you’d expect them to be on the ice.
—-
Anyway, I’ve never coached a team and I’ve never played a single pro game in my life and never will… so what the fuck do I know? lol
All I know is that I don’t think the team looks good at all lately relative to the talent we have, and it’s hard to not blame the coaching staff for that.
Forget overpaying for Meier. Fitz should hire this guy to break down film and fix the broken parts of the Devils’ game….