Wondering: do you ever ask yourself "what should they have done instead?" when you render judgment? What would you have Gleason do differently? Why not give Faulk a minus for driving his man into Gleason, thus picking him off the play?
Giving Faulk a minus there is an interesting thought, hadn't really considered it.
I realize it was a tough play for Gleason, and said so in the previous post. If it had ONLY been about getting picked off the play, I wouldn't have marked it against him. But the key to the entire sequence is his taking a bad angle on Hodgson, which is what I meant by referring to his defensive effort on that play "as a whole".
Gleason plays down the boards rather than staying inside of his man:
Causing Hodgson to come out of the corner with a step on Gleason. That is what causes Skinner to abandon his assignment and cover the slot:
To answer the "what should he have done?" question, Gleason could have recognized that he wouldn't be the first guy to the loose puck and stayed inside of Hodgson. That would have kept the sequence under control rather than getting everyone into scramble-mode. To see an example of this, look at 1:46 of the same video -- Hodgson and Gleason go through the same routine, but Gleason plays inside and the puck happens to go the other way.
Dwyer was clearly attempting to block Sulzer's shot. You're scaring me...do you really not recognize this as a shot-block attempt? And what else would you have Dwyer do there...allow Sulzer to tee it up?
You're right, the replay begins with Sulzer in mid-windup and my eye was on Dwyer at that instant. This is why I really don't like using video with abbreviated replay, but it was the only thing available for this game when I posted it.
As for whether Dwyer should allow Sulzer to take that shot... that's a tough question. Allow the guy with 4 career goals to take an unscreened shot from the point, or make him pass to the offensive specialist who is now able to walk it down into the faceoff circle with nobody challenging him? I don't necessarily blame Dwyer for going down, but it probably wasn't the strictly correct move to take himself out of the play there. I realize that's being really picky toward Dwyer.
Taking all of that into consideration, I'm inclined to switch the minus to Skinner, who should have been the guy to cover Sulzer. I see he starts flapping his arms at the ref after the goal is scored, so maybe there was more to the story... this is another time where the NHL's abbreviated highlights really suck to work with.
You ding one guy for moving after the puck (to the area that he is responsible for, no less) and in the same breath ding a guy for *not* moving somewhere. Again, what would you have Faulk and Dwyer do differently...skate out into the slot area? Skate backwards? Do a triple salchow?
I don't see this one as being particularly controversial.
- Faulk was literally standing still and watching the play, covering uncontested ice, long enough for the Sabres to begin that passing attack. He then decides to try and cross the slot to cover Vanek, who isn't even close to being within his reach, rather than covering his own side and locking down on his assignment. He was entirely responsible for Vanek having that passing lane in the first place. It was a tricky play, sure, but it wasn't beyond his ability to recognize and react correctly.
- Dwyer simply overshot the puck, and did a crap-tastic job of reacting to the events in front of him. Drifting back into the general area of the puck isn't good enough, not when the puck ends up being passed right in front of you on the way to a wide open shot. Simply having his stick on the ice would have been sufficient to disrupt that pass.
I agree that Dwyer wasn't at fault for the second goal, as he was covering an absent Skinner (
edit: the game summary and master sheet have been updated to make this change). I believe Gleason earned his minus on the first goal, but I hadn't even thought about giving Faulk one for pushing his man into Gleason from behind. Anyone else want to chime in? Should Gleason be given a margin-of-error point here?