Could you shed some details on the Sharks’ breakout strategy? My untrained eye test sees that as one of big reasons they couldn’t shift the momentum mid game. They don’t get much movement from supporting forwards exiting the zone, on both structures and unstructured breakouts. Seems like they’re trying to spread the ice and stretch a pass out to a wing past the red line.
Is this something that we need to do due to personnel?
That's exactly what I'm seeing. When it's Thrun/Thompson or Ceci/Walman, you can see the breakout system. On a turnover, they have the two wings fly the zone to try to stretch the opponent's forecheck and either give space for the C's breakout curl at the dots, or a stretch pass, typically to a tip into the zone for "200 foot hockey," or a controlled zone entry. If the forecheck is weak (usually because of a line change by opponent), they'll take the time to setup behind the net and run a typical breakout. We absolutely are trying to play this type of "north-south hockey" getting through the NZ quickly and getting it deep, and then crash and bang for a turnover and puck possession in the OZ. The advanced stats show this is kind of working, kind of, certainly for our skill level it's working okay.
The downside is that if the other team's D are mobile, big, and/or decent at handling the puck, this looks like a lot of getting the puck deep in their zone and then the other team breaks out and gets back into our zone, or a turnoverc in the NZ, or just NZ battles but not a lot of threat in their zone.
And when it's Ferraro and Rutta on the ice, then the system looks like last year - either turn it over in our own zone and get stuck on a 2 minute shift, or try to bang it high and hard off the glass and it gets held in, or collected in the NZ and the line change is difficult and the shift continues, or it's an icing and the shift continues.
