It does hurt bigly. Bigly? Is that a word? Lol!
But we have to try. So,
Game plan vs London?
Stay out of the box. No need to take unnecessary penalties. Especially our D. They’ll continuously go after our veteran D in scrums to get them off the ice. The more time our top three D spend in the box, the more time their freewheeling forwards can exploit our younger, bottom three D.
Be VERY responsible on the PP. London is a short handed goal machine. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails more than short handed goals. Be very sure with your passes in the offensive zone on the PP. Especially around the blueline. Don’t try anything that could lead to a turnover.
Get traffic in front of their net. In this day and age, if the goalie can see the puck, he’ll stop it. Our big forwards need to create traffic in front of Simpson and set up the screen. (Paging Mitch Martin
). I’m not an analytics guy, but Steve Valiquette was on with Kypreos this week and he said traffic in front is the best way to score goals. If a set goalie can see the shot, without traffic, he stops it 97% of the time. May as well not take the shot. So greasy goals could win you games.
For the love of god, PUCKS IN DEEP!!! No dipsy doodling on the offensive zone blue line with the puck when a Knight is near. Too many times this creates turnovers leading to odd man rushes and breakaways the other way. Erie took us to school on this. Could have cost us the series. Bang it deep into the corner if the clear pass or shot to the net isn’t there.
We are four lines deep while London is admittedly three lines deep when they dress the Boultons. They don’t see much ice. But no back to back games in this series so fatigue shouldn’t be an issue for either team, though at times, it could come into play. The odd time their 4th line hits the ice, be aware. The last thing we need is a player go down to a Sawyer Boulton open ice hit. He can be dangerous out there, clean or not.
Mesar / Sale were on point in the Erie series. Rehkopf / Sop need to get their game back on track. Do that, and once you make sure that our grind line is out against one of their top two lines, it should leave one of our top two lines to face their third line. That could result in opportunities our way as one of our top two lines should trump their third line. (though no doubt their 3rd line will capable).
Do all of this, and we could turn this into a long series. I contend the longer the series goes, the better chance we have of winning.
