Much better than the Anaheim game is what I'm sure he means.
Yes, that's what I meant.
Okay, braniacs... Riddle me this;
How do you beat a team that uses a passive 1-2-2 Neutral Zone trap?
How do you beat a team that uses a passive 1-2-2 Neutral Zone trap AND has a puck handling goalie?
Well, if you're Torrey Mitchell, toss it to the goalie, and charge the goalie
I thought it was shrewd for the Wild to set up a little breakout on one side, and then pass D to D and a quick pass to the forward at the far blue line. Kind of bypass the middle. But then you don't have much speed when you enter the zone, and you do that little chip dump behind the D and retrieve.
It's hard to think about. Best I can imagine is to wear down the other team by getting pressure in their end, but you have to do that first. And you need all four lines rolling. But get the other team tired and making mistakes and get their forwards out of rhythm, then try and pepper the goalie. That's what Lemaire teams did.
Trapping teams don't eliminate goal scoring...they just drop the effectiveness of shots and chances. You'll maybe score on 5-7% of shots than 8-10%. So you need as much zone time and shots as you can get, just keep pressuring. Guys make mistakes when they are tired, running around in their end for 90 seconds. We've seen it over and over.
And you've got to play nearly perfect defense. We saw that Phoenix's, what, one shot on goal all period from that turnover resulted in a goal?