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Smashmouth hockey reigns supreme in SC playoffs

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It’s not that “smashmouth hockey reigns supreme,” but more that a diverse and balanced skillset throughout your lineup does. It’s not skill vs grit, it’s all of the above. All Cup winners going back to the early 2000s had plenty of elite talent. They also had tons of depth and excellent role players. And that’s how it should be. Otherwise you could just tank for elite talent every year NBA style and build that way.

Thankfully we’ve accumulated the hardest pieces to find. Now it’s time to start finding those players to help balance it out while our high end talent continues to develop. As several have mentioned, we’re also lucky that some of our high end talent comes w/ that PO style grit.
 
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Size is still very important. All four final teams have big blue lines. The Blues won the Cup in 2018-19. They had a big blue line. TB has the skill upfront. All of their D are at least 6-1. McDonagh is 6-1 . Hedman is 6-6 . Sergachev, Rutta and Savard are 6-2. Cernak is 6-3. All of them are over 200 pounds. The big trees on D make it hard for the opposing team to go to the net.
 
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xsniper11x said:
It’s not that “smashmouth hockey reigns supreme,” but more that a diverse and balanced skillset throughout your lineup does. It’s not skill vs grit, it’s all of the above. All Cup winners going back to the early 2000s had plenty of elite talent. They also had tons of depth and excellent role players. And that’s how it should be. Otherwise you could just tank for elite talent every year NBA style and build that way.

Thankfully we’ve accumulated the hardest pieces to find. Now it’s time to start finding those players to help balance it out while our high end talent continues to develop. As several have mentioned, we’re also lucky that some of our high end talent comes w/ that PO style grit.
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Another thing....most (if not all) of those teams rolled 4 lines effectively.
 
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RangerBoy said:
Size is still very important. All four final teams have big blue lines. The Blues won the Cup in 2018-19. They had a big blue line. TB has the skill upfront. All of their D are at least 6-1. McDonagh is 6-1 . Hedman is 6-6 . Sergachev, Rutta and Savard are 6-2. Cernak is 6-3. All of them are over 200 pounds. The big trees on D make it hard for the opposing team to go to the net.
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Let's trade Robinson and ice Jones!
 
RGY said:
But how do you fix that? Is 82 games too long, which in turn has players not give the same effort night to night?

At the same time, if you shorten your schedule and teams get off to a slow start, essentially killing their playoff chances earlier than they would over an 82 game schedule where they have more time to make adjustments and recover, is that any good for the game? We see it all the time, teams start off hot/cold and then reverse. And it could be due in part to a new coach, new personnel, new youth, injuries, etc.
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Actually call penalties.
 
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The Hawks, Pens, and Caps had smaller defenses than Colorado when they combined for 6 Cups in 9 seasons.

Heavier teams have succeeded the last couple of years but we're just pretending that small, fast, skill teams didn't fence off the Cup for a decade.

And the best team in hockey bar none (and defending champs) has the most skill in the league.

This all is just about the little brother obsession with the Islanders on this board. Get over it. Outside of one line, the Islanders don't even hit much. They're just boring. Yes, boring hockey wins but that's a different discussion.

I've said it all along, the Rangers need to play the they're dealt. Fox and Lundkvist are untouchable for me. I don't care what their heights are. There are plenty of other spots to add grit or (I think, more importantly) forwards who defend.

The coaching change is going to be a night and day shift by itself. Quinn screamed about grit but had an East-West system. They were coached that way.
 
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Machinehead said:
The Hawks, Pens, and Caps had smaller defenses than Colorado when they combined for 6 Cups in 9 seasons.

Heavier teams have succeeded the last couple of years but we're just pretending that small, fast, skill teams didn't fence off the Cup for a decade.

And the best team in hockey bar none (and defending champs) has the most skill in the league.

This all is just about the little brother obsession with the Islanders on this board. Get over it. Outside of one line, the Islanders don't even hit much. They're just boring. Yes, boring hockey wins but that's a different discussion.

I've said it all along, the Rangers need to play the they're dealt. Fox and Lundkvist are untouchable for me. I don't care what their heights are. There are plenty of other spots to add grit or (I think, more importantly) forwards who defend.

The coaching change is going to be a night and day shift by itself. Quinn screamed about grit but had an East-West system. They were coached that way.
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It's not adding grit at the bottom of the forward lineup. It's adding will to the skill in the top 6-9. The will to go into traffic, the will to battle along the walls. Not be allergic to contact. Not the perimeter shit that's been infecting the last two years.
 
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RangerBoy said:
Size is still very important. All four final teams have big blue lines. The Blues won the Cup in 2018-19. They had a big blue line. TB has the skill upfront. All of their D are at least 6-1. McDonagh is 6-1 . Hedman is 6-6 . Sergachev, Rutta and Savard are 6-2. Cernak is 6-3. All of them are over 200 pounds. The big trees on D make it hard for the opposing team to go to the net.
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BIG men on defense win. The ice shrinks and forward have to go to the net. BIG men clean out the front and and wear out opponents in the corners.
 
will1066 said:
It's not adding grit at the bottom of the forward lineup. It's adding will to the skill in the top 6-9. The will to go into traffic, the will to battle along the walls. Not be allergic to contact. Not the perimeter shit that's been infecting the last two years.
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Couldn't agree more. We need more diverse lines. Folks wanting to attach a couple of chirpers to the 4th line are missing the point.
 
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I'm in favor of adding up front. It's the recent freak out about small defense that I don't like. Smaller, skilled defensemen beat heavy forechecking teams by moving the puck. It was Colorado's two big bruisers, Graves and Nemeth, that fell apart.

Our D is fine. Other than Fox, our D is already big/physical. If anything Lundkvist makes it more diverse.
 
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will1066 said:
It's not adding grit at the bottom of the forward lineup. It's adding will to the skill in the top 6-9. The will to go into traffic, the will to battle along the walls. Not be allergic to contact. Not the perimeter shit that's been infecting the last two years.
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Sounds like a guy who signed in Carolina for 3 years at 2 million a season.
 
RangerBoy said:
Size is still very important. All four final teams have big blue lines. The Blues won the Cup in 2018-19. They had a big blue line. TB has the skill upfront. All of their D are at least 6-1. McDonagh is 6-1 . Hedman is 6-6 . Sergachev, Rutta and Savard are 6-2. Cernak is 6-3. All of them are over 200 pounds. The big trees on D make it hard for the opposing team to go to the net.
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The Florida forwards won the offensive battle even against these monster D, Tampa won the battle of the goalies and overall defense and team structure. The Panthers D made too many basic errors that the Tampa D did not, such as coughing up the puck cheaply and allowing odd man rushes, the PK didn't work well enough and the goalies were not strong enough.

The Avs lost their series for similar reasons. The D made avoidable errors that lead to odd man rushes the Vegas scored on and the goalie was wobbly on occasion. Even when the Avs had the lead they coughed up the puck cheaply and wasted their advantage. That's coaching, discipline and mental readiness, not size on D. And with Kadri out the scoring behind MacKinnon/Rantanen dried up, the Avs became too top heavy (Eichel fans take note) and couldn't get past Vegas's simplified game and depth.

You need cutting edge skill, depth, focus, discipline and hot goaltending. But no doubt size is a factor, Clarke was talking about that when the Rangers drafted Schneider. You can call it recency bias because the previous final was Tampa against Dallas (Heiskanen, Klingberg with Oleksiak and Lundell being the beefy guys at the back).
 
Mac n Gs said:
I swear, this nonsense wouldn’t even be a topic of discussion if the team had a more active forecheck/neutral zone scheme.

That’s what will fix this team’s issues -and this goes back to when AV was coach- not purposefully adding bad players because they’re perceived as tough.
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Thank you.

Funny how Gorton & Co talked about how the Rangers were gonna be "tough to play against," but then they went with a coach with no scheme to make that happen.

When we got deconstructed by the Isles this year I don't remember "smashmouth" so much as no space for our players to do their globetrotter thing.

Seriously hoping the next coach corrects this.
 
RangerBoy said:
Size is still very important. All four final teams have big blue lines. The Blues won the Cup in 2018-19. They had a big blue line. TB has the skill upfront. All of their D are at least 6-1. McDonagh is 6-1 . Hedman is 6-6 . Sergachev, Rutta and Savard are 6-2. Cernak is 6-3. All of them are over 200 pounds. The big trees on D make it hard for the opposing team to go to the net.
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Probably so.

However, iirc, when Pittsburgh won a few years back their D was pretty non-descript. My impression is there is more than one way to do well in the playoffs. What's essential is to have a way of playing that works for the group and for the team to commit to it.
 
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