The Special Teams are bad again

weems

Registered User
Jul 3, 2008
18,489
12,535
On the PP their zone entry plan is an utter joke. They drop pass, drop pass, drop pass, and then when the final guy gets it he builds up a bit of speed to beat the lone forechecker and then passes it to a standing still Tavares at the LW blue line and tries to skate past the defenseman on that side for a chip pass from JT. Unfortunately, JT has zero speed or acceleration in this position and NHL defenders are quite good at stopping chip passes.

Then, on the odd time when this zone entry scheme works, they just don't have a plan. They have the most success when they force it down low and pass out front where JT/Nylander/Matthews can pounce on it, but for the most part they just pass it around the perimeter until Matthews or Nylander take a shot from the faceoff dot. When we spend 30 seconds per setup attempt, which is a 50/50 at best, for a contested shot from the circle against a barely screened goalie, you're not going to score many goals.

On the PK teams just massacre us with the cross seam pass to the LW faceoff circle. Ovi, Caufield, Pastrnak, Stamkos, any friggin right shot who plays there knows theyre putting up points that night when they're playing Toronto. The cross seam pass to the right side isn't quite as bad, it's only Kucherov who takes us to school there. Our forwards never get their sticks in that cross seam lane, the puck will go back to the defenseman, who passes to the RW forward who immediately zips it over to the LW and we're fishing it out of the net.

Yep the zone entries have become a big problem.
What makes it even worse is that there is no variation and they continue to basically try to same strategy every time.
Theres barely any speed coming through the neutral zone that pushes the defenders back and they never chip and chase once at the blueline.
It's so predictable, the opposing team can just jam the blueline and take away any space to make plays or have a clean entry.

When is the last time we saw a zone entry as smooth and effective as this one by Mitch...

 
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Tie Domi Esquire

Go Real Sports Apparel Go!
Oct 18, 2010
3,263
1,162
Is there not a better example of why this team is flawed than the PP that can't score and is entirely composed of 5 offense only players taking 60% of the cap.
 

Fogelhund

Registered User
Sep 15, 2007
23,123
27,159
Is there not a better example of why this team is flawed than the PP that can't score and is entirely composed of 5 offense only players taking 60% of the cap.

I'm not sure about that. The question is, why can't they score NOW? They've been consistently an elite unit with that group of players for years. 21/22 they lead the league at 27.2%. 22/23 they were second best. 23/24 they lead the league in PP success, until Marner got injured, and since then, the wheels have fallen off the bus.

It's not that this group can't have success on the PP... they've proven for years that they can.

The question is... why has a group that normally is 26%+, at 9.4% right now, and sitting at 30th in the league.

If we hope to have any success as a team, we need to get back to a top 3 in the league PP... have that success in the playoffs, as well as fix the PK.

We have 25 goals for 5v5, and 17 goals against 5v5.

If we had our TYPICAL PP, and an improved PK... we should be amongst the team elites..

This mostly comes down to coaching IMO.... and it needs fixing yesterday.
 

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