Losing sucks. Doubling up a team in shots and not winning sucks more. Holding a team to zero shots for an entire period, and still not winning? That’s practically unheard of. So we’ve covered that Tuesday’s game sucked. But let’s go into a little more detail. I was unable to watch the game unfortunately, so I don’t quite share my site-mate’s rage over the proceedings. But I did take a look at the goals, and the goals against had a couple things that really jumped out at me. So let’s talk about them and maybe point a finger or two in the right direction.
Goal Number One: Hey how ’bout you youngin’s should do some communicating
First, some video.
The Jackets are an aggressive team, but here is a case where a bunch of players are over-aggressive offensively, and it quickly came back to bite them. Watch Boone Jenner. He busts in hard, crashes the net, but for a brief second he isn’t quite sure what to do. He takes the long way around the net instead of getting back out to be the high man, which is where he should be heading with Horton and Johansen clearly coming in hard to the far corner. Now that isn’t entirely on Jenner, as had Johansen been aware of Jenner’s location, he easily could have cut up high and allowed Jenner to be the low man on the cycle. Basically, each player had a near equal claim to each spot, there was no communication, and both guys went low.
This wouldn’t have been a huge deal, but Gerbe knocks the puck away from Horton and Tyutin gets beat to the puck by Dwyer. It would be easy to blame Tyutin for the bad pinch here, but this isn’t really a “pinch” per se. The turnover happens so quickly, and Tyutin is coming with so much speed, that he was already headed in full speed to jump into the play with the other guys. At that point, with the puck coming back like that, and with how close Tyutin was to keeping it in, there isn’t a player in the league who would have backed off there.Wiz handles the two on one in pretty much as well as possible, taking away the pass and not allowing Gerbe to do anything creative. But he beats Bob anyway. It’s a pretty solid shot by Gerbe, putting it in a very difficult spot to Bob to get to, just above the pads, stick side, and as far out as possible. Oddly enough, a lot of this goal is very similar to the first goal covered earlier today at Backhand Shelf.
Goal Number Two: Rotation rotation rotation
Now this goal isn’t necessarily on any player in particular. The biggest finger to point here is probably at Dalton Prout. Not sure what he’s trying to do in this situation. He’d be better off picking up a man in front and worrying about a rebound than sliding wildly and taking himself out of position. It would also be convenient to point fingers at Derek MacKenzie, but that’s just not the case. The Jackets often have the forwards move in a more non-traditional way than your standard penalty kill. Most penalty kills have a box formation, with each forward taking one side. When the puck moves, the forwards pivot like so:
Now, here’s how the Jackets have tended to rotate the forwards:
Most teams that use this type of forward rotation up high use a diamond instead of a box (the general shape of the four penalty killers). In this situation, it kind of looks like a diamond, as Prout is too far out, but usually the Jackets have the standard rotation by the defensemen (each dman has a side, and rotates from the corner to the net front). This further exacerbates Prout’s decision, as he is trying to get in a shooting lane that DMac is already getting into (ie. two players doing one job), and he’s occupying real estate the positionally belongs to Anisimov (two players in the space of one). Both of those are pretty big no no’s when already short a man. Well, the puck gets past all the guys trying to block it, and with Prout out of position, Loktionov is free to deposit the puck for the goal.
Goal Number Three: Hey number six, maybe grab a man next time
Come on Davidge. There is a LOT more to say about this goal. Minor thing first: very poor work here by Dubinsky. He flat coasts through the neutral zone, doesn’t take a man, and that slightly complicates the reads for Savard and Nikitin. Had Dubinsky hustled and put some back pressure or picked up Loktionov or Dwyer, then Nikitin is a little more aggressive on Dwyer no matter what. Instead he coasts, and lucks into picking up Gerbe cutting across the top of the zone.
Now, for the real bonehead move here. Nikita Nikitin. Come on. So there is some movement from the Carolina forwards on this rush, but it is pretty freaking basic. Guy with the puck takes it wide. Middle forward crashes hard (also known as center lane drive) and the far forward cuts back to the middle. In this situation, the Blue Jackets have this perfectly covered. Dubinsky is there to pick up Gerbe. Savard reads it perfectly, gets over to the middle of the ice and picks up Loktionov. Nikitin takes no one. I think he still thinks Gerbe is driving wide, that Savard is over there taking him, and Dubinsky is covering no one. If that was the case, then Nikitin plays this fine, as it would then become a two on one. But that imaginary case is NOT what happened. What happened was a standard rush, played properly by the other two Blue Jackets involved. Here’s how it should have been covered (Canes players movement in red, Jackets movement in blue):
Pretty straightforward right? Now check out this shot, taken less than a second later:
Had Nikitin played this properly, he’s close enough to Dwyer that he probably doesn’t have the time and space to get off the bomb he does. And yes Billy, that was quite the shot. But as usual, there is a lot more than meets the eye in any goal.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
