I was out of the country for a bit there, lacking internet and good watching locations (although a packed bar all rooting against the Penguins was a great place to watch game four), so I missed a few games for the goal breakdowns. So here is a supercut from the last three outings. Not every goal is covered, but a couple from each game that stood out for one reason or another.
Game Three: Boone Jenner from Jack Skille and Ryan Johansen, 1-0 Jackets
A few things on this goal. First, holy hell, that is a pass by Ryan Murray. You can’t even see if it is tape-to-tape, but it sure looks that way by the time the camera catches up to Ryan Johansen. The pass creates a nice little insta-rush, but it really shouldn’t have come to anything. The movement by Johansen, Skille, and Jenner is what makes this dangerous. I like the creativity by the Johan here. He has to slow up to get help, which usually means getting the blueline, stopping hard, letting the defense sink back, the following forwards crash in, and the puck carrier walks into space. But Pens defender Olli Maata expects this and steps up on Johansen, so Joey cuts right into the heart of the defense, which pulls everyone in. From there, Skille and Jenner do a good job of spacing themselves out and forcing a decision by Maata. The rookie has Johansen, passes him off, and then has to decide between Jenner and Skille. Skille takes a shot and goes wide, stops Maata cold, and Jenner has all day to bury the rebound. Any time you can force players to change coverage and make decisions, you are going good work.
Game Three: Lee Stempniak from Chris Kunitz and Sidney Crosby, 3-3
This is some bad miscommunication. Dubinsky has picked up Stempniak, and Johnson is playing the rush. But Dubi let’s Stempniak go to put backpressure on Kunitz. This is pretty standard for the Jackets when they have numbers, and likely would have been fine if Calvert or Atkinson were closer on the backcheck. Instead, Johnson pinches at pretty much the exact moment Dubi leaves Stempniak. If either of those players stay with what they were doing this is fine. If Johnson keeps backing in and plays the rush, he takes Stempniak, while Dubinsky puts pressure on Kunitz. If Dubi sticks with Stempniak, he can’t get off a clean shot like he does. Stoppable shot too.
Game Four: Boone Jenner from Mark Letestu and James Wisniewski, 3-1 Penguins
Before I get to breaking down the goal, let’s take a second to recognize just how huge this goal was. Down 3-0 in the first period of the game, down 2-1 in the series, it would have been awful easy for this team to lie down, lose this game 5-1, then end the season in Pittsburgh. The tying and winning goals have gotten the most attention, but without this goal shortening the first period deficit, I’m not sure either of those goals ever happen.
As for the goal itself, this further highlights how they need to score on Fleury. Make him move across the crease, and do it quickly. He needs to move left, right, back to center, and make a save in about a second. He loses the puck, and it forces and awkward save that he can’t control. Couple more things: love the effort by Johansen, knowing he’s going to get hit and making sure the Jackets get control of the puck before it happens. But this goal is really made by James Wisniewski’s pass. He’s taken a ton of heat this series, but that one touch rocket of a pass to Letestu’s tape is perfect. No other Jackets defenseman would have made that pass, and without it, this goal does not happen. So yes, he’s made his mistakes, but I really think it has more to do with the playoffs tightening up (causing a couple extra turnovers), and him being forced into a bigger defensive role than he should have due to injuries. Great play on this goal though.
Game Four: Brandon Dubinsky from Ryan Johansen and Jack Johnson, 3-3
Here is where I defend Marc-Andre Fleury. He absolutely made the right decision. In hindsight it looks bad, obviously. But this EXACT play happens all the time in this situation, and nearly every time it ends with the goalie firing the puck back around the boards, sometimes out of the zone. It hopped this time, and Dubi tied it up. Watch that goal again, ignore the puck, ignore Fleury. Watch the Penguin players. They have four players below the hashmarks at the time it hops off Fleury’s stick. They have five players below the hashmarks when Dubinsky gets the puck. How many of those players picked up a man? Zero. Say Fleury doesn’t play that puck, what happens? Johansen picks it up cleanly, has Cam down low as an option, Dubinsky walking in uncovered, along with Savard, Johnson and Anisimov, also all uncovered. Maybe a couple of those players get picked up if things go that way, but it very easily could have played out exactly the same, with Dubinsky beating Fleury instead of an empty net. If not that, then the Penguins would still be in a situation where the Jackets best player has the puck in a dangerous area, with open scoring options. The Jackets score more from that situation than they do getting a lucky bounce.
Game Five: Chris Kunitz from Sidney Crosby and Matt Niskanen, 1-1
Two points here: The Jackets have three defenders right there and none of them grab Kunitz. They all just try and clear the puck. Guess what? Take Kunitz! Take away his stick, and guess what happens? Bob probably finds the puck, or maybe one of the other two guys clear the puck before Crosby gets there. What doesn’t happen, is the puck does not score itself. Take the man on scrambles by your own net, every time. Second, this was not pretty by Bob. To be clear: he was superb/amazing/incredible last game, singlehandedly keeping them in it. But this was not good. I have no idea why he reacted the way he did. You can hear the puck hit his pad flush, yet he thought it went through his fivehole, he panics, and the puck is in the net. If he just stays calm and in position, the puck drops right in front of him and he covers it up without issue. Prior to game five, I had thought Bob’s confidence was down. He’d been playing back in his net, hadn’t looked confident on rebounds, and it had cost him. The shots that have just plain beaten him this series have mostly come from him playing a little too deep in the net (see the above Stempniak goal). He was stellar in game five, but this goal displayed that lack of confidence a little bit. Hopefully the remainder of the game helped build that back up and he can shut the door tonight.
Game Five: Jussi Jokinen from Lee Stempniak and Brandon Sutter, 2-1 Penguins
Remember the thing I said earlier about good movement without the puck forces defensive players to have to switch, which causes problems. This applies super hard on this goal. The defense handles the switch fine, but when Stempniak beats Skille, he never realizes who he needs to pick up instead. He chooses puck-watching, which doesn’t really work. If he gets back on Jokinen, this is nothing. Great move by Stempniak to get the switch going, great work by Sutter pulling Nikitin across, not so great work by Skille in getting torched by Lee Stempniak, then not identifying his man.
Well that ended on a down note. Wish I could add another goal here, but there isn’t too much to say about a goal mouth scramble that I haven’t already addressed in other comments about the Jackets powerplay and getting Fleury moving. Hopefully tonight is more game four Jackets, than game five Jackets, hopefully Fleury muffs a floater early, hopefully Bob is in full supercop mode. Wait, scratch ending on a down note. Let’s just watch this again.
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