Cutting The Head Off The Monster
Posted 11:38 PM ET | Comments 3
There are a lot of balancing acts involved in hockey and one of the key ones is how much emphasis do you place on playing your own game and how much do you place on adjusting to a particular opponent.
My Flyers have a really interesting challenge in the Alexander Ovechkin led Washington Caps. The line of Ovechkin-Backstrom-Kozlov scored a hair under 40% of Washington goals this year. Ovechkin himself had 112 points which translates into his having a hand in 46% of the Caps' 242 goals. Numbers like that warrant special attention.
I took a look at the shot charts of the last 20 games of the Caps' season and noted where Ovechkin scored from. These were all big games for the Caps, and Ovechkin didn't shrink. He scored 18 goals in those games, higher than his goal per game average over the whole season. One of them was an empty netter from his own end. He also didn't pad his scoring numbers during blowouts. He was very consistent in his production.
The blue and red highlighted area is the infamous mid-ice lane. Defenses always try to keep the offense from controlling the puck in the area. The red area is the home plate. Color commentators don't often to refer to these invisible lines on the ice, but the players know them and defend accordingly.
Lets look at where Ovechkin actually scored his goals from. The three from above the home plate were scored on the power play. The 14 scored inside home plate tell an interesting story. Ovechkin is a right handed shooting left wing. You would think he'd score more from the left side where he has the better shooting angle, but that's not the case. I haven't seen the tapes on these goals, but my guess is he's floating over to the right side in order to lose his checker, who is picking AO up within the checker's zone, but letting him go when he floats out of it, thereby giving AO some space to work with.
Also, it's pretty clear he scores a lot from the perimeter and likes to set up in that 20-30 feet from the net range and will float around to get open. He obviously also makes terrific shots to be able to score that much from that range.
So what to do about it? The first two games are in Washington and Caps' coach Bruce Boudreau has last change. If I were Boudreau, I'd definitely want my top line against the Briere line. I think an important key player for the Flyers in this series will be Scott Hartnell. He needs to be on the right wing of the Briere line the first two games in DC. He has to shadow Ovechkin everywhere. No thoughts of a zone for the Flyers. Hartnell has decent size, skates well and has the ability to make opponents hate him. If it were my call, that's what I'd do and if Boudreau doesn't try to match lines in DC, great. I can put my Philly plan in place early.
When the series come back to Philly, I'd keep Hartnell on AO, but try to get Mike Richards against Backstrom. I would have two, dogged, determined checkers on the top two Caps offensive threats. The third member of the big line is the right wing Kozlov. He's huge and has skills. I thought he played very well for the Islanders in the playoffs last year. I would avoid using Thoresen against him because of the size mismatch and would probably lean towards Umberger.
Well, this is going up Wednesday before the series starts and my contest entry will run during Game 3 on Tuesday night. We'll see how close I come to anticipating what Stevens will do to cut the head off this monster.
My Flyers have a really interesting challenge in the Alexander Ovechkin led Washington Caps. The line of Ovechkin-Backstrom-Kozlov scored a hair under 40% of Washington goals this year. Ovechkin himself had 112 points which translates into his having a hand in 46% of the Caps' 242 goals. Numbers like that warrant special attention.
I took a look at the shot charts of the last 20 games of the Caps' season and noted where Ovechkin scored from. These were all big games for the Caps, and Ovechkin didn't shrink. He scored 18 goals in those games, higher than his goal per game average over the whole season. One of them was an empty netter from his own end. He also didn't pad his scoring numbers during blowouts. He was very consistent in his production.
The blue and red highlighted area is the infamous mid-ice lane. Defenses always try to keep the offense from controlling the puck in the area. The red area is the home plate. Color commentators don't often to refer to these invisible lines on the ice, but the players know them and defend accordingly.
Lets look at where Ovechkin actually scored his goals from. The three from above the home plate were scored on the power play. The 14 scored inside home plate tell an interesting story. Ovechkin is a right handed shooting left wing. You would think he'd score more from the left side where he has the better shooting angle, but that's not the case. I haven't seen the tapes on these goals, but my guess is he's floating over to the right side in order to lose his checker, who is picking AO up within the checker's zone, but letting him go when he floats out of it, thereby giving AO some space to work with.
Also, it's pretty clear he scores a lot from the perimeter and likes to set up in that 20-30 feet from the net range and will float around to get open. He obviously also makes terrific shots to be able to score that much from that range.
So what to do about it? The first two games are in Washington and Caps' coach Bruce Boudreau has last change. If I were Boudreau, I'd definitely want my top line against the Briere line. I think an important key player for the Flyers in this series will be Scott Hartnell. He needs to be on the right wing of the Briere line the first two games in DC. He has to shadow Ovechkin everywhere. No thoughts of a zone for the Flyers. Hartnell has decent size, skates well and has the ability to make opponents hate him. If it were my call, that's what I'd do and if Boudreau doesn't try to match lines in DC, great. I can put my Philly plan in place early.
When the series come back to Philly, I'd keep Hartnell on AO, but try to get Mike Richards against Backstrom. I would have two, dogged, determined checkers on the top two Caps offensive threats. The third member of the big line is the right wing Kozlov. He's huge and has skills. I thought he played very well for the Islanders in the playoffs last year. I would avoid using Thoresen against him because of the size mismatch and would probably lean towards Umberger.
Well, this is going up Wednesday before the series starts and my contest entry will run during Game 3 on Tuesday night. We'll see how close I come to anticipating what Stevens will do to cut the head off this monster.
awesome stuff. love the graphics!!
I think if you did a chart like that for most of the top goal scorers in the league, you see the same type of results. Those are the dangerous areas of the ice for any player.
What's different about Ovechkin is how much he scores from above the dots and not so much on the doorstep and he's a left wing but scores a little more from the right side.