Tender Rip
Wears long pants
I don't think it can be stated enough, for our system to work in the postseason, we need to have sustained pressure in the offensive zone. Giving Sid/Geno players who can help them torch the opposing defense.
That is true, sort of, but isn't sustained pressure in the offensive zone how most teams score their goals and win PP's? More cagey teams than us just try to make the most out of the times they have sustained pressure rather than force things to pressure all the time.
We had lots of sustained puck possession in the Montreal series, but not as many great chances as we'd want because we were getting kept to the outside. Much the same was true for the Tampa series, but that one was different due to not having Sid/Malkin.
Against Philly on the other hand we had all the possession, pressure and chances one could wish for offensively and we scored an amount of goals that should not have made it possible not to move on to the next round.
But we didn't have balance, we didn't have structure, we didn't have a goalie, we didn't have a pk and we had no answer to Philly's aggressive play behind our net. The latter I fear a lot against any future opponent with our current D-cast.
Maybe I'm misinformed, but our style of hockey is playing defense in their zone. Forcing them to deal with our skill, grit and speed.
I don't think you are misinformed. That's what Bylsma always says, and he is responsible for what is our style. The problem here is that on the biggest stage this style doesn't seem to work; we are not that gritty either (particularly on D, which is both undersized and relatively soff) and outside of Sid and Malkin we just don't have that much skill... very little infact.
We don't play a skilled game of hockey as such, we are a fast transitioning team with the two best players in the world on it.
In my opinion it doesn't matter that the puck is in the oppositions' zone 60% if we can be counted on to lose our **** with regularity when the puck is in our zone and can never seem to adjust to the pain our opponents are bringing. Before we solve our defensive frailties, both from a system/personnel point of view, we can forget about winning anything. Never mind zone time and offensive nous.