Post-Game Talk: HNIC: Caps @ Leafs

[Blitzkrieg365]

Anyone else read this article? I'm glad Holtby is calling them out, that was a pathetic effort last night.

 

[g00n]

Anyone else read this article? I'm glad Holtby is calling them out, that was a pathetic effort last night.

Holtby confirms there's something rotten in DC. Good for him. He's a winner.

Interesting that he seems to specifically call out veterans at the end.

 

[Alexander the Gr8]

Good on Holtby for calling out the team and the vets in particular. You can't play like that against any NHL team and expect to win. You actually have to work to get wins, I'm surprised I have to say this speaking of a team that was winning almost at will last year in the regular season.

Now I want to know what's going on with Carlson. If both he and Niskanen are injured at the same time we're in trouble. Also, Trotz is keeping Ovechkin's ice time low despite him being good recently.

 

[SimplySensational]

What he did was not leadership, its toxic.

I hope he's ready see just how toxic it was once he loses them a game.

 

[HecticGlow]

Deleted and moved to the roster/lines thread.

 

[RandyHolt]

If you program the subconscious to accept reasons for failure then it will look for ways to do so.

Nailed it Goon. Look no further than the modern era expected loss in a back to back. We had a brutal schedule with 4 hours of flights. I'm tired. Cry me a ****ing river. It's evolved to be a reason for a player to half ass it, and the coach usually reaffirms the loss to be by tossing out the backup to get shelled.

I call bunk that a top athlete cannot play in top form for ~60 TOI, spread out over 3 games in 4 days.

Long time fans know back to backs do not equal a loss. Anyone remember the epic playoff games that were played on consecutive nights? There was no shortage of effort. And no, flying a few hours shouldn't change that to the degree we see the white flag being raised. These guys aren't tucked away in bed by 10pm, regardless.

Holtby is pissed because Trotz couldn't get his players to bust ass and give their all, in the 2nd of the B2B's. Holt's can scream at Ovi and the boyz all he wants. If they tune out Barry, why would they listen to him?

Regardless of Holtby's words, the team is floundering and has been for 10 months. Eventually, motivating players becomes the toughest thing for a coach to do. Players playing injured and like crap, don't get sat; why would a player just playing like crap have any fear of getting sat?

If we had a poor showing offset by grade A attacks and full efforts shown by recent cup winners, that would be one thing. We don't. When we win, its usually ugly Turtle Trotz style usually led by a few PPGs. Without the PPGs carrying us, we are a middling team.

 

[um]

What he did was not leadership, its toxic.

I hope he's ready see just how toxic it was once he loses them a game.

Bad games are going to happen to any player but bad efforts are inexcusable, which is what Holtby is addressing. If Holtby doesn't try one game they can call him out, but that's pretty unlikely to happen.

 

[g00n]

Anyone who's seen Holtby's pre-game prep or heard how he trains knows that effort and intensity are not a problem. He may be the most intense, focused guy on the team every single night. It's silly to try and point the finger at him, and if anyone has the moral authority to be calling players out it's him.

 

[trick9]

Another one from Friedman:

21. Three years ago, there was a notable Washington/Toronto game at Air Canada Centre where Randy Carlyle put a man on Alexander Ovechkin during a Capitals’ power play, essentially turning a five-on-four to a four-on-three — daring anyone other than Ovechkin to beat him. It wasn’t as noticeable last Saturday, but Mike Babcock changed the Maple Leafs’ kill, especially for the Capitals. Generally, he prefers to play aggressively shorthanded, but this time Toronto sat back, lined up at the blue line and looked for Ovechkin once Washington entered. Quite simply, Babcock made the adjustment so Nicklas Backstrom would not have the puck when the Capitals entered the zone.

 

[Hivemind]

For all the interest that gets placed on Ovie's one-timer on the powerplay, it's the zone entry that had always been the hidden strength of the unit. There was a terrific article last year that broke down a number of advantages of the Caps powerplay. Here's a bit from their zone entries:

The beauty of this entry for the Caps is that by having Johansson most often as the puck carrier, the puck enters the zone on the right half-wall or goal-line, exactly where the Caps want it once they're in formation; it's only one or two short passes to get the puck over to Ovechkin or Oshie for their dangerous one-timers. By creating an environment (speed, decoy, polished product) in which Johansson (or Jason Chimera, or Kuznetsov, etc.) can enter the zone on his off-wing, this entry also means the player can easily drop the puck back to the point off the boards once in the zone or rush in for an off-wing (better angle) rush chance, but also is already in the intended position for the 1-3-1. In other words, a lot of teams have players enter the zone on the strong side, and then it takes 10-15 seconds for players to get into position on their off-wings (the Tampa Bay Lightning are an example of this), but not the Caps. Every second is accounted for, and very few are wasted.

There are a number of different ways one can evaluate the success of a zone entry, and I will cover at least four of them in my zone entry studies in the next few weeks. The method I've decided to use here is that a successful zone entry is one in which the team as a result of the entry gets off at least one dangerous rush shot (shot within five seconds of the entry and below the top of the faceoff circles) or gets into formation before the puck is cleared. Because so much of Caps' PP offense comes from those two states, I felt it was most appropriate. For reference, on the left are the entry rates for each of the six teams I track using that method.

The Caps are clearly the best, with the Toronto Maple Leafs not too far behind. The New York Islanders are a team that, especially in the first half of the year, treated the power play not too differently from even strength -- not electing for a distinct formation at all times -- and as a result their numbers are likely skewed negatively by this method of evaluation. So looking at micro-stats, how does each aspect of the Capitals' entry scheme, particularly the Single Swing, contribute to that success rate?

The teams that have done the best at shutting down the Capitals powerplay have seemingly always done two things. They pressure Backstrom at the half-wall, and they deny the zone entry. I'd be very curious to see if the stats back up my anecdotal observation that the Capitals have been forced to use the Ovechkin dump-in method to try and set-up the powerplay more this year. To my eye, it seems that Trotz has either adjusted their zone entry or that other teams have simply caught up to it and learned how to take it away, thus forcing the Capitals to default to slower and less effective zone entry techniques. It's a huge issue with their powerplay right now, and it's similarly puzzling to me why they have demoted their best zone entry tool (Johansson) to the 2nd unit.