GDT: PDF GAME 4 - San Jose Sharks Vs. Vegas Golden Knights - 7 PM PST, NBCSN

[do0glas]

Even those random penalties wouldn't be such momentum killers if they stopped the cross-box passes that open up when they chase the puck too much.

Yea i saw our two dmen below the goal line at the same time on a pk last night. That forces forwards to collapse and give up the point. It opens up guys on the backdoor.

 

[one2gamble]

Vegas sets a ton of picks in the offensive zone too.
The Sharks tend to rotate around them much better than the Knight's do. The Knight's players seem to be unaware of the upcoming pick and it looks much worse.

They are aware, they are just selling calls

 

[hohosaregood]

Vegas sets a ton of picks in the offensive zone too.
The Sharks tend to rotate around them much better than the Knight's do. The Knight's players seem to be unaware of the upcoming pick and it looks much worse.

They're not used to not getting it called their way.

 

[Bleedred]

I really don't understand this "Braun is bad" nonsense. Braun is not bad, at all. Vlasic is a defensive god but he can't play as well as he does if his partner sucks. Braun has been and still is a very solid top 4 d-man.

Braun is not good anymore. He’s really fell off the last two years.

He’s certainly not a top 4 D anymore. Maybe he’s a top 5-6 D, but he’s pretty poor in a top 4 role. He’s being carried around by Vlasic if anything.

Eye test and advanced stats both say he isn’t good anymore. I don’t understand how people can watch him and think he’s not that bad. And a lot of good defensemen have bad partners. I think the team makes a guy like Braun look better. The fact that there aren’t a lot of anchors on this team really allows Braun not to get plastered in his own end so much.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Yea i saw our two dmen below the goal line at the same time on a pk last night. That forces forwards to collapse and give up the point. It opens up guys on the backdoor.

That and even when the puck is at the top of the zone, the forwards chased the puck too much and were circling more than stopping and starting. Plus, sticks in passing lanes needs to be better.

 

[McDeez]

As good as Sorensen has been. I hope they keep him on the 4th line. The way they were cycling the puck in their zone was a thing of beauty. Merrill and Miller were having fits trying to keep up. Also, Carrier. Wannabe Goon. Lol

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Braun is not good anymore. He’s really fell off the last two years.

He’s certainly not a top 4 D anymore. Maybe he’s a top 5-6 D, but he’s pretty poor in a top 4 role. He’s being carried around by Vlasic if anything.

Eye test and advanced stats both say he isn’t good anymore. I don’t understand how people can watch him and think he’s not that bad. And a lot of good defensemen have bad partners. I think the team makes a guy like Braun look better. The fact that there aren’t a lot of anchors on this team really allows Braun not to get plastered in his own end so much.

Braun would probably succeed on a 3rd pairing with a competent puck-moving partner on his left side. My pipe dream is to send Braun to Ottawa with whatever to bring in Karlsson. lol

 

[one2gamble]

I do agree that Braun is in over his head and it would be nice to get a younger guy in there to grow along side Vlasic in hopes he can take some of the load off him after signing that terrible contract.....

 

[Sharksrule04]

Braun is not good anymore. He’s really fell off the last two years.

He’s certainly not a top 4 D anymore. Maybe he’s a top 5-6 D, but he’s pretty poor in a top 4 role. He’s being carried around by Vlasic if anything.

Eye test and advanced stats both say he isn’t good anymore. I don’t understand how people can watch him and think he’s not that bad. And a lot of good defensemen have bad partners. I think the team makes a guy like Braun look better. The fact that there aren’t a lot of anchors on this team really allows Braun not to get plastered in his own end so much.

Yea, you're wrong but that's fine you can have any opinion you want.

 

[WTFetus]

Braun would probably succeed on a 3rd pairing with a competent puck-moving partner on his left side. My pipe dream is to send Braun to Ottawa with whatever to bring in Karlsson. lol

Same. I wouldn't say Braun is bad, but I always felt that Vlasic is making him look better than he is. He has speed, but absolutely no offensive intelligence, and the fact that he gets bodied so much seems to be because he isn't quick enough to react to things. He's no top pairing defenseman and I wouldn't mind packaging him for something better, but I think he'd be a good 4D paired with a puckmover.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Same. I wouldn't say Braun is bad, but I always felt that Vlasic is making him look better than he is. He has speed, but absolutely no offensive intelligence, and the fact that he gets bodied so much seems to be because he isn't quick enough to react to things. He's no top pairing defenseman and I wouldn't mind packaging him for something better, but I think he'd be a good 4D paired with a puckmover.

Vlasic is carrying him but he's also a victim of his role. If their job wasn't purely shutdown, he'd probably look better in most metrics.

 

[Bizz]

The only thing I'll say about Braun is he's at least not a useless pylon like he was last season.

 

[pappaf2]

Watching some of the knights interviews I like that Vegas feels like they didn't play poorly. Hopefully that means Gallant won't adjust their style of play and the sharks and replicate their stifling of their system like game 4.

As mentioned above the media and the knights are all in on the "illegal" picks being thrown by the sharks. It will be really annoying if the refs join that line of thinking too heavily.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

Vlasic is carrying him but he's also a victim of his role. If their job wasn't purely shutdown, he'd probably look better in most metrics.

This is true as well. Nobody seems to realize it but the deployment that those two receive is downright insane. Yeah, neither one of them is playing as well right now as they’ve both played in the past, and we could probably use a long term upgrade over Braun on that pairing, but most teams don’t have a pairing that they deploy like those two. The way those two are deployed optimizes Burns’ offensive performance and prevents Dillon-DeMelo from getting caved in as bad as they probably would on a different team. It’s an interesting trade off and I would say that Vlasic-Braun perform at least well, given their role, but it definitely is taxing on them and definitely has tanked their metrics.

 

[Negatively Positive]

It's clear that Gallant instructed his players to run into and fall down every time the Sharks set a pick. Their goal is to get the refs' attention and discourage the Sharks from running picks going forward. Instead of changing their game they're trying to force the Sharks to change their game. The refs will probably buy into it. f*** these whiners.

 

[anthonyyy]

They even did it in the offensive zone when Karlsson ran into Meier. He could've died! Just like Bellmare taking a dive when Kane crosschecked him game 1 and Gallant sitting him out of practice to make it seem worse.

But these are the mind games of the playoffs I guess. It just sucks that the refs fall for their antics.

 

[hockeyball]

They even did it in the offensive zone when Karlsson ran into Meier. He could've died! Just like Bellmare taking a dive when Kane crosschecked him game 1 and Gallant sitting him out of practice to make it seem worse.

But these are the mind games of the playoffs I guess. It just sucks that the refs fall for their antics.

Also, the amount of series we have had to endure having picks run against us constantly and never being called (See: Blackhawks, Kings, Edmonton)

 

[pappaf2]

Also, the amount of series we have had to endure having picks run against us constantly and never being called (See: Blackhawks, Kings, Edmonton)

But once the sharks do even something that could possibly remotely even have a teeny tiny resemblance to a pick it's now at the forefront of everyone's minds.

 

[zombie kopitar]

The only thing I'll say about Braun is he's at least not a useless pylon like he was last season.

He's still one of the best skaters on the blueline, as evident by being one of the few that can keep up and disrupt the Vegas forecheck.
That's when you really see the speed difference.....the Sharks offense compensates as they've been doing it effectively for years, but when a team exploits it on the D side is when we're *****ed

 

[Tkachuk4MVP]

Watching some of the knights interviews I like that Vegas feels like they didn't play poorly. Hopefully that means Gallant won't adjust their style of play and the sharks and replicate their stifling of their system like game 4.

As mentioned above the media and the knights are all in on the "illegal" picks being thrown by the sharks. It will be really annoying if the refs join that line of thinking too heavily.

Gallant's post-game interview was much more somber, he knows his team got badly outplayed.

 

[Tkachuk4MVP]

As good as Sorensen has been. I hope they keep him on the 4th line. The way they were cycling the puck in their zone was a thing of beauty. Merrill and Miller were having fits trying to keep up. Also, Carrier. Wannabe Goon. Lol

Pete would be crazy to break up that 4th line right now, but who the hell knows anymore.

 

[do0glas]

Keep setting picks. They cant call em all. LA did it amd obstructed on D but knew they could kill any pp.

 

[Bleedred]

Braun would probably succeed on a 3rd pairing with a competent puck-moving partner on his left side. My pipe dream is to send Braun to Ottawa with whatever to bring in Karlsson. lol

I'll agree with that. He might not be bad as a bottom pairing guy, but he's not very good as a top pairing guy or likely even a middle pairing guy. At least not anymore, I'm not saying he always sucked as a top pairing guy. His type of game never ages well anyway, so it's no surprise that he's 30-31 and already fell off a bit. Luckily there's not a lot of anchors here so he probably passes the eye test a bit more than he would if he were on a team like Toronto or even Washington.

 

[Internazionale]

Burns looked like his old dynamic self playing with Ryan again. He can pinch more for all I care because in Ryan I trust. I love how during a pregame interview, he was asked about Ryan being inserted back into the lineup as his D pairing, and he had a smirk about him when answering the question that made me chuckle. He looked way more at ease, and this is great moving forward. Hopefully PDB sticks with this lineup and doesn't change anything anymore moving forward. We are winning this series.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Burns looked like his old dynamic self playing with Ryan again. He can pinch more for all I care because in Ryan I trust. I love how during a pregame interview, he was asked about Ryan being inserted back into the lineup as his D pairing, and he had a smirk about him when answering the question that made me chuckle. He looked way more at ease, and this is great moving forward. Hopefully PDB see's the light and doesn't change anything anymore moving forward. We are winning this series.

Need to have them work on their PK discipline when chasing the puck but other than that, there's nothing poor about their game.