AustonMitchWilly
Registered User
- Jul 3, 2013
- 2,315
- 1
Taken from r/leafs
These guys are the best hockey players in the world, but they go up against the best hockey players in the world every night, too. Different systems manage the puck and protect certain areas of the ice differently; how a player looks under one system will depend on how the style his team plays accentuates the positive attributes and hides the deficiencies of himself and his teammates.
Carlyle's defensive coverage was under constant scrutiny because he was content to let the opposition take a ton of shots on net as long as those shots were from the perimeter of the defensive zone. Once the opposition had set up in the offensive zone, he had the Leafs chasing them around the zone in an effort to either pressure the puck carrier into an area of the ice they were content to allow a shot from, or forcing the puck carrier to make a pass to what Carlyle deemed to be a "non-threatening" area of the ice. Unfortunately, so much movement and sustained pressure against led to breakdowns in coverage, and we saw lots of shots against from all areas of the ice.
Executing this type of coverage successfully is very difficult, and Carlyle's specific approach hadn't been successful for him since he had a roster with defensively-strong centremen and multiple hall-of-fame defencemen patrolling his blueline - his teams started to get significantly out-shot and out-chanced once Pronger left Anaheim. Few Leaf forwards are particularly good at helping with puck retrieval, and they ended up looking even more inept because chasing the opposition around their own zone pulled them away from good outlet positions; this led to a lot of possession given away in the neutral zone once they were able to finally scurry back to the boards and chip the puck over their defensive blueline. Even when the team wasn't pressured and had opportunities to make clean breakouts, most of the time they chose to have the defencemen blast it 100ft up ice to a stationary winger on the boards at centre ice who would deflect the puck into the offensive zone and let the opposite winger chase it down. Other than some odd-man transition rushes created off of turnovers by the speed of Kessel and JVR, and the occasional dancing through the NZ by Kessel and Kadri for a controlled entry, the methods of moving the puck up ice under Carlyle were ugly and ended up with the opposition quickly retrieving the puck and bringing it back into the Leafs end to start another shooting gallery.
I've only watched little snippets of the two games under Horachek (and it is only two games), but it seems like they're doing a much better job at attacking the puck carrier without having everyone chase out of position and leaving areas of the ice wide open (so far). Breakouts are much easier because the forwards are straying from their outlet positions a lot less, and the team is focused on moving up ice as a five-man unit which gives them more options for entering the offensive zone. Skilled players look a lot better under this approach as opposed to Carlyle's style of play because they are moving up the ice quickly and with more puck control while having to defend a lot less.