Post-Game Talk: Oilers def. Canucks - 3-0

[Johnny Canucker]

I think they finish bottom 5

Yahhhhhhh. Can’t wait for Juolevi v2.0 to play 6 minutes / healthy scratch in 10 years from now.

 

[Johnny Canucker]

Yeah, I agree. Nothing to look forward to until October when Podkolzin comes and our team also hopefully gets back on track somewhat.

Yah, sounds like a great idea to sign him and burn a year of ELC, to bring him to a team mathematically out of the playoffs, after head trauma.

we are all Canucks.

 

[Intangibos]

Benning walks home? I heard he’s an avid Biker.

I was more surprised by the "things going on in his head" part

 

[Chimpradamus]

 

[GreatSaveLuongo]

3 pt gap vs Sens, go Sens go! Hoping on team tank!

 

[Traveled]

None of that is true. We're a team full of useless, slow, expensive veteran players who demoralize our good young players as they are the reason why our positive contributors could not be brought back to build on the glimmer of success last year.

We essentially have two guys under 21 who are amazing, but yet to be tied up long term to contracts, and then all our other "young players" are turning 25/26 and approaching UFA years.

What's the solution?

 

[Traveled]

Typical.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Well, still losing. 2 wins in February. Killer. Ottawa wins their games in hand, Canucks are officially last in the North.

Plug badly needs to be pulled.

Anyway...

--Virtanen looked good aside from his two bonehead penalties in the 1st. Skating, shooting, noticeable for good things sometimes.

--Goaltending once again 2nd best, but then you don't win many games when you score 0 goals. Also when your team keeps giving up breakaways and loose pucks. Demko was good, even great at little times here and there, but in the end the team needed perfect and didn't get it. May not be fair to him, but it is what it is.

--Lineup changes were moot and annoying. Hawryluk sucked. Hamonic wasn't great. Would rather have someone other than Juolevi sit.

--Team is as fragile as bone china. Goal against, suddenly the breakdowns start again. The f***'s up with Miller? A little pressure the guy's screaming. Soft between his ears. I wonder if any other teams had this issue with him...

Not a lot else to say, really. Thought a lot of the game was pretty even but in the end, the reaper reaped. Standings are scary. Canucks are 2 points ahead of teams with 9 fewer games. On pace for a bottom 5 finish as we close out the month. Fasten your seatbelts, we have lost cabin pressure.

The Tank is love. All hail the Tank.

 

[rypper]

Canucks have a 2% chance of making the playoffs and 73% chance of finishing 6th in the division. It's not even March.

 

[jd22]

Meaningless games in March! Let's go!

That was the goal right?

 

[mossey3535]

He is the issue. Every goalie under a heavy workload eventually gives up numbers goals (i.e. 90% of 30 shots is still 3 GA). But he is making crazy saves and then giving up easy goals that could have been addressed through his technique and addressing his bad habits.

He only let in two goals tonight and both were, AGAIN, because he was down early.

Goal one the guy is on the goalmouth so yes you should be down. You probably can't react from that spot. But the pass is to Chiasson's backhand and he has no room to even move his stick to elevate it. Demko instinctively leans on his post, which carries him too far to his right. So when Chiasson spins he is shooting at empty net. You can tell this was a poor play because Demko ended up basically facing at a 45 degree angle to where the shot was released.

AGAIN he is looking for his posts by default. It is ingrained now. I would estimate that at least half of the TOTAL goals he gives up are because of this tendency. At the moment that Chiasson receives the puck, Demko is already in perfect position. But he leans right! Because he uses the post as a security blanket!!@!

The general rule of head trajectory is that you move the head first, then your shoulders follow, and then your feet. If you look at this replay, Demko has his head right on the puck at all times but his entire body is reaching for that post. Yeah you would totally prevent the backhand but you are leaving the whole other part of the net open.

From there because his head is off his body line (or vice versa), it's a comedy of errors. Now he has to overcompensate to track the puck and his entire body of course rotates with his head (this is what it tends to do unless you fight it consciously or subconsciously) which takes him out of square to the shot and exposes the entire left post.

Also there is room blocker side even with this stack because Demko has a very passive post integration position. His hands are tucked when they should be slightly in front of his torso and pads. This is classic box control and takes away even more aerial angle.

In this case Price in his prime would have dropped straight down and counted on his forward blocker position to seal off the backhand. In that case he would be square and ready for the far side shot and would probably block it just by being in that position.

Demko's passive glove position and tendency to drop early bites him on the second goal as well.

First of all Draisaitl is not in the zone where RVH (aka dropping to your knees against the post) is warranted.

Drai is clearly inside the faceoff dot. The diagram above is from 2014 - nowadays NHL shooters are hanging out in the part of the purple triangle from the center of the faceoff circle to the wall. They can curl back into the faceoff circle a teeny bit to give themselves aerial angle on any goalies who drop down early. Even by 2014 standards, dropping here is idiotic.

Even worse, Demko is not square or on his angle on Drai even on his feet. Then he compounds the problem by leaning. This is one of the best players in the NHL, in a position where you are mis-using the RVH, and now by leaning on the post you are exposing the entire far side net.

Earlier in the game McDavid tried two sudden shots from roughly the same position because he knows Demko drops early but didn't get all that much on them.

Of course Drai knows Demko is in a bad position so he shoots. Luckily for Demko he shoots right at him. Unluckily for Demko his RVH has tons of holes in it. Even on the initial shot, the top of Demko's left pad isn't sealing the ice so a far side shot could have gone under it and hit has right skate (which is up) and gone in. Top of the net appears open but at this range there is no aerial angle to roof it here. What is concerning is that there is space on both sides of his glove and his glove is not open to the puck (the latter is optional but I prefer it). To me this is a very early version of RVH - skate on post makes it harder to close the side. Arm inside post is also an indication of RVH technique from about 10 years ago.

These days there are lots of adaptations to this move. Your post pad anchors with blade, toe, or boot break. You can have your arm inside or outside (newer thinking is outside), and you can have your glove active or passive. You can also orient it fingers up or down (the former is reactive, the latter passive).

In this case because he already makes the poor choice of going down in the wrong situation, he wasn't under pressure. There's no reason to have holes in this position. You're not going post-to-post in a hurry to counter a cross-crease play or wraparound.

It's also concerning that Demko apparently doesn't have any alternatives to RVH. There are lots of techniques that are better suited to this situation. For example, I would advise that he keeps his feet here and use a slight post overlap (you are slightly off the goal line so your foot is in front of the post) which would keep him square and on-angle for any initial shot from Draisaitl but would not put him in a passive blocking position. However a simple butterfly drop would let him quickly cover the net bottom for the point-blank play.

Demko was excellent for most of this game but two technical breakdowns determined whether the team lost. Yes in this case there was no run support but what if the team had been able to score a goal? The first mistake alone would have resulted in a loss.

This is the issue for me with Demko. He is giving up lots of low-danger goals. Imagine where he could be if he eliminated them! But there are no signs of progression so far this year to my eye. Unfortunately he can kind of fake it until he makes it in this case because he is so good in almost all other circumstances. But I am personally annoyed because so many other prospect goalies have huge holes in their games that can't be patched up (too small, too slow, etc). Demko's issues are all fairly easy fixes because they don't stem from a lack of physical ability.

 

[mossey3535]

PS I think there is already enough evidence to indicate that Clark and Demko don't work well together. The movement patterns that Demko has are from almost an entire season working with Clark at a time when he was getting plenty of practice time because Marky was the clear #1.

Basically Demko is just grooving what he has been taught by Cloutier and then by Clark. In fact there is an old 2016 or 2017 video of Cloutier working on post integration with Demko and you can see the huge holes in Demko's technique there as well.

Clark isn't known to force changes on his goalies so IMO Demko is still working off of Cloutier's poor instruction. By now he is comfortable with it, to the point that it has become a bad habit that he uses at almost all times. This can happen very easily - this tendency has been attributed to Talbot's fall from grace in Edmonton and Ryan Miller was also abusing post integration when he tried to modernize his skating when he came here and if you look back at GDTs from that time I comment on how he is giving up goals because of it.

Probably Clark worked better with Marky because Marky has a very diverse movement set from working with Melanson and what Clark does best is refine a veteran/established goalie's game.

 

[tantalum]

I don’t even know where to start. Probably with the moral victory of giving up, what, 5 breakaways and having them all saved.

That’s all I really got. It was one of those games that as soon as you saw Mike Smith wasn’t going to play like Mike Smith, you realized the Oilers were never going to lose no matter how many breakaways they missed.

The Sens are sneaking up....

 

[Baby Pettersson]

How has no changes been made yet. I know this season is a loss but maybe get a head start for next year?

 

[Upoil]

Big ooof. We just aren't very good.

I really miss when I used to watch this team and get excited.

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

Mehhhhhhhh. Where does it end. Everyone has their own show. Should we pin Dave Pratt’s podcast? What about Stanchion, Brough, etc etc.

Its also rather silly. Who cares what the media says. Its frigging hockey not some sort of "truth to power" thing.

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

Is this team really this bad? I was expecting a downturn this year but not a worst in league performance. I don’t even know what they can do to change. Elder Tanev and Markstrom protected this team from being worst in the league in previous years. Two are gone. The other is almost done.

Edit: the only consolation is that this year is a weird year and can be dismissed going forward.

Brah. They were bad last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

They just lost their best tender, 2 right side dmen an good winger in Toffoli and a servicable guy in Leivo.

 

[Fatass]

How has no changes been made yet. I know this season is a loss but maybe get a head start for next year?

The “no plan, plan, clearly comes from the very top.
#Thank you Aquilini

 

[archangel2]

Only bright spot I can see is that I started both Smith and Demko in my pool last night

 

[iceburg]

Brah. They were bad last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

They just lost their best tender, 2 right side dmen an good winger in Toffoli and a servicable guy in Leivo.

They've gone down from being a bubble playoff team last year. I'm kinda done talking about the loss of players that were making significant contributions. It was the clearest evidence of the consequences of poor management. Seems the only way they may make a change is if the bottom line $$ is impacted. And right now COVID muddies that water.

I've been a fan of this team for way too long. I've seen it struggle to be competitive as a new franchise. I've seen the Jack Gordon years that only turned around because Quinn. I've seen the Keenan years when a promising squad was ripped apart. I can honestly say that, IMO, this is now the lowest point in franchise history. And the reason is because I have no expectation that the current management can turn this around. Quite the opposite. My expectation is that more damage will be done in trying to fix the short term. And there is apparently no organizational motivation to make a change. Fun times.

 

[Grumbler]

The coach is completely delusional. "5 on 5 we played well. I thought our goalie played well" Please just stop. Stop deluding the team mentality that they did things well. No they didn't. Call out the people who are complete trash, and start talking about the real problems with the team. But no no no...every piss performance we have it is delusion after delusion "we played well, you good teams go through rough patches...etc, etc." NO, we didn't play well, we are a bad team because we have some bad players and terrible contracts. Even Torts and Alain said it as it is when the problem is blatantly apparent.

 

[Chimpradamus]

The coach is completely delusional. "5 on 5 we played well. I thought our goalie played well" Please just stop. Stop deluding the team mentality that they did things well. No they didn't. Call out the people who are complete trash, and start talking about the real problems with the team. But no no no...every piss performance we have it is delusion after delusion "we played well, you good teams go through rough patches...etc, etc." NO, we didn't play well, we are a bad team because we have some bad players and terrible contracts. Even Torts and Alain said it as it is when the problem is blatantly apparent.

The Canucks are slowly but firmly sliding towards being the worst team in the league. Green: "Things are going well and we're playing well." He's starting to look like Bagdad Bob with these comments.

 

[I am toxic]

snip
First of all Draisaitl is not in the zone where RVH (aka dropping to your knees against the post) is warranted.

Drai is clearly inside the faceoff dot. The diagram above is from 2014 - nowadays NHL shooters are hanging out in the part of the purple triangle from the center of the faceoff circle to the wall. They can curl back into the faceoff circle a teeny bit to give themselves aerial angle on any goalies who drop down early. Even by 2014 standards, dropping here is idiotic.

Keeks had that great thread in the old goaliestore forum about RVH (or VH at the time) absolutely should not be used if the shooter was more than a stick length away in the wedge.

Dying in the pie.

Virtually every goalie I watch has the tendency to stay down in RVH (does anyone use VH anymore, I think I saw it once so far in the last year?) as the puck often moves it's way up the boards from the corner to the hashmarks (as the defenders take away the house but give up the area outside). When I point it out to my own goalies, they at first don't seem to be aware of it, like the habit is so ingrained. I finally got an (unsatisfactory) explanation from my kid, says he's concerned about creating holes while going from RVH to standing up square. I'm not buyin' it, I think he just can't admit that it is a combination of 1) laziness to get back on their feet and 2) post integration becoming a security blanket where the goalie can't lose the net.

 

[December5th]

JIM: how do you want your hockey team for the next 7 years

aqualini: Just f*** my sh1t up

 

[M2Beezy]

guy with the job title "GM" that is the problem.

Benning