New member here, and fairly new to hockey. I have a burning question (and please educate me if I have this all wrong). Why do the Sharks only use the Dump & Chase technique?
The Sharks don't only use it. Although the degree to which they might overuse it in a game or a series can lead to losses.
Couldn't the Sharks have changed their strategy to carrying the puck through the zone instead?
Since you say you are new to hockey, I will do my best to educate you as I can on the strategy.
Carrying the puck into the zone and attacking on the rush is clearly the ideal. Of course, since it's the ideal, defenders tend to focus on limiting the offense's ability to enter the zone with the puck and speed. If you have three defenders at the blue line ready to knock you off the puck, trying to carry it into the zone is going to be extremely difficult and likely result in lots of costly turnovers that will lead to high scoring chances going back against you. The only way to penetrate that defensive front is to send the puck in deep and then chase after it with speed and size in an attempt to get it back first.
From the defensive or neutral zone, it's often a result of getting forechecked hard by the opposition. If Justin Braun has the puck on the defensive zone and he has a forward rushing him quickly, he needs to get that puck out of the zone quickly or else it will result in a costly turnover. Ideally he'd be able to find an open teammate and hit him with a crisp pass. But barring that (whether through fault of Braun, his other linemates, the skill of the opposing Kings players, or some combination of all 3), getting the puck out of the D-zone and hoping to retrieve it in the neutral zone or offensive zone is still preferable to turning the puck over deep in the D-zone. Which still happened a lot.
Obviously the Kings made adjustments to counter it making it ineffective.
And that's basically what hockey is. There are certain strategies that are ideal for an offense. But those are basically the same strategies ideal for EVERY offense. So every defense tries to counter them. Then the offense tries to adapt to that counter. Then the defense tries to contain or counter that adaptation. And so on. At the end of the game/series, it comes down to who executes those actions slightly better.
After the first 3 games, the Kings took away the Sharks ability to get open looks off of scoring rushes, and the Sharks weren't good enough to overcome that. On the flip side, the Sharks tried to take away the Kings ability to get open looks off of scoring rushes.....and the SJ defenders regularly missed assignments.
