Dellow: A breakdown of the tiny edges teams create to improve zone clearances while shorthanded
At the risk of treading on Colleague Bourne’s turf a little bit, I was watching the Stars-Ducks game last Wednesday night and observed something that prompted me to write a bit of a Systems Analystesque piece. Late in the second period, the Stars took a penalty. Watch Blake Comeau here. He’s number 15, the right wing as the puck is dropped.
See how neat and tidy that was? As the puck came back to the left corner, Comeau sprinted to the right corner to give Roman Polak an outlet. You can actually see Polak shoulder check to make sure Comeau’s on his way as he heads back for the puck. Instead of a puck that gets rimmed and easily stopped at the blueline, it’s an easy clear for Comeau. By the time the Stars get back into the offensive zone, 33 seconds of power-play time has elapsed.
See how neat and tidy that was? As the puck came back to the left corner, Comeau sprinted to the right corner to give Roman Polak an outlet. You can actually see Polak shoulder check to make sure Comeau’s on his way as he heads back for the puck. Instead of a puck that gets rimmed and easily stopped at the blueline, it’s an easy clear for Comeau. By the time the Stars get back into the offensive zone, 33 seconds of power-play time has elapsed.
Let’s do a little bit of background here. NHL teams have special teams meetings in the hours leading up to the game. The penalty killing unit will discuss what they can expect from the opposition power play. The power play units will be told how they’re going to approach things like faceoffs and breakouts, which are more readily changed than what happens once the team has a setup in the offensive zone.
In the sequence above, the Ducks had three forwards up for the faceoff and two players on the blueline. In circumstances like that, it’s harder to just rim the puck out of the defensive zone – there will be someone well positioned to come across and cut it off. Here’s a different setup, from the Oilers-Penguins game earlier this year. You can see that Edmonton has four players pushed up – Milan Lucic isn’t quite visible on the right wing but you can see Ryan Nugent-Hopkins positioned right at the top of the circle, while Oscar Klefbom is the lone man back.
The Oilers lose the draw and there’s only one man, Oscar Klefbom, on the blueline. He’s got a lot of ice to cover on a puck that’s being rimmed out, particularly if the faceoff is lost cleanly, as it was here. The Oilers were, at the time, employing an all left-shot power play, which impacted Klefbom’s positioning too.
The Oilers lose the draw and there’s only one man, Oscar Klefbom, on the blueline. He’s got a lot of ice to cover on a puck that’s being rimmed out, particularly if the faceoff is lost cleanly, as it was here. The Oilers were, at the time, employing an all left-shot power play, which impacted Klefbom’s positioning too.
Here’s another example of Edmonton’s setup, this time on a faceoff win. It makes it easier to see how far to the left Klefbom is.
Why push four players forwards sometimes? Well, if you lose the draw, or it’s scrambled, you’ve got an extra body who can get into the action quickly, something that’s apparent on that clip from the Oilers-Penguins game. In the first clip, Edmonton loses the faceoff and then basically blitzes. You can see where that would be an advantage if it was won less cleanly or bobbled by the defenceman. It also, as you can see in the second clip, makes it easier to establish clean control of the puck before the defending team has time to start pressuring. McDavid throws a bit of a pick but Nugent-Hopkins and Klefbom have acres of room because Nugent-Hopkins recovers the puck long before it gets to the blueline.
Why push four players forwards sometimes? Well, if you lose the draw, or it’s scrambled, you’ve got an extra body who can get into the action quickly, something that’s apparent on that clip from the Oilers-Penguins game. In the first clip, Edmonton loses the faceoff and then basically blitzes. You can see where that would be an advantage if it was won less cleanly or bobbled by the defenceman. It also, as you can see in the second clip, makes it easier to establish clean control of the puck before the defending team has time to start pressuring. McDavid throws a bit of a pick but Nugent-Hopkins and Klefbom have acres of room because Nugent-Hopkins recovers the puck long before it gets to the blueline.
Note as well that when a team has four players pushed up, as the Oilers do in these clips, that the defenceman’s positioning can change based on where the faceoff is likely to be won. Klefbom is set up closer to the middle of the ice in the first clip – Draisaitl is going to try and win the puck back to him, which means pulling it into the middle of the ice. In the Blackhawks clip, the faceoff’s on the other side of the ice, which means that Klefbom is positioned closer to the boards.
Different opposition setups present different challenges. If the Stars tried to use the same set up against Edmonton that they used versus Anaheim, there’s a much greater chance that a forechecker would get them due to how the Oilers are positioned and the roles of those players. Moreover, it would be unnecessary, particularly if the faceoff’s on the left side of the ice. There’s just too much space for the defenceman to cover to cut off a rimmed puck.
This is the sort of stuff that would be covered off in a penalty kill meeting, letting those players know what they can expect. A smart team would change their approach if playing a team that was going to forecheck more aggressively and give them the rim out of the defensive zone. Here’s another Stars example, again with Polak and Comeau on the ice. This time they’re facing Edmonton’s more aggressive approach.
There’s no passing it across to the far corner here. Polak just zips it around and out through the open space.
There’s no passing it across to the far corner here. Polak just zips it around and out through the open space.
You can actually take a data-driven look at how well teams do with this. When a shorthanded team wins a defensive zone faceoff, there’s a period in the game in which very little happens in terms of shots. You can see this if we look at the shot rate in each second after a 4-on-5 defensive zone faceoff, separated into wins and losses.
(This, incidentally, is a good reason to get rid of faceoffs. Nobody comes to the rink to watch the puck get iced. Why not just give the team that was fouled the puck to start the power play? Offence is, as Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon pointed out the other day, fun. Imagine if the team on the power play was just given the puck above the circles and permitted to line up wherever they wanted, while the defending players had to stay below the dots until the puck was played. I’d rather watch, say, Nicklas Backstrom with the puck in that situation than a linesman chastising players who are trying to cheat on a faceoff and a 48 percent chance the puck goes down the ice. But I digress.)
Anyway, you can see that the effect washes out fairly quickly. After just 20 seconds, the shot rate in a given second is about the same regardless of whether a team won or lost the faceoff. Therefore, let’s take twenty seconds as a cutoff. How often are NHL teams making it twenty seconds without allowing a shot attempt after a 4-on-5 defensive zone faceoff win? If they do their job properly and clear the puck, it should be difficult to give up an attempt within 20 seconds. Since I’m trying to infer how good teams are at coming in with a plan and executing it when they win a 4-on-5 defensive zone faceoff, this is a better measurement than looking at the shot attempt rate – if a team blows a single clearance attempt and gives up four attempts in twenty seconds, that’s a distinct issue from a team that blows four clearances, giving up a single attempt each time. As ever, the red line represents the league average rate.
It’s hard to find competitive edges in the NHL. By and large, teams have been pretty similar in terms of going 20 seconds without allowing an attempt after a 4-on-5 defensive zone win. The difference between Vegas (sixth) and Winnipeg (29th) amounts to one extra defensive zone won shift in ten on which a shot attempt is allowed within 20 seconds. The Jets are on pace to win about 138 4-on-5 defensive zone faceoffs this year. You can reasonably say that the difference in how well Winnipeg gives up nothing over the next 20 seconds versus a team like Vegas will amount to about 14 extra faceoffs where an attempt is allowed within twenty seconds, given what’s happened to date. We’re not talking about huge differences for most teams. That’s kind of what coaches are after in a lot of cases though: piling up enough small edges to turn into a big edge or, alternatively, minimize a team’s chances of breaking at a critical moment.
As ever, the Senators kind of make you wince. We’ve talked about their issues after winning defensive zone faceoffs already this year and there’s an element of the Senators struggling to deal with the rush even if they do clear the puck in these situations – the “Andy’s like, ‘Oh shit'” factor as the puck goes down the ice and comes back very quickly. It really underlines the issues with Ottawa’s penalty kill though.
We opened with the Stars doing it right, so we’ll close with an example of where it didn’t work. This clip from a Flames/Stars game pre-dates the Ducks/Stars clip by a few weeks. Again we have Polak and Comeau on the ice and a team pressuring with three forwards.
The Dallas centre blocks Calgary’s centre after the draw and Polak’s partner chips the puck back to him. However, Polak doesn’t have Comeau as an outlet. Instead, Comeau is tied up with a Calgary forward. Comeau actually seems to have done a pretty good job in terms of putting Polak into a position from which he doesn’t have to rim the puck – he can take that extra step. But he fails to do so and as soon as the puck leaves his stick, Polak knows his team is in trouble. Twelve seconds after the puck is dropped, it’s in the net. The Stars end up winning in OT but it’s a point given away to a possible competitor for a playoff berth.
The Dallas centre blocks Calgary’s centre after the draw and Polak’s partner chips the puck back to him. However, Polak doesn’t have Comeau as an outlet. Instead, Comeau is tied up with a Calgary forward. Comeau actually seems to have done a pretty good job in terms of putting Polak into a position from which he doesn’t have to rim the puck – he can take that extra step. But he fails to do so and as soon as the puck leaves his stick, Polak knows his team is in trouble. Twelve seconds after the puck is dropped, it’s in the net. The Stars end up winning in OT but it’s a point given away to a possible competitor for a playoff berth.
It’s not the biggest thing, but if you mess it up, it’ll cost you eventually. Given the way the league is now, every little edge matters. Even thinking about how you can find the extra clearances.
