How we can Improve PK Faceoff Clears

Dellow: A breakdown of the tiny edges teams create to improve zone clearances while shorthanded

By Tyler Dellow Dec 17, 2018 5 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 1%

Bourne: On the early comforts of being a top prospect in the minors and how quickly that window can close

By Justin Bourne Nov 28, 2018 80 

In​ the Toronto Marlies weight room​ at​ what’s​ now​ the​ Coca-Cola Coliseum​ there’s​ a large​ poster on the wall​ visible​ to​​ all the players, staff and media. Its message is simple, but an important one. It explains the concept of the aggregation of marginal gains, which is a fancy way of saying “if you just do a little bit more, or a little bit less, those things compound and you’ll end up further in that direction than you’d have ever believed.”

It looks like this:

In the hyper-competitive world of pro sports, there’s basically no more relevant message. We constantly hear about guys like Patrick Marleau who’s defied the odds by being able to be healthy and still contributing in his late 30s. We also hear about how he takes care of himself, whether it be with nutrition, in the gym or with rest. Longevity and self-care tend to go hand-in-hand.

Similarly, there are no shortage of stories about players with high ceilings that flame out, much to the bewilderment of those who know how much talent they have. Sometimes it’s a lack of opportunity, sometimes it’s luck. Others … well, sometimes the player chose the wrong side of the 1 percent a little too often.

There’s an interesting phenomenon when highly touted players are drafted and end up in the minors for developmental reasons. One, they’re generally showered with praise and promise (which may or may not go to their head), but two, they’re generally allotted a crazy long leash and tons of opportunity. As most agree, they have to play and be allowed to make mistakes to learn from them, so there’s a lot of logic there.

A problem with this, though, is that some players tend to feel … let’s say overly safe, since invincible is a bit much. They can do whatever they want and their ice time doesn’t suffer. While that risky style of play can often lead to goals in their own net, armed with their own offensive production and continued playing time, they can get comfortable.

(Sidebar: You know your favourite top prospect who’s been getting benched because the coach is an idiot and not giving him a chance and if he’d only give him a chance … there’s a chance that coach is trying to combat this and get the guy to truly work, training that prospect like a puppy.)

What many prospects don’t realize, is that the moment they show up at training camp, their hourglass gets flipped, and the sands start slipping through to the other side. They don’t realize that when those grains of sand run out, the cushy gig ends and boy can it happen quickly.

Young people in general aren’t too great at planning long term. It’s tough to believe that when you’re 19-21 in the American Hockey League, that one day you won’t be the young rookie with the long leash anymore. It’s tough to see that at some point, the coddled young seed has to become a tree that bears fruit, or the organization will throw you in the compost. In turn, it’s tough to understand that that 1 percent aggregation of marginal gains matters, because things have been going well for them so far, so what’s the big deal?

Even if you’re young and having some success, putting in the work in today’s NHL is more important than ever. If you’re handed a book to read, read it. If Patrick Marleau is doing five minutes of extra cardio, join him. If you’re travelling late into the night with a game the next day, put down the phone and get some sleep.

On Tuesday, the Toronto Marlies traded Andrew Nielsen to the Calgary Flames organization for Morgan Klimchuk. What I don’t want, is for everything I wrote above to be ascribed to Nielsen, as those are generalizations. But since he’s obviously the catalyst for this piece, some of those notes do apply.

As a rookie, the Leafs could not have been more excited to have Nielsen. He’s a 6’4” left shot D-man, has a bomb of a shot and had/has (depending on where you sit) a ceiling that seemed/seems extremely high. With that, he was given ample opportunity, including PP1 time, which led to him scoring 39 points from the back end as a rookie, which looked really, really good.

Only, he didn’t.

His speed was far below the AHL level, which is a limitation nearly impossible to overcome. He made some poor decisions, seemed hesitant to put himself in situations where he could look bad (which means sagging gaps) and just generally had a hard time. Until the power play, when he’d go bomb another one in the net.

Nielsen is a nice guy who treats those around him well. But I do get the sense that that top-end prospect entitlement pulled him away from putting in that 1 percent that makes the difference and that’s part of the reason it didn’t pan out for him in Toronto.

When I was the video coach for the Marlies, I’d have all the players shifts loaded onto iPads for the bus after the game. The players who most frequently came to me to see how they played: Connor Brown, Zach Hyman, Travis Dermott and Nikita Soshnikov. That’s one of those 1 percent things – while other guys are playing cards, they were watching the game again. Who knows how much of a difference it made. But coincidentally, things sure panned out OK for those guys.

When that hourglass gets flipped on those unassuming top prospects, and they’re trying to get better and get familiar with the pro game, a harsh reality looms. That if they don’t become the tree that quickly bears fruit, the team gets to draft seven new players the upcoming summer. And guess what? One of them is going to be a shiny new seed to be coddled, who might just play the same position, who might just bump them out of their cushy role, forcing themto swim upstream.

If you don’t put in that 1 percent, get better, and you don’t take noticeable strides, the next year you can find yourself on PP2, with a worse D-partner, and with worse numbers and ice time really fast. That’s a scary thing with all professional sports – someone is always coming for your job, and the window in which anything is handed to you and not earned is really short.

The Marlies have talented, young offensive D in Timothy Liljgren and Rasmus Sandin, they have proven vets, most of whom could handle NHL minutes, and just like that, Nielsen became expendable.

He didn’t do anything wrong necessarily. It’s a tough business, and the reality is, you have to be better than the guy next to you, and better than them fast. The AHL is only a developmental league insofar as you’re among the most valuable assets worth developing, and after that you’re in for an uphill climb.

The Marlies don’t have that poster up to decorate the walls. In that league, you’re climbing all over one another trying to get to the top, trying to be the person who gets to slap an extra “0” on their paycheck and sleep at the Ritz instead of the HoJo.

Nielsen is a talented guy who could certainly take the trade as a wake-up call and use the fresh start to push himself closer to the NHL. But to me, he’s a great lesson for all young players who have been given multiple chances in the American League. The next guy is coming along faster than most realize. That 1 percent – whether that means more time in the gym, more time after practice, or passing on fast food for some bland ol’ chicken breast – it adds up.

(Top photo: Graig Abel/Getty Images)