A3Z Subscriber Team Report: Week 1
Shane Wright, Phillip Broberg & Stars on cruise control
It’s time for the first installment of the weekly statcaps from the All Three Zones project. If you haven’t been following, I setup a subscriber tier where you can basically hire me to be your favorite team’s beat writer. I’ll have every game completed within a day & you’ll get weekly reports or breakdowns every Monday or Tuesday morning. Full disclosure, it’s still very early so this one might be a little more “data dumpy” compared to others. I’m also not entirely sure how this will work throughout the season, but having some set teams to follow is making the project more fun this year.
As of right now, I have five Bedard Tier subscribers (Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, Tampa Bay & St. Louis) and one McDavid Tier subscriber (Montreal), which is the Bedard Tier minus the weekly breakdowns. A couple of these subscribers just joined yesterday so I don’t have every game yet & Tampa has only played one game, so this report might be a little bare bones compared to later in the month when I can dive into more of the details. There were some things that stood out to me in the first week, though.
Seattle’s search for offense
Seattle didn’t have a great set of games, blowing a 2-0 lead in their opener and they were out-chanced at five-on-five in two of the three. Both of their losses followed a similar sequence where they essentially lost the game giving up goals on back-to-back shifts and could not mount any sort of comeback. The most concerning thing to me was they couldn’t generate any offense while playing down a goal, creating only one scoring chance in the third period against St. Louis (which was a rebound by Burakovsky) and only three chances in the third period in their 2-0 loss to the Stars. One of which was a power move to the net by Shane Wright & the other two were by Jordan Eberle in the same shift.
Again, it’s early, but it looks like offense is going to be a problem for the Kraken. They’ve been heavily reliant on their forecheck & cycles for offense, carrying the puck in on only 39% of their entries and they’ve yet to generate a shot off a counter-attack. Most of their rushes have come when they can keep the play in front of them or put a couple passes together out of the zone, which are situations that lead to games where you dictate the terms but not necessarily the scoring chances. It’s sort of a 180 from the team they had last year. Eberle’s goal from the Minnesota game is a good example.
Notice what they do after they force a turnover. Instead of quickly going up the ice they retreat behind their own net & start what amounts to be a controlled breakout where they can bypass the Wild’s forecheck and get an entry into the zone with decent support. They’ve struggled to string passes together, so a lot of their offense has been more direct plays like this, where they get a puck to the net & have someone jam at it, or creating a scramble from behind the net. Eberle has been the best player to adapt to this style so far, which shouldn’t be a surprise with his experience & chameleon like nature.
It’s a tough game to play because you’re demanding a lot of precision to get the puck out of the zone & it’s more of a free-for-all after that with how much they’ve been dumping the puck in & crashing the net. It’s also worked against them at times because when you send three forwards to the net & don’t get the rebound you want, it opens the door for transition the other way.
Count the white jerseys before the shot.
and where they are in relation to the puck after the shot. We don’t always look at point shots as a high-risk play but sometimes this is how the bounces go, especially when you’re playing against good teams. I assume this is something they’ve already discussed because they’ve made some adjustments to their forwards lines after Game 1.
Early observations
The story early on for me is them putting Shane Wright on the top line between McCann & Eberle. Byslma hasn’t always kept the forward units the same, but I did like him trying this after Wright’s strong opening night performance. So far, he’s gotten with the program on what to do on offense, showing a nose for the net and all four shots he created were scoring chances. The downside is he’s had limited puck touches, as Eberle does most of the puck-handling on this line and he hasn’t really had the chance to break a game open yet. At least they’re being patient.
The shocking stat is Matty Beniers carrying the puck in only 8 of 21 entries so far & having six shots compared to only one setup. I’m going to chalk that up to early season randomness, but he is someone I expected better things from after a tough sophomore slump. He was placed in Yanni Gourde’s old spot on the checking line in between Tolvanen & Bjorkstrand in Game 2, so I’m interested to see if his playing style or mindset changes based on that.
Brandon Montour has been the guy they paid for so far, or at least they’re giving him every opportunity to be. So much of their offense has run through him in all three zones. He leads the team in shots with 17, the next closest player has 9 and only three players have more controlled entries than him (7). He’s also being relied on to start more breakouts, which is a shift from the pure rover role he excelled in with the Panthers. It’s led to some feast-or-famine play in the defensive zone, but he’s had some big shoes to fill with Vince Dunn injured.
Stars on Cruise Control
The Stars are 3-0 and I felt like they were still in preseason mode for the first week. It was an odd set of games with the parade to the penalty box in Nashville followed by the Islanders game where they somehow gave up 24 chances. Their win against Seattle was the strongest they looked and even that game was a little weird with both of their goals coming on back-to-back shifts. David Castillo used the term “cruise control” to describe their start & I can’t think of anything more accurate.
Just look at who their top players are in terms of Game Score, you can pretty much take your pick of who their best player is. It’s not even that their top guns have been “bad,” by any stretch, Marchment Duchene & Stankoven just had excellent games that kept them in the upper echelon & Wyatt Johnston’s been playing the qualilty over quantity game early. I was also expecting some growing pains early with this team because they’re still figuring out their defense pairs, which was further complicated by the injury to Matt Dumba. They’re cycling Miro, Harley & Lindell in with different players because they don’t have any real standouts on the right side just yet. Although I will say Lundkvist has had a very clean start to his year (7 retrievals leading to exits vs. 3 turnovers) and Lyubushkin’s enjoyed playing behind the forward talent on Dallas, especially Stankoven who has been an automatic zone exit so far.
Dallas feels like a blank canvas to me right now. They’re going to make the playoffs fairly easily and they can play whatever game they want to right now while they’re still figuring out what works as far as forward combos go. I do want to give a shoutout to Evgenii Dadonov, who took the Pavelski spot on the top line and surpassed my expectations in that Seattle game. There is some real chemistry with Hintz & he can really work in that puck hound role.
Never did I think taking Logan Stankoven off the top line would be a good move, but sometimes it’s about the style fit rather than putting all the best players together, although Dallas has some flexibility with how deep their lineup is.
The Blues Setting Broberg Up For Success
The Blues have looked like a lottery team or a feisty wild card team depending on the period. That’s how the early season works, but this roster is such a conglomeration of mid-tier forwards that I’m expecting them to have some wild swings throughout the year. They still have most of the elements of those post-Cup Blues teams where they feast heavily off the rush & offensive zone turnovers. Kyrou is still a burner, he’s yet to dump the puck in on an entry and they’ve doubled down on some forwards whose calling card is making quick strike offense happen (Joseph, Kapanen & Texier are three of the biggest culprits of that).
Kapanen’s game against San Jose was a good example of that. I was a little surprised to see him lead the team in Game Score because I would have put three or four other players in front of him, but he had one scoring chance, setup four and had four zone entries that led to scoring chances. That’s a really good night at the office for a forward even if you get blanked on the scoresheet. Still, there’s an element of Toegpei using Metronome to his game because I know a scoring chance is going to happen one way or another when he’s on the ice.
I also want to give some love to Phillip Broberg, whose had an ice start to his St. Louis career after signing an offer sheet over the summer. It’s hard to say what his potential is because the Oilers kept him on training wheels until the Conference Finals last year when they desperately needed more mobility on their blue line. Individually, he shined as a puck-mover, doing an excellent job of retrieving pucks & generating exits but it never led any on-ice results. Basically it ended up being just empty calories because the forwards either couldn’t do anything with the puck or Broberg never got to do much in the offensive zone to capitalize on his strong individual skills.
In St. Louis, we’ve seen the individual skill so far & they haven’t been hiding him in the lineup either. He’s played second pair duty alongside Justin Faulk & they’ve done an excellent job of trying to play to his strengths, creating situations where he’s got time & space to move the puck to kickstart the offense.
Watching him reminded me of an offensive coordinator dialing up easy completions for a quarterback to get their confidence up. The hope is that when Broberg has to make more plays under pressure, the decision making will come more naturally. Right now, the results speak for themselves. He has 10 retrievals leading to successful zone exits & leads the Blues in exits with possessions. Faulk has also been an excellent partner for him, taking the hits to get him the puck with space and settling down some loose plays in the defensive zone. Broberg’s also had a few situations where he’s had to deal with pressure & the early results are good.
The Blues still have a lot to sort out with their roster, but they’re doing a great job of setting Broberg up for success when they need him to play bigger matchups, which might be soon-ish based on how Leddy & Parayko have looked early on.
Chicago’s subscriber asked me to wait to post their data & Tampa has only played one game, so that is all for this week. Reminder if you want your team added to the weekly updates, subscribe to the Bedard Tier and I’ll have a post on them every week along with complete A3Z coverage.