AMA End of Season/Playoff Edition Answers
Hurricanes center dilemma, how offense changes in the playoffs, why the Devils sucked, Kraken shipwrecked, Kevin Fiala
Let’s get this started
I would expect all three to be in the lineup, although I could see Kotkaniemi or Kuznetsov coming out when Jesper Fast is healthy. One of them has to move over to the wing anyway. With the way things are setup now, you have Aho & Staal handling the heavier minutes & one you can shelter and play in some higher leverage situations offensively. According to the most recent practice lines, Kotkaniemi has that spot for Game 1 with Drury also taking shifts there & Kuznetsov playing 4C.
Kuznetsov got a lengthy audition as Marty Necas’ running mate & they produced mixed results. You had occasional moments of brilliance with the two showing great chemistry, but they were below the 50% line in terms of Goals & Expected Goals in his 20 games here, which is very hard to do on Carolina. In a perfect world, Kuzy slides into that sheltered 2C spots & goes wild with Necas, but the game-breaking skill hasn’t shown through on a consistent basis. The effort was there, the precision wasn’t and a few missed passes that lead to chances the other way are usually what kills you in playoff games.
Kuznetsov is one of those players who either has it or he doesn’t. If he’s on it, he can win a game on his own (especially with favorable deployment), when he isn’t, his hands are a mess and he’ll compensate for that by hanging out in front of the net to look for deflections & the play usually dies on his stick. It’s frustrating because sometimes you'll get both guys in the same game & he will have at least one shift where he does something that makes you think he can break the game open. It just hasn’t happened yet.
Against NYI you have some flexibility to try some different players out. One of Staal or Aho is going to matchup against Horvat while the other plays against Brock Nelson (presumably). After that, the matchups start to soften up (especially if Pageau is hurt & Roy keeps Barzal on the wing). Engvall & Lee aren’t scrubs on that third line, so you can’t just throw anybody out there & not expect to get burned if you make mistakes, but there is some extra room for error when you’re not playing against some of the higher skilled players in the Isles lineup.
This is important if Kotkaniemi gets the 2C spot because that’s been his issue when playing higher in the lineup. He brings more skill than Jack Drury & his shot is a welcomed addition to any lineup, but soft passes and poor execution are what did him in during his stint in the top-six. Letting Necas do his thing & finding ways to complement him are the main priorities on his line & we’ve seen Kotkaniemi play this role before. It just hasn’t worked this year. Getting back to where he was last year with playing a more simpler game with feeding pucks back to the point & helping keep the cycle going would serve him well because he’s tried to be more of a game-breaker this year with forcing passes to the middle that aren’t open & it’s been part of why his lines haven’t drove play at either end. With Drury, you have someone who will at least help drive whatever line he is on & always be in the right spot to extend a possession or cover for a mistake. Asking him to score or complete anything more than a 5-10 foot pass is the challenge & why this line might fall into a rut if Carolina’s other lines get shutdown. *knocks on wood*
This is a good time to revisit some of the All Three Zones tracking from the past couple of seasons.
Shooting percentage off the rush stays consistent from the regular season to the playoffs & they’re still higher percentage plays compared to the forecheck, which has flucuated in the post-season recently. Where rush play does change is that the percentage of shots taken that end up being scoring chances goes down. It decreased almost 5% from the regular season to the playoffs two years ago and about 2% last year. Not a huge difference, but it does add up in a close series.
Like in the regular season, you need a balance of rush & in-zone offense but chances are at more of a premium. Games are tighter & teams get limited to more one-and-done looks with every team focusing on the details & protecting the house. Rush play in general is also hard to come by in the playoffs, as the league average of controlled entries is usually around 42-43% compared to 47-48% in the regular season (except for 2021-22 where Colorado dominated, so the forecheck is always going to play a key role in playoff success (as it does in the regular season). That said, if you can be a good rush team, it pays off well. These are still higher percentage shots and 40-45% of the overall goal total isn’t anything to ignore. It’s why Vegas basically cruised their way to a Cup win last year. They weren’t always looking to attack, but they made their entries count more than most teams. Colorado also followed this blueprint, although their rush effeciency during their Cup run is something I don’t think we will ever see again.
Some parts of their game were due for a cool down. They had the highest shooting percentage in the league last year in the A3Z data and they lost 44 goals in their bottom-six between Sprong, Donato & Geekie. I thought some of that would even out with the goaltending getting better & some combination of Tatar, Kartye, Yamamoto & one of the rookies stepping up on offense. All of them had okay seasons production-wise, but nobody really emerged as a top player. Beniers didn’t produce like I had hoped & Jared McCann came back to Earth after a 40-goal season.
When comparing this year’s team to last, there’s a pretty big difference in how they were generating their offense.
There’s a lot of red & blue bars here, but I want to focus on the change in forecheck & cycle offense form last year to this year. Pretty drastic fall off. They also took fewer shots & created fewer chances in general. This was a team I expected to have a good second half becuase their play in neutral zone was still pretty good. They could create quick-strike offense and weren’t getting counter-attacked to hell like a lot of poor finishing teams do.
They just never improved and their offense stayed one-dimensional all season. I point to the injury to Vince Dunn in early March as the moment where the roof caved in. He’s an important piece with how good he is at getting the puck through traffic & leading Seattle’s transition game. Nobody else on that blue line could fill his shoes & there was a pretty big domino effect while they were competing for a wild card spot down the stretch.
Still, the one-dimensional offense is a problem they’re gonna have to figure out in the off-season. They’re a good forechecking team & if you watch them you know they have no problem cycling the puck. Turning those into sequences into anything of consequence, namely shots on goal, was just a task for them this year. It bares out in the goals too. Going by All Three Zones data, they scored 60% of their goals off the forecheck last year, a good chunk of them coming off rebounds & deflections. This year, it was only 41.6%.
I don’t have as many Jersey games tracked as I would like, but a few things did stick out to me when looking at their overall stats.
Similar to the Kraken, they had a pretty big dropoff in scoring chance creation and forecheck/cycle offense. They weren’t as effective with breaking defenses down on the cycle, generating fewer low-to-high passes and relying more on their rush offense to carry the mail. Basically, they were limited to mostly one-and-done looks & they had a lot of extended possessions where they weren’t getting any shots. This is where the new players on their defense corps struggled.
Not that you want your defense taking all your shots, but in today’s game they have to be more involved in the cycle than this. Even if you’re not getting chances, pinning teams into their own zone pays off on the follow-up shifts and also keeps you from getting counter-attacked to hell, which was also a major problem for New Jersey this year. Just from watching Simon Nemec, I think they will improve here next season. He looks like the type who can be very effective on the cycle. His profile is a little all-or-nothing with how effective he was at generating chances without any shot volume, but I think that balance will come as he figures out what works & what doesn’t. Luke Hughes had similar struggles this year with all his offense coming off the rush or the power play.
Although after reviewing the tape, some of the plays they tried to start cycles on had no chance just from how the fowards & defense were reading it.
They win a faceoff & Jack Hughes goes for a jam play instead of getting the pcuk to the crashing forward. Haula then goes to Luke Hughes on the backdoor for a pretty good look, but the shot gets blocked. Hughes goes back to get it but he’s pressured & has to move it down the wall to where Jack can win a puck back from the Sabres. From then, he drops it off to Holtz (basically out of instinct) and goes to the other side of the rink while Holtz has to deal with the Sabres pressure. They try an area pass to Jack because the two defensemen already backed out of the zone and Hughes has to deal with a 1v3 down low. From then, the possession is over and Buffalo is goes the other way. This is a possession they probably could have gotten more out of with better execution & cohesion from the forwards & D, but they’re all going off instinct & you get a lot of broken plays that don’t result in much.
I think this is something that will improve. They’ll have that new coach bump next year & Jack wasn’t himself after returning from injury. So much of his cycle game goes through him & he will create something out of nothing when he is on his game. Instead, you saw more rushed plays with him deferring to linmates & possessions dying as a result. Some better forecheck execution would also go a long way because their forwards would usually be in the vicinity to kill an exit but whiff on the check.
This is something that can be fixed, especially with a new coach. What I’m less sure about is the goaltending and how broken their rush play was this year. They’re a team that likes to attack at their own pace & reset in their own zone so it’s easier for their skilled forwards to carry the puck. The problem is they’re bad at handling forecheck pressure & exiting the zone, which led to them giving up a lot of shots on what I categorized as “neutral zone reloads” and neutral zone turnovers. These are usually higher percentage shots compared to when a team has to come 200 feet off the rush because possession changes quickly and you’re usually attacking against a tired group.
This would be counted as a “reload” play for Buffalo because New Jersey cleared the zone & the Sabres re-entered almost immediately. It’s a weak goal but the Devils were giving up a lot of shots off plays like this all season. They either want to stretch the ice & attack with speed or regroup after clearing the blue line. Instead, the pass gets picked off and Buffalo gets a quick entry.
This one is more of a black-and-white turnover, but the premise is the same. They reverse the play to Marino on the weak-side but the Sabres cut it off and there’s a fire drill in their own zone that everyone has to get back to help put out. They want to be a rush team but they can’t exit the zone & teams knew to pressure Marino because he was the guy they deferred to for a breakout for most of the year. They also need to be a rush team because that’s their strength, but the only way they could do it is if they played at their own pace, which you can’t always do in the NHL. Dougie Hamilton coming back will help, but this was an issue when he was in the lineup too (partially connected to Jonas Siegenthaler having a disastrous season). Hughes/Nemec could solve some of their problems, though.
As good of a passer he is, Fiala might be a better shooter. He’s the best on the Kings at making the difficult plays & creating a wide open pathway to the net for his teammates. I will always go to bat for Anze Kopitar & how good he still is at his age. Those short passes he makes under pressure & through layers of skates shouldn’t be overlooked. Trevor Moore is also up there as a playmaker, just because of how good he is behind the net & how dangeorus those plays just from proximity. Fiala’s numbers aren’t as great as they were last year in terms of chance creation, but he was also one of the best players in the league then.
He is one of those players who gets on the board almost every night but you never really hear him in consideration for “best of” anything. Maybe he should be.