Clip of the Day: Turning broken plays into goals
How New Jersey became the team to break All Three Zones Charts in 2022-23
Now that we’re past the halfway point of the season, we can start to pick up some trends in the All Three Zones data. I want to do a better job of showcasing some of this in a more brief form than I did in previous years. There’s always a play or two that sticks out to me where you can see some of the A3Z work in action. It could be a system trait, a team’s playing style or just a cool thing a player or team does that I pick up on when I’m going about my work. I’m going to try do do this once a week (at the very least) just to keep things fresh on my end so this becomes more interactive & less of a laborious data collection project.
Today we’re going to talk about the team that has jumped off the page more than anyone else this year, the New Jersey Devils. They score a lot of goals, pile up a lot of shots and sit near the top of their division after going on two long winning streaks early in the season. Most of it stems from their rush offense & how teams struggled to keep up with their speed.
Rush offense is just one phase of the game, but scoring on your quick-strike opportunities goes a long way for the rest of the game. New Jersey has been trying to play this type of style since drafting Jack Hughes and his evolution into a superstar who can control the game obviously has a ripple effect on the rest of the team. What’s interesting, however, is how the Devils compare to a certain team that jumped off the page in last year’s A3Z’s dataset.
The Devils rush offense is very similar to the Florida Panthers, of last season. The same team that broke goal-scoring records and had a 122-point season. Their head coach, Andrew Brunette, is currently an assistant on the Devils staff. I don’t know how much the Devils explosion of offense is him and how much of it is Jack Hughes being a unicorn, but there are parallels with how the two teams get the most out of their forwards, especially when it comes to rush offense.
I loved this goal in particular because we often think of rush offense originating in the defensive zone with clean exits in breakouts. Most know that it doesn’t always work like that, especially if you’re deliberately coming out of your own zone like New Jersey does here. New Jersey is also down one of their better puck movers in John Marino in this particular game so they’ve got Brendan Smith & Ryan Graves, two of their weaker passers, working their way out of the zone.
They send a pass to neutral that gets picked off, but NJ regains possession immediately with all three forwards converging on the play. Yegor Sharangovich (17), in particular, made a good read because they were trying to hit him with a stretch pass & he recognized the play was DOA. After that, they can start attacking with layers. Tomas Tatar (90) enters the zone 1v3 and the play looks dead once he decides to pull-up and temporarily loses possession against the back-checker.
Tatar’s hesitation actually works in the Devils favor here because what he’s really doing is changing the angle of attack & allowing his two linemates to drive the middle, opening up a lot of space for Dougie Hamilton to jump-in off the bench and step into a shot with some traffic in front. They get a fortuitous rebound & Sharangovich jumps on it to get a late goal for the Devils. It kind of shows how much small details add up because Brandon Carlo had him boxed out originally, but turned the other way to look for the puck & that’s all Sharangovich needed to get a lay-up
All of this started on a play that looked dead in the water in the defensive zone. Again, I’m not sure how much of an influence Brunette has on this but you can see some of the pieces Jersey put together for years starting to take form. Sharangovich & Tatar are two strong middle-six players with complementary skillsets who can make the subtle plays to facilitate offense. Dougie Hamilton is their threat from the blue-line who can be the trailer & create confusion for defenders. Hughes & Nico Hischier are their rocks who make things easier for their wingers.
Their defense, while better than Florida’s last year, has had some issues exiting under pressure, so the play isn’t always going to be clean but the forwards are doing a great job of making sure the play doesn’t start or end on the breakout. I mentioned in my Seattle recap that balance is key when it comes to how you create offense. Jersey seems to be finding that now.