VGK/COL Update: Disaster Scenario
Because I have thoughts that exceed the Twitter limit
The playoffs are all about controlling segments of the game and we’ve seen that to an extreme degree in the Western Conference Final, Game 3 being the best example. Jack Drury scores a beauty of a shorthanded goal midway through the first period to give the Avs a 3-0 lead. They’re outchancing Vegas 8-4 and look like they’re in a position to shift the series.
They produced six scoring chances the rest of the game, their only five-on-five chances coming during a seven-minute stretch in the second period while the score was still tied and Vegas limited them to only four shot attempts after Tomas Hertl scored in the third period to give them the lead. Oh, and Nathan MacKinnon also got hurt in this game. He will be in the lineup tonight, but he looked in serious pain when he tried to skate, limited power play specialist duty while their star defenseman is already playing with a shoulder held together with Flex Seal.
So it’s hard to imagine this getting worse for the Avs. There’s been a lot of talk of how they’re pissing away an incredible regular season & the injury to Makar is hard to ignore, but what has Vegas done well to put themselves in this position?
This reminds me a little bit of Vegas’ series against Utah, except it took Vegas one game to right the ship instead of four. They looked slower, less skilled and overwhelmed by Utah’s rush play & had to survive waves of offense coming at them. This was the case for the first 30-something minutes of Game 1 & they had to survive that game to a degree when taking the empty net situation into account. Since then, they’ve neutralized Colorado’s offense.
They’re frustrating to play against because they don’t hammer teams on the shot counter when they’re controlling play, they just don’t let you do anything & can pick up the pace. They scored a few goals off harmless looking exits in this series & the Hertl game-winner is a good example. It started as a pretty innocent looking breakout, but they caught the three Avs forwards standing still for a just a second & got Hertl in a one-on-one situation entering the zone off a bump pass. It was also with their third defense pair, which is a talking point I wanted to bring up.
In their Cup year, they didn’t have a prolific defense, but they didn’t have anyone who was a disaster with the puck eitehr. Just a group of six reliable players who could make the first play out of the zone & hit the occassional stretch pass.
The only suspect player here is Rasmus Andersson (who leads the series in botched retrievals & failed exits), but the rest have been pretty sound. They might not be one-man breakouts, but they are getting the puck to the right people & not turning it over. Considering they have two forwards with double digit exits with possession (Marner & Barbashev), this formula works for them. Colorado has the roster makeup to exploit this with how good they are at re-entering the zone off clears, but it’s been less of an issue for Vegas as the series has gone on. This is where Makar not at 100% hurts the most.
Overall Stats
Look at all those point shots, yeesh. Game 1 boosts Colorado’s stats a bit, but it’s still a closer series than a 3-0 score indicates. It’s probably too late for the Avs to see any benefits from it because Vegas has played better as the series has gone on. You can also see the difference in how both teams are getting their rush chances. The Avs like to quick-strike from the neutral zone while Vegas likes going end-to-end and they’ve got the horses to do it with Marner & Eichel. Also worth noting the Avs advantage in in-zone offense hasn’t amounted to much, but we’ve talked about the difficulties with off the forecheck & cycle with limited space. Typing that out just gave me flashbacks as a Hurricanes fan.
Individual Stats
You know how some players will play well for most of the game & have every mistake be one that sticks off the page or end up in the back of their net? That’s been the story for Sam Malinski this series. He has one failed exit, which started the sequence that led to William Karlsson’s goal & he’s allowed only seven controlled entries on 17 targets, one of them being Tomas Hertl’s goal. That’s how it goes sometimes. Devon Toews had similar problems in Game 2. Meanwhile Vegas is getting production from their third pair guys like Coghlan, Korczak and Hutton.
This is workhorse Mitch Marner at its finest, he leads all Vegas players in shot contributions, chance contributions, forecheck disruptions and controlled zone exits. This isn’t even touching on his fantastic special teams performance all playoffs long. It hasn’t been easy for Vegas players to rack up high game scores in a low-event series where it’s been more about quality than quantity, but Marner has been the exception to this, doing everything.
Brock Nelson’s Game 1 performance is carrying his stats for the most part, he had six scoring chances that game & only two the rest of the way. Still, he’s been the most snake-bitten player this series. Putting him on a line with two guys who prefer to play center was an odd choice for Game 3, though. They scored a nice goal early, but there were a couple of shifts in the defensive zone where it looked like all three guys wanted to play center & got caught low in the zone.