Pucks for Brains

 Center High Defensive Zone Concepts Even the best teams spend a solid chunk of the game in their defensive zone. How a team handles that time is a big part of their identity. Do they focus on containing the puck outside, or put more pressure on the puck carrier to win it back now? Do they spread out to be ready for a counterattack or collapse to corral rebounds?  Today, we're going to discuss a fun d-zone concept: the center high zone. Traditionally, the center has to skate a lot and plays a pivotal role low in the defense. In a box+1, their role is to back up the strong-side defender and double team the puck if an opportunity arises, and chase to the other side if the puck switches. In a Czech press, their role is to fill in for whichever player is pressing the puck, taking up different corners of the zone as the puck moves. In a man coverage, they shadow an opposing forward, following them wherever they go. We'll get into the nuances of these systems another time, but suffi...

What's the Best Use of a Fourth Line? Last time , we talked about different options for how to deploy your forwards. Most of those strategies leave the team with a fourth line- a place where the team stashes cheaper players who don't play as much. How these players are used belies a coach's overarching philosophy. We're going to break down all of the possibilities, do some math to figure out the optimum impact of each, and figure out what's best. It will involve a lot of talk of expected goals, or xG - basically, given how many shots a team gets and where they come from, how often you would expect them to score. The key thing to look at is expected goal differential , because this gives an idea of the kind of impact a player or line has on their team. If we imagine every team as starting at .500 and 0 expected goal differential, 6 expected goals up is worth a win above .500, and 6 expected goals up is equivalent to losing a game. Goon Line We're going to get thi...

 Spreading Around Your Forwards' Minutes The primary difference between different deployment schemes is how much the depth is utilized. Teams with elite top-end talent will want to rely on it as much as possible, while teams with good depth will want to wear down their opponents with it. In order to quantify that, we can calculate the depth rating : Depth Rating = % of even strength minutes played by 1st line + 2 x % of even strength minutes played by 2nd line + 3 x % of even strength minutes played by 3rd line + 4 x % of even strength minutes played by 4th line A team which showed up with just their first line and didn't substitute at all would get a 100, and a team which played all of their lines perfectly equally would get a 250. That gives us a range to understand how much a given strategy is relying on depth. These are the platonic ideals of a line deployment strategy- real hockey is far too chaotic for any of these concepts to be implemented perfectly. Line changes can be...

 Are We Wasting the Backup Goalie? For a long time, teams only really used their starting goalies . Backup goalies existed in case the starter was injured, and the starter got to rest maybe once every eight or nine games. We know better than that now- goalies playing in back to back games in particular are susceptible to injuries and poor performance. So the modern backup goalie plays to rest the starter on back-to-back games, drastically reducing their chance for injury and helping them come back rested for their next game. But there's a problem. When the starter is "resting," they still need to dress and sit on the bench. If the backup gets hurt or has a terrible game, they're going in, so they need to stretch, prepare and focus as though they're playing, and they might not even get to rest. Teams are using their backup goalie to rest their starter in the hopes of keeping them healthy and improving their performance. But the current method of rotation is ineffi...

 Unorthodox Forechecking Tactics Last time, we covered historical forechecking strategies. This time, we're going to look at some unusual strategies that teams have used to win the puck back. 2-3 Power Lock The left wing lock never completely died. Instead, it evolved. Defensemen have gotten too good to just funnel them to their backhand, but the idea of using an extra high player to hold the blue line still works. So coaches made adjustments. Instead of fixing the left wing to be eternal F3, the 2-3 system uses modern fluid positioning. Norwich University in NCAA DIII has been using the system for years, with great success. Instead of playing just on the left, the F3 can fill in on the left, right, or center of the defensive line. Generally, teams will look to have F3 in the center though, since they want to have their defensemen pinching. The forecheck involves pushing the opposition to the outside, then having a defender or the high forward come downhill for a pinch. Having a pl...

Winning Forechecks from History Last time, we covered three of the forechecks you might see in a modern NHL game. This time, we hop in the time machine and take a look at some of the strategies employed by teams of the past. Notably, ones that one Stanley Cups. Positional Forecheck These days, everything is F1, F2, and F3. There are rotations, there are support positions, there is structure. This was not the case in the 1960s. There was the left wing, who defended the left side, the right wing, who defended the right side, and the center, who defended everywhere. The Montreal Canadiens used a particular version of this forecheck to great effect. To my knowledge, there is not a name for it, and it we used modern numerical designations, it would be a "3-2" or a "3-0-2". So for brevity's sake, we'll just call it the positional forecheck. It plays almost like a trap, just very high up the ice instead of in the neutral zone. If the puck was in the middle of the i...