Hoot45 wrote:Leroy wrote:Take that Theo.
At this rate, I'm thinking about ordering a personalized jersey with TAKETHATTHEO on the back.
I'm happy to eat Crow on it. I was worried because the team couldn't sustain the type of play they started the season with. But the team isn't playing like that now.
If you look at the last part of my post:
The good news is a lot of underperformers are players who, historically, have been solid possession players. So we can expect Stastny, Sobotka, Parayko, and Tarasenko to get better. Which should help mitigate Schenn and Schwartz falling back to earth (because they're basically carrying the team right now). Bortuzo and Gunnarson can't be this bad - they're still NHL players - just like most #4 starter-quality pitchers in baseball won't sport a 9.00 ERA for an entire season if they're healthy.
The other nice thing is that Steen and Boumeester should be back soon. Neither one of them are world savers, and both of them are past their prime when they were league-leaders in possession numbers. But both of them are better than the trash players like Gunnarson and Bortuzzo are currently putting up.
Looking at the stats - Schwartz - Schenn - <insert scrub winger here> - Pietrangelo - Edmundson are basically the best 5-player lineup in the league right now. Then the rest of the team is a smoldering pile of dog poo that has Tarasenko's ungodly wrist shot.
Either Pietrangelo is winning the Norris, Schwartz the selke, and Schenn the Richard Rocket and they're basically going to drag this team into the playoffs, or the rest of the team will need to get it together before the above players start coming back to earth.
Stastny, Sobotka, Parako, and Tarasenko all dramatically improved their posession numbers.
The team had 8 or 9 players in the bottom 30 of possession when I posted that 2 weeks ago. Now they have 2: Gunnarson and Paajarvi.
Steen came back and is playing as good as i've seen him in years. Sobotka moved down a line and has really helped stabilize the third line. Now players like Paajarvi who don't have any business trying to drive possession in the offensive zone are being given more favorable zone starts and are playing better because of it.
This team looks legit now. Their neutral zone transition is fantastic. They have two legitimate scoring lines and a third line that is able to sustain offensive pressure. Allen looks like he did at the end of last season and is taking away some great scoring opportunities that allow the blues to be more aggressive on the forecheck.
The team has gotten it together and have been playing some of the most fun hockey I can remember in years. Schenn was exactly the type of player this team needed. He was worth every penny of those two first round picks. And not seeing Lehtera out there killing offensive pressure has been worth a first round pick alone.
https://streamable.com/9jyei is a great example of what is different from last year.
First frame:
Here Schenn is playing super aggressive and is the first person into the offensive zone. Watch any film from last year, Lehtera was always the last player to cross center ice when transitioning to the offensive zone and that generally forced the wingers to overextend and the play would "collapse" into the neutral zone. Or the defenseman would just dump the puck and the battle would be in the corner with a lower chance of scoring.
Now, Schenn is faster and more aggressive and leads the transition into the offensive zone. The big thing this does is changes what Doughty does. Instead of him pushing into the neutral zone and trying to transition back into the blues zone, or heading to the corner and using his size to win the puck, he moves backwards andpositions himself to defend Schenn in case the puck makes it through the neutral zone.
So to Doughty here, the blues 1.) Have enough offensive transition to cause him to change his pace and move back and 2.) Schenn is a big enough threat to cause him to backpedal and move into the defensive zone. It's a testament to how good Doughty is that he saw that and prevented a potential breakaway.
This creates more space in the neutral zone because Schwartz and Tarasenko now only have 1 d-man and 2 forwards to deal with and they have the momentum advantage. So Schenn's aggressiveness has already given the Blues enough of a defensive mismatch that they can win possession in the neutral zone.
If this were last year this opportunity wouldn't have even existed because Lehtera would have been too slow getting into the neutral zone and the entire play would have happened closer to the blues zone or in the corner. So even if Schwartz was able to steal the puck like he does, the end result would have been a battle at the boards instead of an open transition back into the offensive zone.
When Schwartz does steal the puck Schenn has the presence to get back into the neutral zone to prevent offsides or lose momentum and moves to the boards instead of trying to stay in the middle of the ice. So now his speed and aggressiveness is adding more benefit because it keeps the Kings that are in the neutral zone in the top of the ice and allows Tarasenko to do his uncanny sneak-away-from-all-the-defenders thing that great goalscorers are able to do.
This creates considerable separation from defenders that pulled from the neutral zone an gives Tarasenko a 1:1 with Doughty, who took a bad route to the puck and is a bit out of position.
Schwartz made the amazing play and the great pass and Tarasenko scored the top-notch goal. But neither of that happens without the line having a good center playing like a good center. Schenn creates separation with his speed and keeps the play closer to the offensive zone, pulls defenders to him with his awareness, and keeps the play on-side.
In the past the only center we've had that could come close to doing that consistently is Stastny. Having another center who actually plays like a top-six center is huge because a play like this would have fizzled in the neutral zone with a slower, less aggressive player in the middle of the ice (ie Lehtera) and likely would have let to the defensement trying to dump the puck instead of transition through the neutral zone like he did to start the clip. The play would have turned into a posession battle, something the Kings are better at, and ultimately the puck heading back into the Blues zone.
