The Pittsburgh Penguins are fresh off of a Game 1 victory that defied logic and will look to take a stranglehold on the Stanley Cup Final. The Nashville Predators will look to pressure the Penguins exactly like they did in the first game and hope to get an improvement from one of the worst goaltending performances in Stanley Cup Final history.
Nashville’s forecheck in Game 1 was very predictable. They closed off the wall consistently while the Penguins obliged. It led to a complete lack of controlled zone exits. Here is the evidence.
Not a lot of success. Literally no success with Hainsey. In fact, the catfish had more controlled exits last game than the Penguins defender. Justin Schultz has the closest skill set to Kris Letang so it isn’t a surprise that he would also have the most controlled exits.
So what can Pittsburgh do? Are we going to get a repeat of Game 1? Nashville is a very good team so they probably will continue to find success. I don’t think they will have the same forechecking success as they had in Game 1. Last game looked like a house team playing against a travel team with the house team afraid of the puck and just looking to smash it hard around the boards to get it off their stick.
If my coaching mind is working correctly Pittsburgh will be making the following changes:
The wingers will come down lower in the zone. If the Predators are going to aggressively pinch then it only makes sense to make them come down further and further to get to the puck. Hypothetically, the lower the wingers the more time they will have with the puck. Also, the lower the winger the softer the rim around can be. Pittsburgh was mindlessly hammering the puck around the boards all the way to the Nashville points in Game 1. Lower winger support can help prevent that with softer rims. The downfall here is that it is a lot more skating for the wingers and fatigue could set in over time. Pittsburgh has great team speed among the forwards so that will minimize that problem. Another problem is if there is a turnover the Nashville points will be wide open. Giving time and space to those defenders is not ideal, but I believe dropping the wingers is worth the risk.
Centers curling low is a must for this kind of forecheck. It’s one thing to get the puck to a winger down low, but they need support. If the center is too high it will play right into the forecheck. Pittsburgh has an advantage by having Crosby and Malkin. If you can get them the puck down low and with a little bit of space the chances of a controlled breakout are very high. You can also stretch the weak side winger to further clear space for the center to skate the puck up.
Reverse the puck. Bait the ultra-aggressive forecheck up the strong side with your low winger and then kick the puck back to the defenseman who made the initial breakout pass and change the flow of the play. The strong side defenseman will have to bust his butt from the hash marks back to the blue line while the other defender will be put in a position where a pinch would be too risky. If you look at the time on ice breakdowns for the Predators both Matt Irwin and Yannick Weber played less than ten minutes in Game 1. That is a ton of skating for Nashville's top four defensemen. If you can drop your wingers down low and reverse the play that is a lot of wasted effort for the Nashville players.
Try a set play. Remember the HBK flip play from last year’s postseason? That kind of play could probably work a few times against what Nashville is running assuming the Penguins can execute some of the things listed above.
The good news for Pittsburgh is if they can figure out the controlled exit part of things I believe once in the offensive zone they will be able to generate offense. It’s just that they never had the opportunity to do so in the last game. If Peter Laviolette continues to play his bottom pairing under ten minutes the speed of the Penguins forwards will take a toll on the top four Nashville Predators.
The success or failure on this front is what will make or break the series for Pittsburgh. If they fail their best asset (forwards) will not be able to do the things that make them a strength of the team. If the team can exit the zone under control Pittsburgh has the ability to generate offense as well as any team in the league.
It is worth mentioning that for all the great work Nashville did defensively it did not translate to lopsided offensive numbers. Again, Nashville has a forward group that has a few very good players, but a lot of mediocre ones. Here’s a look at Pittsburgh this postseason on what they have given up.
For Pittsburgh lacking any kind of meaningful possession last game the Predators sure didn’t do much at 5v5. You can see above that Columbus and Washington did a much better job of generating against the Penguins.
On average Pittsburgh has given up 49.2 shot attempts at 5v5 each playoff game this year. They have given up 8 high-danger chances per game as well. Against Nashville in Game 1 it was 36 and 6 respectively.
There was a lot made of the catfish being thrown on the ice by a visiting Predators fan in Game 1. I’m not really sure why there was a big uproar about something dead being thrown on the ice in Pittsburgh. The Penguins threw Craig Adams’ corpse on the ice for years and are currently doing it with Ron Hainsey.
Thanks for reading!
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