Morning skate promised a host of changes tonight for Vegas.
Ryan Carpenter and Oscar Lindberg appear ready to step in up front for Tomas Nosek and Tomas Tatar. Gerard Gallant wouldn't confirm, but morning lines point toward it.
Gallant noted yesterday, "When 10, 15 % don't show up, don't forecheck with all the other guys, it makes the biggest difference in the world. San Jose had 20 guys competing last night. We didn't have quite that on every shift. That's why we lost.
"We just didn't get in the blue paint enough. Tough areas, battle areas. That's what you have to do."
He added this morning, "Our forecheck was really late last game. It was too slow. Your F1 has to go in quick, your F2 and F3 have to be ready too. If you give teams time to execute their [breakout] plays, they're going to do them."
While Gallant wouldn't spell it out, you can guess that he wasn't particularly pleased with Tatar or Nosek's "battle."
That's a bit of a surprise concerning Nosek, more often than not a forward who attacks the net and forecheck with ferocity. But maybe this will be a wake-up call for the 25-year-old who is essentially a rookie.
As for Tatar, he is a slinky shooter whose game might jump out more in the "soft" areas -- when I say soft, I don't mean as opposed to tough, I mean slipping in and out of scoring areas in the slot. The Slovakian sniper doesn't play to be clobbered, and he shouldn't.
But for whatever reason, he's yet to find any obvious chemistry with anybody; I believe he's a player who needs to be fed the puck more instead of retrieving it on his own.
It's certainly disconcerting that at this juncture of the post-season, he's yet to make himself indispensable to the line-up.
As for Game Five, Lindberg skated with Alex Tuch and Cody Eakin this morning. The Swede should provide more of a forechecking and two-way presence than Tatar without sacrificing too much skill; Lindberg will try to re-capture his 2017 playoff form, when by some accounts, he was one of the Rangers' better forwards.
We've seen Eakin raise his game in these playoffs, which he also did in 2016 for Dallas, so it's an intriguing bet on the talented Lindberg tonight.
Carpenter will probably line up next to Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and William Carrier. He could eat up some of Nosek's penalty-killing minutes.
David Perron should be reunited with James Neal and Erik Haula, while the Jonathan Marchessault line remains the same, as Gallant leans on what got him here in this first game of a best-of-three.
Meanwhile, on the blueline, Luca Sbisa is primed to replace Jon Merrill.
Sbisa hasn't played in more than two months, so it's definitely a tough spot for him to make his playoff debut. However, he should be able to handle the San Jose forecheck with more ease, while offering some PK minutes and a physical edge.
If Gallant replaces Merrill with Sbisa, my big question is how that affects pairings. Merrill had been playing with Colin Miller; Sbisa has played just 20:40 at 5v5 with Miller this year.
Sbisa's most frequent 5v5 partner in the regular season was Nate Schmidt, followed by Deryk Engelland. Both Schmidt and Engelland have played almost exclusively with Brayden McNabb and Shea Theodore in the post-season.
Of course, that doesn't mean Sbisa and Miller can't find instant chemistry. Sbisa is a lefty, while Miller is a righty, and a Sbisa-Miller pairing follows the traditional stay-at-home defender/puck-mover model -- which, actually, McNabb-Schmidt and Theodore-Engelland follow.
As for San Jose, they appearing to be running the same line-up as Game Four.
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Flipping the forecheck has been topic du jour.
I wrote about how the Sharks controlled the middle of the ice in Game Four, but to a man, the Golden Knights weren't focused on that.
"I'm not especially worried about the middle. I'm more interested in creating [sustained] offense," noted Bellemare. And indeed, Vegas hasn't really got their lines rolling recently. "This year, we've had one line start and the next line and the next line. I'm more interested in our forecheck being where it's supposed to be."
McNabb recognized, "They clog it up pretty good. We have to fight for position. Fight to get to the middle. Be rewarded if we do that." But he added, "We got away from our forecheck. We didn't get too may pucks deep. That's when we're successful."
Of course, these things go hand in hand. The Knights have to forecheck with more authority, but they certainly need more chances through the middle of the ice, as you're more likely to score from that kind of action.
I also asked Perron about the Sharks swarming the Golden Knights on entry, which I wrote about here:
When the Golden Knights were able to get center lane drive, the Sharks made a particular point of outnumbering them on entry:View post on imgur.comView post on imgur.comIn both cases, two Knights enter in stride, but they're swarmed by three Sharks. A third Knight (Haula in the first clip and Smith in the second) trails deliberately. Vegas is hoping to hit the open late man, but San Jose resists with this aggressive defensive posture.
In the second clip, the trailer (Smith) does receive the pass, but the Sharks backcheck with gusto. Vlasic blocks Smith's first shot attempt, while Joe Pavelski and Evander Kane hound Smith to the blueline, forcing a turnover.
He added, giving the Sharks' perspective on such plays, "It's a 2-on-2 right now, but their [third] guy isn't here yet, I'm going to help my team out.
"If they do hang on to it, I'm going to widen out on the [third guy]."
We'll see what the Knights have up their sleeve tonight. San Jose's game has improved after a disastrous Game One, while Vegas's has come down to earth since then.
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