rickross Posted October 31, 2015 Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 Maybe Bob Hartley is simply cursed for being such a great coach last year and having the hardware to prove it! That Jack Adams is a killer I tell you..Hartley(?), Patrick Roy, Paul "Walrus" Maclean, Dave Tippett and I"m pretty sure Ken "Alfred" Hitchcock(Oct 31st ha!..its only fitting!) is another recent victim to have have won this cursed award..its a long list! Something is up with this Flames team this year..they seem "jinxed", the amount of freak injuries early on, they keep saying the "pucks aren't bouncing in the right way for us"..and we've already lost to the 1# Professional Drafting franchise in all of sports in the Edmonton Oilers...at HOME mind you! This year, historically we're off to the franchises worst start. Here's hoping starting today, on Halloween Day in Edmonton..this curse will finally get off our a$$! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cccsberg Posted October 31, 2015 Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 Well I'm not going the jinx route yet, perhaps its something else? One thing I have noticed and been wondering if its just once in a while or a trend is the defensive zone coverage. Anybody care to weigh-in with your observations? Mine are that it seems to me last year we pretty much played a zone-type defence, with all players collapsing to cover the centre of the ice like a modified PK formation. They would cover the centre but let the opposition buzz around the outside, leading to LOTS of blocked shots (I think they led the NHL) and LOTS of Corsi against. This made us a poor possession team but like it or not it was pretty confounding to advanced stats gurus and also pretty effective. This year I have noticed on multiple occasions they seem to be playing more of a modified to full man-to-man coverage in the D zone. In this scenario they roughly keep their places on the ice but when the opposition is in their area they play them much tighter and follow them around the ice extensively. This opens things up tremendously but also leads to problems in the grey areas where there's a hand-off from one player to the next. It may just be my imagination but it seems the opponents are getting a lot more open, clear shots on net than previous and there are way fewer blocked shots from what I recall last year. Contrarily, the opposition is countering us by clogging the slot with bodies, taking away those cross-ice passes to open men there. In addition, last night on at least one occasion, Montreal had a specific player that was "spying" Gaudreau and following him all around the ice. I mention these because I wonder if this is first, true? and secondly certainly is enhancing our possession stats but decreasing our D-effectiveness? Any other observations here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlbertaBoy12 Posted October 31, 2015 Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 Personally I dont think our D zone coverage hasent been that bad, Russell has honestly lost his coverage on alot of the goals and thats not helping. Hamilton was responsible for a few of the goals as well. We have changed our D zone coverage for sure, which is probably because we have a more talented and more experienced team this year. But even though we have had lapses in D coverage, our goalies havent bailed us out at all, how many high quality chances have we had against montreal detroit ottawa new york etc. Their goalies have been bailing them out and we have been killing it in out shooting them through the game, couple bad goals and the team loses momentum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travel_dude Posted October 31, 2015 Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 How many Hartley threads are we going to have here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rickross Posted October 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 They've made adjustments for sure over the last few games. It's really difficult to pinpoint if it's solely a matter of Hartleys systems or is the team just playing out of sync? We were much more sure footed defensively last year and same for offence. This year the minute we get scored on there is little to no push back. We never take leads during game, if we do we cant hold the lead. I'm sure teams have scouted our systems to death, those long breakout passes aren't working and we don't break out and enter zones as effectively as we did last year. It'd be great to see them turn things around but something about the start to this season just doesn't feel right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.