Time for Barry Trotz to Break Up Caps 3rd Line

NBC's Rivalry Night last night featured, in a truly shocking development, actual rivals play a game as the Washington Capitals were downed by the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-1 on home ice. The game was fairly dull until the third period when there were three goals scored in a span of 2 minutes, 21 seconds and the action really picked up as the Caps frantically tried to even up the game. Marc-Andre Fleury was brilliant in this game, stopping 33 pucks on 34 shots.

The real interesting part of this game however was some of Barry Trotz's coaching decisions in the third period and his overreliance on the team's third line and especially, Jay Beagle. Beagle has established himself as Trotz's pet so far both this season and last and while he certainly is a useful, versatile player - generator of offence, he is not. Beagle played most of his minutes in the third period at 5:45 with six of his shifts coming after the Penguins had rebounded to take a 2-1 lead. Why he got so much ice time with the Caps desperately needing offence is a question really worth asking Trotz. Beagle actually got more even-strength ice time than last week's First Star of the week Evgeny Kuznetsov, their highly skilled sophomore Andre Burakovsky, and possession legend Justin Williams in the third period. The Caps are a team with immense offensive depth, and yet they failed to properly utilize it when they needed it most last night.

So, perhaps Trotz would have regretted some of these decisions with hindsight today? Well, he regretted some decisions but not the ones that were actually costly. As Washington Capitals beat writer Isabelle Khurshudyan tweeted this morning, Barry Trotz had this to say about the Capitals 4th line:

"Maybe two decent shifts, and then, they've got to be better for us. That's not good enough."

This is where I get confused. For starters, Brooks Laich and Chandler Stephenson, who comprise 2/3 of the Caps fourth line, only played 7:16 and 5:42, respectively. Despite this, they managed to stay above water in terms of possession and the other member of that fourth line, Burakovsky, put up the team's best SAT +/- at +10 (17 CF, 7 CA). I completely understand there is more to the game than these numbers, but when your fourth line provides positive possession that is really what you hope from a fourth line. Trotz is undoubtedly referring to the 2nd Penguins goal in which the fourth line got stuck out against the Evgeni Malkin line and conceded a goal to Phil Kessel which was not exemplary defence but why were they even out there against that line in the first place? A rookie center against a top 5 center in the NHL? No surprise how that will turn out. That goal was on Trotz's line-matching in that circumstance, not on the fourth line.

But back to the third line. They have not been good this season, full stop. Wilson and Beagle are the only two regular forwards on the team who have been below 50% in terms of score-adjusted possession and they have not been facing the toughest competition either. Perhaps Trotz sees them as limiting quality scoring chances? Wrong again. They have worse numbers when looking at scoring chance numbers (via war-on-ice.com) than examining normal shot attempts.

Trotz pledged to move Wilson up the lineup this season and while he has, he's also been plagued with less-skilled linemates. Beagle is the main culprit of my criticism here as he is given the most opportunity in high-pressure situations, like he was last night. With 2:42 remaining in the third period and the Caps having been buzzing around the Penguins zone for the last few minutes, Beagle hops on the ice inexplicably to join T.J. Oshie and Alex Ovechkin. One of these is not like the other.

Here we can see Beagle with the puck coming through center. Ideally, a strong puck-carrier would be on this line to gain the zone with control and move forward from there. Instead, Beagle has the puck with two extremely skilled wingers on his flanks. Notice Oshie at the top of the screen skating down the wing with boatloads of room. Beagle has the space to enter the zone and dish the puck to Oshie but he's more of a dump-and-chase guy. Fair enough, Caps have a strong forecheck. But, wait:

Beagle's attempted dump-in inexplicably bounces off of his stick and lands right on the tape of the Penguins defender who is able to chip it off the glass and out to safety. This is with less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds in the third period when time is of the essence; not ideal. The Penguins would soon ice the game with a beautiful empty-net flip by Nick Bonino (who, coincidentally, is a much better 3rd line center option than Beagle). I will not belabor the fact that Beagle was again out with 27 seconds left in the game for an offensive-zone draw as the Caps needed 2 goals now.

The conclusion? Beagle should not under any circumstances be on the ice with this little time left in a game when your team needs a goal. And further to that point, the Caps 3rd line is just not working right now and with a few tweaks, their bottom six could be a lot stronger. I wouldn't mind seeing Burakovsky teamed up with Wilson and Laich on the third line and Beagle and Jason Chimera moved down to the fourth. After all, Trotz said he was looking for three scoring lines and this would be the best way of going about achieving that. 

The Caps still played well enough to win last night but questionable deployment by Trotz and the Caps coaching staff did not help matters and hopefully does not become an ongoing problem.

Kevin Bieksa costs Ducks and likely, Bruce Boudreau

There is no better way to introduce this blog than to begin with this picture of Anaheim Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau. This was taken with less than a minute remaining against the Dallas Stars as Boudreau's Ducks' were in the process of blowing a three goal lead and eventually losing in regulation. There is really no excuse for the Ducks to have lost this game, except for the fact that they were on a back-to-back and were undoubtedly exhausted after two periods of the high-flying Stars. Or maybe except for the fact that they were playing an explosive offence in the Stars. Or, maybe, because they were missing their best player in Ryan Getzlaf. I mean, blowing a three goal lead is never a positive thing for any hockey club, especially one who is off to an absolutely dreadful 1-6-2 start, but there were some mitigating circumstances. 

Still, this feels like the end of Boudreau's time in Anaheim, if only from the look of despair his face exhibits in the above picture. It's important to note that while Anaheim has been extremely unlucky in this still extremely early season, they haven't exactly been a great team. Their 48.9% even-strength, score-adjusted possession going into tonight's game (via puckon.net) has them ranked 21st in the NHL and they have received fairly strong goaltending. The scoring has completely dried up thanks to terrible shooting numbers that will spike dramatically, but they still haven't been dominating games. 

Tonight's game was almost night and day from the first two periods to the third period. At fives they were beating the Stars 30-23 in shot attempts up until the second intermission (via hockeystats.ca) before they fell off a cliff in the third (again, part of this surely has to do with playing on the back end of a double-header). In the third period the Ducks managed a whopping 5 (!!!) shot attempts towards the Stars cage while the Stars absolutely pelted Freddy Andersen in the third. They racked up 21 shot attempts in the third period alone and completely dominated the pace of play while the Ducks could muster nothing. 

We can get a glimpse of the absolutely impotent Ducks transition game and attack in the third period here as Sami Vatanen attempts to lead a break-out while the Ducks forwards have absolutely bailed the zone and are hoping to receive the puck in the neutral zone with the three Stars back smothering each one of them. Vatanen has little-to-no options here as the Stars are in perfect position and he is forced to whip the puck off the boards to the Ducks winger at the far blueline. Predictably, this doesn't end up as well as Vatanen would have hoped and the Stars defender covers the pass perfectly with it resulting in an icing.

It was like this all third period. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Barring 3-on-3 overtime where really anything can happen or the unpredictable shootout, the Stars were bound to eventually break down the Ducks defence and bury the game-winner. Their relentless offensive pressure was overwhelming and the Ducks had little to counter this onslaught. Yet, the game-winner by Antoine Roussel with 1:28 remaining is a goal that featured some inexplicably awful defence in front of Andersen's net. And it wasn't a rookie or a young defender missing an assignment or a center being out of position, it was noted "defensive defenceman" Kevin Bieksa being victimized. 

The play starts out innocently enough. Note the time on the clock in the picture above: 1:36 remaining in the third period and the goal came 8 seconds later so the play develops extremely quickly. Jamie Oleksiak has the puck in this frame and we can see one Ducks defender forechecking, meaning 4 Ducks defenders should be back ready to neutralize the rush up ice. 

Instead, what happens is some truly shoddy defensive play. The puck bounces off the Ducks defender at the top-left of the frame above and ricochets towards the middle of the ice. At this point you can see that Vern Fiddler and the Ducks backchecker are locked side-by-side, both presumably ready to pounce on the puck. Fiddler blows by the Ducks player he is skating with and now has a 2-on-1 on an unlucky bounce, combined with some skeptical Ducks defending.

Note here #2 Kevin Bieksa violating Cardinal Sin #1 of 2-on-1 play: complete focus on the puck-carrier and complete ignorance of the other player on the odd-man-rush. Take the pass, they teach you early on as a defender. Not taking the pass would be an understatement to describe Bieksa on this play. Fiddler drives the net and gets an uncontested shot (Bieksa failed to take the shooter either) while eventual goal scorer Roussel waits in the crease for the puck to inevitably come to him because that's just the Ducks luck right now. 

Roussel backhands home the puck lying in the crease as Bieksa fails to take the man with the puck, the man in the crease and the mailman. Seriously, what is Bieksa doing on this play? This year plus two more years of Bieksa could be painful in Anaheim. Even more immediate will be the impact this game has on Anaheim's coaching situation. As Elliotte Friedman noted in his weekly 30 Thoughts column, Ducks ownership is keen on Boudreau but the same cannot be said of the rocky relationship between Boudreau and GM Bob Murray. Many think this will be Boudreau's final game with the Ducks.

If it is, Bieksa owes Boudreau a beer. Then again, he might miss that assignment too.