The Detroit Red Wings this year have been one of the most interesting teams for me to follow due to the coaching change that shocked the hockey world. When Mike Babcock left the Red Wings to join the Toronto Maple Leafs, many expected that Jeff Blashill would be able to step right in and continue the legacy of success that Babcock and the Red Wings organization in general have left behind. After all, the Red Wings organization has made the playoffs in 24 straight seasons and were expected to contend again this season after some interesting off-season additions and taking the Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning to a hard-fought seven games. But no pressure Jeff.
This season has not gone exactly the way Blashill and the Red Wings would have hoped. They sit in 10th place in the Eastern Conference with a 7-6-1 record and a -3 goal differential. Their record is not the real cause for concern in Hockeytown though, and really it's actually a pretty good record for a team that is adjusting to a new coach. The real cause of concern is their troubling possession stats 14 games into the season after being the league's poster-child for dominant possession the last decade. The Red Wings currently boast the 29th best 5 on 5 score-adjusted possession numbers at 46.8%. To put this into perspective, the Red Wings were the proud owners of the league's #1 score-adjusted CF% from 2007-2008 until 2014-2015 when Babcock left the team with a ridiculous 55.0% (all stats courtesy of the fantastic War-on-Ice). The team possessed the puck a consistently tremendous amount of the time and this was a major reason for their continued playoff streak and their Stanley Cup victory during this span.
So the real question becomes, what has changed this season to result in the fairly substantial difference in possession numbers? Granted, the Red Wings have only played 14 games this season so there is still the complete possibility that they can turn these numbers around and return to their past dominance, but it is still worth considering this early into the Blashill era. It also would be wise to mention that the Red Wings are missing one of the game's best two-way forwards in Pavel Datsyuk and his absence surely has a massive impact on possession numbers as well. In order to examine the cause of this downturn, we will take a look at some film from the Red Wings last season versus the Red Wings this season and see if we can notice any patterns or trends that have changed the way the team plays.
Is Blashill's system substantially different from Babcock's and it has resulted in poor possession numbers or is the drop-off simply poor execution and/or small sample size? Let's see if we can find out.
The first thing that becomes apparent when watching the Red Wings this season from years past is the lack of consistent, controlled breakouts that were a staple of the Babcock-coached teams. As I mentioned in my post on the Avs last week, Babcock heavily stressed short and crisp passes that were important to establishing the breakout and moving the puck up ice with speed and control. As far as I can tell, that staple is missing with the Red Wings this season. Let's look at a few examples.
Here we can see that Jakub Kindl has control of the puck in the corner with the Canucks changing and only one forechecker actively applying pressure on the defender. The Red Wings have their center Riley Sheahan behind the net serving as an option to regroup, a winger posted on the half-boards and the other winger high in the zone who could retrieve a pass either from the defender in the corner or from a quick one-touch pass from the winger on the half-boards and he would be advancing up the ice with speed. The other Red Wing not currently in the picture is the other defenceman, Niklas Kronwall, who is positioned in the other corner directly across from Kindl.
Kindl decides to go behind the net and the puck inexplicably hops over both Sheahan's stick and eventually Kronwall's giving the Canucks an opportunity to pounce on the loose puck in a situation where this should never happen. This breakout is particularly strange to me, because the Red Wings had plenty of room to move the puck in the center of the ice but they have three players (2 D and a C) lined up behind the net. It will definitely warrant more investigation to see if this is an installed feature of their breakout.
Because of this, Kronwall is forced to relay the puck back behind the net to Kindl. Now the Red Wings have limited their options for a crisp, fast-paced breakout. Kindl still does have options, however, but instead he rings the puck around the boards without any player in position to accept it and the Canucks are able to re-gain possession in the neutral zone. This panicked breakout has become a concerning trend in the games I have watched.
Just over a year ago, Justin Bourne wrote a tremendous piece on how the Red Wings utilize the center of the ice to kickstart the breakout, contrary to common coaching tactics. The Red Wings played the Maple Leafs the other night and it was clear that Babcock not only employs this tactic frequently, but also applies this same logic on the forecheck.
Bourne highlighted numerous plays in which the center of the ice would often be vacant of opposing forecheckers and would thus be the perfect area to exploit in order to break the puck out with control. Here is one example where the Red Wings try to break out by moving the puck to the strong-side winger who is being pressured by the other team. The ideal play for the winger would be a quick redirection to the middle where his C, in this case Henrik Zetterberg, could retrieve the puck with momentum up ice. Instead, #26 Daniel Winnik is hugging Zetterberg as he streaks through the middle and eliminates him as an outlet.
Due to Winnik effectively cutting off the middle of the ice as an option, the Red Wings winger is forced to spin and flip the puck Off the Glass (I chose this blog's title for a reason - one of my least favourite plays in hockey is the chip off the glass and out). Now, this is a tremendous example of Babcock's coaching adjustments to restrict the middle of the ice when he is familiar with the team's strategy. It is also another example of this year's Red Wings being forced to take the least favourable method to exit the zone without control of the puck.
The main difference in the Red Wings breakout I have noticed has been their departure from using the center of the ice as the catalyst for the breakout. Whereas Babcock stressed it as the ideal method for exiting the zone, the Red Wings are far more content to use the wingers along the boards to advance the puck. Noticeably, the Red Wings execution has been remarkably poor so far and that is likely the result of an adjustment period being necessary. Once the breakout begins to run smoother and passes are being made more efficiently, the breakout should be far improved.
In terms of the forecheck, the Red Wings have a fairly aggressive 2-3 system where the first two attackers in will pressure the defenders and the third forward will sit back and float to the open areas. I say fairly aggressive because the F3 will often engage in the play and is not afraid to hunt for loose pucks even if it means there is no forward back.
In this frame we see the two original Red Wings forecheckers battling for the puck in the corner. The F3, Zetterberg, is a few feet from the battle even though there is only one Oiler battling the two forecheckers. Of course, the score at the time was 3-0 so the Red Wings would be inclined to press further at this time, but it is something I have noticed often with the Red Wings forecheck that the F3 is often involved in board scrums and corner play.
The forecheck the Red Wings have employed under Blashill is really not that different from what the team utilized under Babcock. Studying the Red Wings film from last season, we see that they too used an aggressive 2-3 system that was very lenient on the high forward activating in order to sustain offensive pressure.
This frame is taken from a game last year against the St. Louis Blues. All three forecheckers are involved in the battle for the puck and are willing to sacrifice the consequences of a turnover for maintaining possession. In the same game from last year we see the same aggressive forecheck once again:
This forecheck has remained relatively consistent from the games I have viewed both last season and this season. Blashill has definitely adopted Babcock's forechecking strategy this season and is confident in his forward's ability to commit to the backcheck and minimize the risk of odd-man rushes.
In both the D-zone and the O-zone, the conclusion of this post is that there has been little change
in the systems ran by Babcock and Blashill. The one notable change is the reluctance to use the middle of the ice this season on the breakout by the Red Wings defenders while that was one of the go-to options for the defencemen last season. While that certainly hinders the ability of the Red Wings to exploit the center of the ice and decreases their speed advantage, the breakout has also been constantly plagued by poor execution and sloppy play. Once the team becomes more coherent as a unit, the breakout should dramatically improve, especially if they are more liberal with taking advantage of the open ice.
It may be a little too early to condemn Blashill's systems in Detroit. The absence of Pavel Datsyuk and Mike Green for the last few games have removed two of the game's best players at tilting the ice and should have a considerable impact on the Red Wings underlying numbers. Furthermore, the team is just getting acclimated to a new system that may be familiar to them from Grand Rapids, but not on the NHL stage. If the Red Wings continue to hover around the bottom of the league in CF% 20 or 30 games into the season and there are no signs of improvement, perhaps then will red flags be warranted. But right now it appears as if there is not too much separating Babcock's Red Wings from Blashill's Red Wings.
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