The Hockey PDOcast - The Disjointed Power Play Experience

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Harman Dayal to unpack everything they’re seeing from the Eastern Conference Final, including what the Panthers did in Games 3 and 4 to control play the way they did, and what the Rangers need to do to fix that as the series moves back to New York. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovin. Welcome to the Hockey Pee-O-Cast. My name is Dimitri Vlopovich and joining me in studios, my good buddy, Harman Dial. How, what's going on, man? Just still enjoying and thinking about the game last night. That was a lot of fun.

It was a lot of fun. We're going to talk today about game four. We're going to talk about games three and four, kind of lump them together of the East Final with the Panthers and the Rangers because I haven't done a show in a few days. So we're going to play catch. catch up on that. I thought both games, despite having different results, were like very similar thematically in terms of Florida's sort of dominance territorially and on the shot clock,

but the game's going over time and then the Rangers kind of hanging in there. So we're going to break all that down, get into all the stuff that we think matters from it, and also some of the stuff that might kind of be noise or you might not necessarily have to worry about as much. Let's get into it. Do you want to start with the Rangers perspective here first? Because I think the natural inclination would be like, let's like Panthers. But here in the PDOCAS, we always kind of throw things on their head and do the opposite. Okay, the Rangers, let's start with the positive. So if I were to tell you that they would be in this position where they're two-two heading home

with two of the three games left at MSG potentially, despite the fact that Panarin has zero goals, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibinijad have zero points, Barclay Goodrow has a third of their total goal scored in this series, and their power play has scored just one time. in 21 minutes with the manned advantage after going 11 goals in 50 power play minutes in the first two rounds and their penalty kill, no less, giving up five goals and kind of starting to show some cracks here after playing Carolina and Washington to a draw from a goal's perspective in the first two rounds. If I told you all of that happened and it was still two, too, too, you'd be like, what aren't going to happen? And so I guess that's what we're going to try to

answer here today. But I think from like that position, I think that is a silver line. Absolutely. I mean, there's kind of two ways of looking at the series so far is almost looking at the way Florida dominated territorial, territorially, the last couple of games and saying, well, if they keep playing like that, it's, it's only a matter of time. Like Florida could have easily been up three one in the series, and it's only a matter of time before they sort of take over. But the flip side of that perspective is we haven't come close to seeing the Rangers A game. And yet they're two, too. And Florida had to dominate the last two games just for both games to be a coinful. going into overtime essentially just because Shasturkin has been absolutely on one. So considering how well he's playing right now, if you can level up just a couple, a couple spots here, all of a sudden now you may have a pretty good chance of giving

the Panthers some trouble. Yeah, I thought the Rangers played pretty well in the first two games at home. From those two, just kind of to show you the comparison of the series, games 1 and 2 at MSG, shot attempts were 141 to 141 so perfectly even shots on goal were 55 to 54 for the panthers I'd scoring chances at 33 to 28 for new york in those two games so it's very low event relatively speaking especially for panthers games games three and four shot attempts 197 to 87 for florida so more than 100 more shot attempts 77 to 46 shots on goal and scoring chances 56 32 so nearly twice as many So that kind of shows you how this series has gone.

And I kind of wanted to note that because I did a podcast after Game 1 of the series. That's the last one I did on this matchup. And I sort of noted that despite the fact the Rangers got shot out in that game and the narrative coming out of it was like, wow, the Panthers just played a remarkable game. I actually thought the Rangers played pretty well and should have felt pretty comfortable with it. And they sort of continued that in game two. Now, games three and four, I think essentially went into the direction that maybe we would have thought heading in, right? the true to form, right? This Panthers team is such a high volume team that's going to rack up

a ton of chances and shots. The Rangers are going to be efficient. They're going to take advantage with their looks. They're going to turn good scoring chances into great scoring chances and they're going to have awesome goal-tending. And that's sort of been the case. So from that perspective, it's not necessarily surprising. I think the path we've taken to getting here, though, and some of the other details are a little bit surprising. For sure. And even when we reflect on the game last night, the first period, I thought it was totally fine from a Rangers' perspective. I actually thought when you consider the power play looks at they had that they probably had more high danger chances. I mean, I didn't track it.

But all situations wise, Florida, yes, they had a lot of puck possession. And yes, they were able to break out of their zone really cleanly. But I thought the Rangers did a terrific job of clogging the middle defensively. They won a lot of stick battles there. I think Florida was settling for a lot of poor shots that frankly had no chance of beating Igor Chesterkin. There were a couple times where there was sorted for. unscreen point shots and I'm like guys this is basically a turnover against uh shisterkin so

with all that in mind I came away from the first period thinking you know what they held their own pretty well defensively you can kind of see the formula here where even though they didn't control the puck a lot one thing their defensemen do really well is win battles down low and and I sort of felt like Florida didn't have many opportunities to hem the rangers in for heavy cycling down low shifts the types where you get exhausted. But then unfortunately, things just completely changed in the second period. And the ice was even more tilted and now Florida was actually able to get to the inside. And that was pretty much the entire third period you just described there, right?

I think there were a couple shifts in particular where the Rangers were just hanging on for dear life. Yeah. They would run always, like that's always like a sign that things are going poorly for you. And on the Sports Night broadcast, they flash like the... John R. Miller is having like a two and a half minute shift and you're like, uh-oh. And then there were a couple of those for various Rangers defensemen along the way. I'm with you on that. So how do you, let's break it down then.

What do you think the difference was as that game progressed and kind of how do you think it got away from the Rangers? And in particular, like schematically, where do you think things are going wrong? Because I have a few ideas, but I'm curious for your take because I'm running unison in lockstep here that despite the fact that the game as a whole went one way, I think the first period, there's a lot of positive stuff tactically to take from it. It just slipped away from them as the game went along. And that was very similar to the notes we hit in game three as well. I think the Rangers need to clean up their neutrals on defensive play. That's the biggest thing that stands out. And sometimes when teams get burned off the rush,

a lot of the fixation is on defensemen, but I really think this is a five-man unit thing where A, their four-check isn't able to give Florida any difficulties on the breakout. It felt like the Forsling-Eckblad pair, for example, was able to skate it out every single time with no pressure on them. And from there, it didn't matter whether the Rangers forwards were sort of caught a little bit up the ice and they had lacklester back pressure or even when they were above the puck. They felt like holograms, right?

It felt too easy for the panthers skaters and puck carriers to get around them. And I don't think the forwards were enough of an obstacle or a barrier and actually angling guys to one side of the ice. And as a result, I also, I mean, the defenseman, of course, played a role in that, too. There were a couple of situations where they were, like, one rush where Lindgren sort of stepped up and got caught and ended up being a two-on-one-one against. There were also offenses on turnovers at the blue line. Like, it was, like, every part of what a head coach doesn't want to see occurred and gave the Panthers a ton of time and space off the rush. and how many times did Barkoff get behind New York's defense, for example, in all alone, like five times?

Yeah, I added at four, and I was saying this to you before we started, I had it at four times that he was in alone, essentially against Sturkin. He got one shot attempt off on those four, and now one of them also drew the penalty in overtime that wound up quickly resulting in the game-winning goal. But we'll get into all that kind of what happened there, because that was a bit of a bizarre occurrence. I'm with you, though, and I think this ties into the conversation you and I actually had at length last time you were on the show. we were talking about the Oilers Canucks series. And obviously that wound up flipping in Edmonton's perspective, but we were talking about where things were getting away from them in that same vein. And it was how inextricable your forecheck and your breakout game are,

despite the fact that it's different players at different positions at literally opposite ends of the ice, but one kind of ties into the other, right? If you're generating no threat or like illusion of pressure at all, which is what the Rangers were doing in this game, the Panthers are able to essentially just break out at will every time and then skate downhill. And the broadcast was doing a great job of kind of highlighting how even when the Rangers were up one nothing early, there was no gap at all in place defensively.

Right. Like the Panthers were just skating into the zone and then basically getting to tee off. And that's highly alarming, right? That's certainly you cannot play that way against this Panthers team. It's one thing to give up a bunch of shots if you're in a good position. It's another to sort of tactically leave that much space. and I don't know what the rangers are doing with their for check because obviously they're going to be the inferior

forecheck in this series regardless but they were essentially just sending one man like one kind of cursory forechecker in and forsling just does the classic thing where he just sort of retrieves the puck skates around him passes the puck up the ice and then there's no one there's no second four checker in place there's no sort of all right we're going to take away this option

and make you redirect your breakout elsewhere like the panthers are pretty much just running practice drills at times right and I think that's if you're Peter have you let and you're like rewatching the tape today. I think there's a lot of sort of stuff that you can drill down on and really get after your team about. We'll also look at one of the rare situations where they did apply pressure on the four check was on Mika, forcing him into that icing.

Now you get the fourth line out there trapped. The Rangers counter with the Lafranier line, Panarin, Crowcheck. Now they're able to hem them in. Lafranier scores to tie the game. That's how you also generate offense. It's not just preventing preventing things defensively shots and chances against. It's also how you're going to create turnovers,

how you're going to spend time in the offensive zone, how you're going to allow some of your most talented offensive players to generate opportunities to wear the opposition down. And kind of spinning that forward then where I think they really got into trouble in the second and third period and why the Panthers were able to sort of stack together these two, two and a half minute shifts, just cycling the puck in the offensive zone,

is the Rangers, I think, committed Cardinal Sin against this Panthers forecheck, which is trying to pass the puck up the wall against them to break it out, right? And I think anyone that's watched a Panthers game pretty much the past two years would be able to tell you you cannot get away with that against them because they're so aggressive at blocking off the walls, and they're almost daring you to go up the middle of the ice, right? Now, if you try to pass the puck up the middle of ice, especially with some of the relative lack of puck-moving ability amongst this Rangers' blue,

line, you're probably going to have turnovers as well. And I think that's what's disappointing in seeing how unwilling, I guess, or unable they've been to make plays with their feet, the Rangers blue liners, right? Like, you'd think that, regardless of whatever Fox's health is at right now, but even Jacob True by this point, Brayne Schneider, Eric Gustafson, certainly Kiannoyne Miller, like, these are players who should be able to take the puck and get it up the ice a little bit, to buy themselves some more time and space and elude a little bit of this pressure. And there's been none of that. It was almost they were constantly just resorting to retrieve the puck, try to hammer it up the wall, and there'd just be a Panthers forecheck or they're waiting to

knock it down, get it back at the middle of the ice, and just do it all over again. And that's a major issue, and that cannot continue if they want to get back in the series. Yeah, the Rangers Blue Line has really let me down the last couple of games. I mean, sure, but we don't have to go down that rabbit hole, but every time he touches the puck in the defensive zone, I cringe. It feels like a turnover or a failed clearance is inevitable, but even as you alluded to Fox, and I know he's banged up, but I don't think he's been as dynamic on the breakout, but also Miller, as you alluded to, what an athletic, gifted skater. And it feels like he hasn't taken advantage of many opportunities to really seize control of the puck, take a lane and skated out himself, right?

So even Gustafson, right? Here's got on the third pair that had a turn. perfect regular season and I haven't noticed him enough, I feel like, for for clean exits and okay, he's helping control play. So I really think that as much as we highlighted, for example, how the forwards need to help the defenseman on the neutrals on defensive side of things, on the breakout side of things, I really do think a large part of it is on their deed to execute better. It certainly is. Okay, let's do some of the positives. So we've got to talk about Alexei Lafranier here because the way, how he's ramped up his game, I think he was doing all of this in the regular season.

I did a full show with Daryl Befrey at the end of the regular season, kind of highlighting this stuff. But him doing it against this opponent on this stage is an entirely different thing, right? And in particular, I think in both these games, but obviously the game three with the two highlight, real goals is sort of a signature performance.

But even in game four, in the first period, on the second unit power play, he like dances into the zone off the rush, creates a look for Jack Roslovich, which he kind of fumbled and nothing came of. Then he attacks Sam Ryanhart at the blue line, puts it between his legs, rings it off the bar. He's just doing all of these high-skilled plays that are just reflective of immense confidence,

right? Like even unsubtle stuff, instead of seeing him just panic and get rid of the puck, he's like holding on to it, dragging the puck, making someone miss, and then getting it to a teammate after in a better and more advantageous position. And he's really been their primary driver of offense, right? I think any way you look at it, obviously the three goals, get him in a tie with Barkley Goodrow in this series for the team lead, but scoring chances.

He had, by my account, 10 of the Rangers' 32 scoring chances in these two games. Everything's flowing through him. And it's kind of been a good demonstration, I guess, of all of his unique skills that made him such a highly regarded prospect and made him so effective this season. He's relentlessly in attack mode. It's sort of like when you watch and, in the NBA, a player is just feeling it

and he wants to drive the paint every single time. And it feels like no matter how well you defend him, he's just able to slash through and find space anyway. That's what it's like watching him play right now. The biggest thing that separates his performance compared to last season is I feel like his skating has improved miles. So much quicker. I know it's not just by the eye either

because halfway through the season, I was writing a piece on the NHL's most improved players this season. I obviously had LaFranier on that list. And looking at the NHL edge data, his speed bursts above 20 miles per hour had shot through the roof compared to last season. So the work that he put into the summer to get quicker is allowing him to attack more dynamically, is allowing him to find a little bit more space off the rush. From there with that increased feet movement,

then he's also pairing that with, okay, now I've got the confidence that I can rely on my pock handling in high traffic areas to actually dangle guys, that makes him infinitely more dangerous to defend compared to last season when it felt like, okay, it's hard for him to pick up steam in the same way. And if you aren't picking up steam in the same way, now even the moves that you're going to try the offensive blue line to make space for yourself, you can have the hands, but if you're not going at the same right, it's still easier to kind of contain. And it's been the full, I think you've seen a glimpse of like the full array of things, right? obviously I think what catches your eye and I think it does distinguish from from the previous couple

seasons is how much he's attacking off the rush right that's been kind of a season long trend and I think it's a combination of improved skating confidence playing with panera and I think being encouraged right the Rangers as a team attacked much more off the rush this season generally than they did previously under a different coach and so you put that all together and that's obviously what catches your eye you're seeing other areas that he's able to excel offensively in this as well right like the goal he's scores around the net where he just kind of has that knack for for getting open and he's there to tap in the fox pass after fox made that spin moved to make stephen Lorenz miss uh in game two the forecheck like he's he's a massive individual and so he just like takes you out disrupts

dislodges the puck that creates a four check goal he's sort of doing it all for them it's kind of remarkable because i do think while anyone that watched him knows like he was doing this with regular frequency especially like increasing as the year went along so it's not at him nowhere. But I do think like you can't understate how impressive it is that you watch these games and you come away from game three and four being like when he's out there, I feel like they're going to create a scoring chance. And when he's not, I feel like they're not. And it's not because he's playing with Panera. And it feels like he's sort of the engine for that. And I think that evolution is truly remarkable. For sure, it's that he's individually driving and it's happening. It's not like he's

like standing in the slot waiting for a brilliant pass to get to him. Like he's capable of that, but he's actually taking the initiative far more off in himself as well. Yeah, it's like he can now create and look dangerous independent of how Panarin is playing, which is massive, right? Because early in the season, yeah, Lafranier was playing with a lot of confidence, but you look at a lot of the goals, and they were more of like the complementary type where I'm finding ways to get open around the net, and it's a high IQ play, but a lot of it is derived from, okay, Panarin's making a great move, he's attracting defenders, the defense's focuses on him. And so Lafranier is kind of able to attack in soft areas, kind of slip under the radar.

And that's how he's doing his damage. Of course, as the season went on and as his confidence grew, you saw him drive more individually. But these playoffs, especially the series, has been different. Where now it's like, again, it doesn't matter how Panarin is playing, Lafranier is going to continue doing his thing. And if he has to take more of an onus of, hey, I'm going to. be carrying pox and I'm going to be the guy. I'm capable of being that too. Yeah, I don't really know, I mean, I completely agree with all that. And I think in particular, you look at that line and it's done pretty much everything for them at 515 in this series, right, with him, Trojik and Panarin. And

Panarin's come under a lot of fire on the one hand. His on ice metrics in this series are actually quite good, especially in comparison to a lot of the other lines because of how that groups work together. I understand that based on the regular season he has and like how prolific a player he is when he's not dominating games offensively, you're going to come under fire, right? Especially with his previous playoff reputation. I don't know how we evaluate his performance because I do think he's making plays for others, right? He like on the power play yesterday, he sets up the trochering goal. He's got a few other ones where he's sort of dragging defenders with him and then enabling teammates to step into space that he's created, right? So I think all of that is really good.

Yet both him and Fox, I feel like, have come under a lot of scrutiny and fire throughout a lot of this postseason, but especially in this series. Yeah, he isn't playing poorly, right? This isn't like the first run against the devil's last year. But I do think there's still another level for him to reach in being able to take games over because that's what he was, right? In the regular season, he was there clear MVP. the offense was sort of flowing through him and, you know,

the power play hasn't been very productive outside of the goal last game. So, again, he's not playing poorly. You still see him making plays. You still see shifts where he's dangerous. And that his line as a whole has been by far the Rangers best line at it even strength last couple of games. But there is more of a, like you're left wanting a little bit more in terms of the consistency with which he looks threatening.

I think especially when in comparison, like we just had all these glowing words about Lafranier, right? I could say the same stuff about Vinny Trochec. In this series, with him on the ice of 5-15, the Rangers are up 5-2. He has five primary points on the nine total goals. The team has scored. The goal he scored yesterday was so cool where he just rips it pretty much at Brobowski's head and just goes barren in. Drawing two penalties taken none, despite, I think, playing like a very physical style has won a bunch of his face-offs as well. Like, he's doing everything in such a very obvious way.

I think that is also working against Panarin here where like his two linemates that he's most closely associated with seem like they're sort of driving it more directly, whereas he's kind of in the shadows a little bit more. And I think that has to change for them. I think the one thing I have to say about this Rangers team negatively though is, and there's no way around it, like Mika Zabinajad simply needs to be better. And I know that even when he's at his best, a lot of his production and impact comes at special teams, right? Both obviously with that shot on the power play, but even short-handed, as we've seen this postseason, he's able to create a lot. Pretty much essentially, as soon as you remove the 10th skater on the ice for either team,

it's like he wakes up and all of a sudden becomes superhuman. They just need more from him, especially at 5-1-5. I mean, the numbers so far are highly alarming. So he's played 62 and a half minutes at 5-on-5 in the series. Shots on goal, 45 to 13 for the Panthers, high danger chances, 18 to 6, goals 2-0, So they haven't scored at all with him on the Ness. He has no points, much like his linemate Chris Kreider. And it's been tough because early in the series,

he was drawing a lot of the head-to-head matchups with Barkov. And in that game, too, in particular, Barkov was sort of taking him to school and kind of like bullying him one-on-one along the wall and then bringing the puck out and essentially putting on a puck possession clinic. And I'm not going to hold that necessarily that much against him because it's Sasha Barkov, and he'll probably do that to pretty much anyone that tries to go with him

head-to-head. But that's what he's going to be. judged on here and I think when you're looking at this ranger's performance and who needs to step up and how they can sort of take back control of the series and win two of these final three games they just need more from him like there's no way around it if he keeps putting together this performance I think it's going to be really tough for them to generate enough yeah it was like halfway through the second period where I thought to myself damn have I even seen zabanajad in this in this game like I had to think have I seen him making any plays and I was like no not really right and outside of the

look that he had off the rush in the third period. I'm not the power player early, right? Right, yeah. And in the third period, there wasn't a lot in terms of driving play and inconsistency in the offense's own of, okay, we're stacking shifts, where zipping the puck around.

Him and Kreider have just been way too quiet and considering that's one of your marquee top six lines, especially with how many chances the Panthers top six players are creating 100% they need way more. Well, especially what I find, and I'm with you on that, you did notice him in overtime where he made the turnover that led to the breakaway, the penalty, and then the goal.

And that was, we just said everything about Lafranier and how, like, we generally tend to focus on quantifiable stuff, right? Which is why we look at a lot of metrics to evaluate performance. I think we're both in agreement and anyone that watches sports is that, like, confidence in the way you're playing has a big impact on your decision-making and sort of how you approach the game. And I think that was a classic example of a player in the opposite direction right now where he comes into the offensive zone. And not that he had a great play to make, probably the right play is to just dump the puck down and kind of get it deep in the zone and then figure it out from there.

But instead, he really without that much pressure, like, I think Montour is coming at him, but he allows him to. And then he forces a pass to a pretty much covered Blake Wheeler who's playing his first game in forever at the blue line. And that immediately becomes a turnover. And that's unacceptable, right? like it's one thing not to be scoring and struggling offensively but just those types of plays are absolute killers so yeah i think i think all that stuff is really interesting i have been a bit surprised like they've the panthers have been pursuing the barkov matchup there i'm and maybe this is just because they like playing barkov with the uh ekblad forsling pair but i was sort of expecting the

pair the head-to-heads from fords defensemen to be different in this series i thought that line would get much more montra micaw and instead they've actually gotten a lot of ekblad forsling as well and i feel like like we can talk more of when we get into the panther section here about that pair. I obviously anyone who listens to us knows how much I love Gus Foresling. I think EqBlad is very exploitable right now and the fact that they haven't really been going at them that much is sort of a missed opportunity and something they need to address moving forward here. Let's take our break here harm and then we come back. We'll jump right back into it and we'll keep talking about the East Final. You're listening to the Hockey Piedocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.

Hey, it's Jamie Dodd and Thomas Strance. Get your daily dose of Canucks Talk with us. Days from 12 to 2 on SportsNet 650 or catch up on demand through your favorite podcast app. All right, we're back here on the Hockey Pedyo guest, by Harmon Dahl. Today, Harm, we're doing our recap of what we saw from the Panthers Rangers game last night, game four, and really this series as a whole. We've talked a lot about the Rangers perspective. Let's shift here to a little bit on the Panther side.

What really stuck out to you in terms of driving forces for them in that game four? kind of stuff that really caught your eye while you're watching that game. Well, we touched on it already a little bit, but the speed with which they transitioned the puck, they created an insane number of rush chances. It really felt like a lot of that was driven, particularly by the Foresling pair. Watching Foresling's deception on defense's own retrievals is so cool, what he does before he touches it to make the Furchker think he's going left, but then to collect, collect the puck and go right.

Just that escapeability that he has is such a treat to watch. And once he gets going, he's able to then hit Florida's forwards in stride. And they have so much skill, whether it's Barkov, whether it's Verhege, whether it's Sam Bennett off the rush. These guys just have the skill, the IQ to connect plays, get to the inside. And from the second period onward, it felt like a relentless onslaught from transition. And the key then, too, is the first period I thought it was a lot of one and done for them offensively. I didn't like their shot selection.

But they also then started to get their forecheck going. And, okay, we got this initial rush chance, and now we're going to hem the Rangers in as well. Now, let the record show, just for the sake of truthfulness here. I did not. That wasn't a guiding question. I wasn't steering you towards talking about Gus Foresling. I didn't at any point during the break telling you that you had to bring it up with a gun of your head. because the listeners here on the PDO on the PDOCS Discord are always commenting about how I'm talking too much about Gus Forzing and how I'm using every opportunity to talk up his game. So this is all harm's opinions here, which I fully co-signed, of course. But no, I'm with you. And I think the amount of space that they just had in the neutral zone from that breakout, then attacking downhill, really stood out, especially as the game went along. And I think it brings up an interesting conversation that we can have here about kind of the pros and cons, I guess, of dominating territorially the way.

the panthers have for large stretches of these games three and four because on the one hand I think it gives off this sort of like the visual of all right well the dam's about to break here right like if you keep getting all these shots on net and you just stay in the offensive zone something good is eventually going to happen but this rangers team is also very clearly I think comfortable in being kind of back in that defensive posture and with eurisdurken playing the way he is right now I think you're going to need to do something very creative and high level or just get incredibly lucky, I guess, to score on him right now. Like there's a very few shots that are cleanly beating him. And so it looks great and all the numbers you put together are awesome.

But I do think similar to we've talked about other teams this postseason that are sort of equipped to play that game. I wouldn't say it's advisable or I would recommend the Rangers immediately sort of defaulting to that. But I also do think like it's not quite as simple as being like, all right, well, the shot attempts. are heavily skewed in this way, and therefore we should expect the goals to come. Like, that's not really how playoff hockey works, and I don't think anyone is, you know, earnestly disagreeing with that. Yeah, and yesterday I thought to myself about halfway through the game, I haven't seen a lot of East West in the offensive zone for the Florida Panthers.

There aren't a lot of opportunities to get those really high percentage plays were able to seem the defense. You're forcing Schisturkin to go left right. There just wasn't a lot that they were. a attempting or I mean yeah I don't even think they were necessarily attempting a lot of those East West plays in the first in in the first place but a lot of those backdoor plays are some of those highest percentage scoring chances and so you're right it looks really pretty territorially and look if they continue to dominate play the way they did in games three and four they'll

take their chances to win this series but there were times again especially in the first period where I thought, kids, this is great that they have all this Pock possession, but maybe a little bit more offensive creativity would be nice. But with that said, if they're going to create and get behind New York's defense this many times have this many rush opportunities, it's not really going to matter. Yeah, we're the Rangers, and we talked about this a lot in the first part of this show, but I think there is the distinction where I think the Rangers will be comfortable sitting back in that defensive posture and allowing the Panthers to Carolina Hurricane style for the most part, with a lack of better description, just bomb away from the point

and kind of take a lot of these very direct line shots, like Sturkin's just going to eat all that stuff up. And he's not even really, we should say, like, giving up rebounds at this point. So like, it's a lot of kind of one and duns, as you're mentioning. Where the rangers shot themselves in the foot was a lot of the breakout stuff where they're sort of making these unnecessary mistakes and then that's feeding into additional opportunities and they're getting tired and then maybe their defensive detail

is slipping a little bit and then just how much space they had in the neutral zone where you're allowing them to walk in and get some of these rush opportunities those are obviously more high danger, right? So I think if you actually short up a lot of, a few of the details that we talked about

in terms of being able to get the puck out of the zone and then providing a bit of resistance in terms of gaping up in the blue line, I think the Rangers actually would be fine playing this way, assuming she's just taking keeps playing this way. But that's not really what happened in there and I think that's what's kind of troubling for them in these two games

shot attempts with Matthew could chuck on the ice all situations now a lot of it is he plays on the power play as well but 96 to 14 for the Florida Panthers now one of those 14 was Alex Wemberg's game three overtime winner as well and I made the mistake never tweet harm I made the mistake of tweeting out whatever the shot attempts were for Matthew

could chuck at the time and sure enough like the next attempt on the ice that he was on for was was the goal against but yeah I think I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff there. I mean, just Sturkin's playing so well right now. I kind of wanted to make the note as well that, like,

finally that overtime winner by Reinhart was one of the few goals he's given up in this series. That was actually, and even that was kind of a goal line pass that came out for a one-timer on a perfectly play shot, but it was at least a direct one-on-one shot that he got beat by from the Panthers perspective, because pretty much everything else has been off of the Rangers' defense. been in balance again, that first Bennett goal in this game,

even Verhege's sort of like hand-eye tipping it out of mid-air off Lankron stick. It's been a lot of, and that happens, especially when you get this type of shot volume that the Panthers have had. But Shastrican just seeing the puck so well that it feels like he's stopping pretty much anything he actually is able to cleanly see. And even on a few of these, it's almost deceiving. Like, I think the shots actually are probably more dangerous than they look because of how he's playing, where there was like,

one Ryan Hart power play shot where it was from a dangerous area and Ryan Hart can score that against anyone. Yeah. And he caught it like he almost like just like swatted a fly out of midair and it was like so casual and it gave off the illusion that it was a nothing shot when in reality I think an inferior goal he would have either gotten beaten by it or made it look like this great A and we would have all been marveling and posting clips about how remarkable Leseba was but it was just nothing. And I think the commentators didn't even really remark on it. They were just like oh he catches it. He was half like standing up and I was like wait hold on second. That was a high danger chance, wasn't it? And I watched the replay and I was like, yeah,

that was a legit dangerous chance. That was a 50 goal scorer from a prime area where he scored like 30 goals this season and he just made it look like nothing. Yeah, that was nuts. That was unbelievable. It's also hard for the Panthers to create chaos because even though they're trying to get traffic in front, even though they're trying to, you know, get a lot of shots off in the offensive zone, there's just, he's swallowing everything up. There's never any rebound. And if there ever are, the Rangers defensemen are typically boxing out and getting them out of harm's way. So there's pretty much nothing in the way of second chance opportunities that the Panthers are able to generate. And that's part of the reason why in zone when the Panthers are attacking, as you sort of alluded to, the Rangers because of how comfortable they are defending, they're fine to give you the perimeter.

They don't look that dangerous. Again, if the Rangers can just find a way to clean things up in transition defense, then all of a sudden there definitely can be a formula where maybe the Rangers get out attempted and outshot, but perhaps a lot of those are just from in-zone from the outside, or even if they are from medium-danger scoring location, Shosturkin is playing so well that it's not going to really matter. And because of how opportunistic the Rangers can be offensively, there is a path for them to win that way,

as long as they can just clean up their transition defense to an adequate level. Yeah, I mean, Jersers are giving up 10 goals on 338 Panthers attempts in this series. And like I said, one of them was, like, Lafranier, scoring on him in game one, a few other sort of weird tips or deflections off his own players and kind of unfortunate events.

Very few of them are actually, all right, a panther's shooter just beat them cleanly. So that's alarming. And I'm curious about sort of, I guess that accumulation of, of some of these trends or habits over the course of a series as it progresses, right? Because we're getting into game five now into the later stages of this. Both teams are sort of establishing what they are and sort of what they're good and not good at.

And I didn't really know what to attribute what we were seeing a lot early in game four, where we mentioned kind of the Barkov opportunities where he wasn't really getting shots off. It might just be bad ice and it might just be too convenient of a storyline to be saying this. But I did think there were a few instances where you could almost see the Panthers, had an opportunity to probably do something. Like they got 95% of the way there. And then right at the finish line, they just never got a shot off

because they either tried to do something kind of like next level and didn't work out or the puck bubbled on them and it just wasn't clean. And that might be a combination of pressure, bad ice, I'm sure, realizing that you probably actually need to get a good shot off the Beach's Stryken at this point rather than just shooting it into his pad.

So I'm sure it's a combination of those things. But I did think a lot of that was happening at game four and I'll be watching for that moving forward because the Panthers were getting into good areas of the ice even before they started scoring in game four, but they weren't really getting anything of note in terms of actually on the stat sheet to show for it. And so I want to see if that continues

or whether that was just sort of like a weird aberration and they're able to execute better on those. Yeah, that's a fascinating observation because even on one of the Panthers later power plays in the second or third period, I remember an innocence where Reinhardt had the puck in the bumper pretty much all alone. all he needed to do was turn and he would have had a clean one-on-one look.

And he immediately passed it off back to the right flank, I believe it was, and sort of passed up a great A chance. So that's a really good point. And I mean, just to touch on Barkov, I mean, even though he wasn't able to direct a lot of his potential chances into actual shots on goal, I think he just continues to be such a two-way beast, possession monster. it's so fun watching him play in this sort of smooth cerebral style where he as soon as he gets the puck, it's also how he protects it, nearly impossible push off with his massive frame, how disruptive he is on the back check,

how many stick checks he makes, how many 50-50 battles down low, even in the defense's zone, where subtly, and this is kind of what sparks some of Florida's breakouts too is the Rangers will try and get set up. they'll have a couple of forwards deep. Barkov will just swoop in, win a battle down low, make a little bump pass, and now the Panthers have time and space to transition up the ice. It's been remarkable watching him tilt the ice. I mean, he's impossible to remove from the puck. And as this series gone along, Paul Maurice also made the adjustment because they were struggling

a little bit. He switched up his lines, right? And he put Verhege on that line. And it feels like when you put those two together, it's like almost like a luxury item for him because Verhegey will certainly get to his spots and shoot it and create a bunch himself, but watching the way they play off of each other is really fun and a cool dynamic to this. So, yeah, I mean, he has been absolutely outrageous. And I also had the note, you know, we were talking about how the Rangers haven't really gotten going on the power play. And I think

part of it is because of what the Panthers are doing on the penalty kill. And what that is, is, and the broadcast has done a good job of highlighting this, they're pressuring a lot up high, right? But they're doing it in a controlled way. Like the Rangers, ironically enough, got into trouble doing this on the overtime winner because Truba got out of his lane chasing a hit along the boards. And so I posted a screen cap where there was one Rangers defender that was pretty much from like the dots down. And it was a two on one because all three other guys have gone chasing the puck up high. So that's a very dangerous game to play. But because of how much ground a guy like Barkov covers, for example, when he's out there on the PK, they're able to pressure the point and

sort of take away Fox as a distributor. And the Rangers love to funnel it through him, not as a shooter necessarily, although he likes to get it on net for those Crider tips, but because he can then distribute it to the next guy to then make a play, right? And a lot of times it goes, Fox to Paneraan, cross-ice is a binajad for the one-timer, and he sort of kicks off that sequence. And they're sort of taken that away, and the Rangers need to adjust to that.

I think we saw a bit of that in game four, right? On the goal itself, you saw how low Panarin got because they worked the puck down to him, and then he was able to pass it back up into the high slot into the open ice to Trojek. They almost need to get guys lower, and force the puck there because I think there's a bit of space. Even on the Zabinajad crossbar later on in the first,

it was because Crider worked it out front and they had a bit of a numerical advantage down low, right? They sort of need to totally reconfigure the way they're operating on the power play and the Panthers PKK has made them do that. And I think a lot of PKs that have tried adjusting to elite power plays have gone to that strategy of trying to pressure high because even in, for example, the Canucks Oilers series,

Oilers were feasting off the Man advantage early, but then the Canucks made the adjustment and they typically never really been a team that pressured high. They started doing that, and all of a sudden as a series progressed, Edmonton's power play went ice cold, and really it came from your pressuring guys up high. You're not giving the point man a lot of time and space, and even just throughout the regular season, at times watching, because I cover the Canucks so closely, the best P.Ks pressure high, those are the ones that give oftentimes the most amount of trouble

because then it becomes so much harder for the point man to play catch with his with his fight guys. And once you disrupt the flow, the pace, the rhythm of that puck movement, it feels like it creates a disjointed power play experience throughout. Whereas if you're a little bit more passive, you allow them to make those initial passes. It feels like they build up steam and now they have the confidence to start seeming east west passes versus if you cut things off at the root at the start, not give the point man a lot of time. it can create difficulties, but it's difficult, right? Because if you're applying that much pressure, that can leave ice elsewhere. And that's where as a PK,

you have to be so disciplined about what trigger points are you looking for. That's one thing that talking to players when they are playing this sort of high pressure PK style, it's you have to really pick your spots carefully. If you dive in at the wrong time when you think a player is vulnerable, but he's not, all of a sudden you're leaving a vulnerability somewhere else. Well, at the end of the day, like a good power play will always beat a good penalty kill if they execute properly.

I think it's generally a good bet to do what you're saying, which is force their hand and make them a bit uncomfortable and bet on like we're getting into much higher pressure environments. The ice is getting worse on them messing up along the way in doing so, right? Like the Panthers were able to score that overtime goal partly because the Rangers, kind of got too aggressive, but also if you look back at it, it was like three high level one-touch passes that went to a one-timer that was perfectly placed by Reinhart from the dot, right? And it's like, if you're going to execute that many great plays in a row, you're probably going to score regardless of what the P-Kers were doing. Yeah.

It just looks worse. But there are many other instances where if one of the guys bobbles it along the way or isn't as clean, maybe you get to the puck and you clear it or you actually create an opportunity yourself, which is what the Rangers have done a lot this postseason. And so, yeah, I think it's certainly never as cut and dry as it appears. But in hearing you talk, I was making a mental note. I was like, if we ever start a band, it should be the disjointed power play experience. I don't know if I think that's a good one.

Okay, here's a mailback question for you that ties into this as I was thinking about it as we were watching this game. So I did this last week. And it was essentially paraphrasing, and I thought it was a really thought-provoking question. It was like every postseason, something happens along the way. and then we generally tend to focus on that as, all right, this is an example of something that works in the postseason and teams are going to need to kind of focus on this or prioritize it, whether it's a player type or a particular action or something along the way, rather than a specific player or team, just kind of generally speaking. And I pose that to you, and I was like, all right, think about this. We're going to talk about it a little bit. in initially answering it I was talking a lot about how

scoring chances are becoming so much more difficult and I think I've even seen it in my tracking as this postseason has gone along where in round one teams like the oilers were putting up like 32 to 35 scoring chances in a game against the Kings and now all of these games are like 15 to 17 scoring chances a team like they're just so low it's so tough to create consistent source of offense and so obviously getting good players is part of it but guys you can actually meaningfully turn shots into scoring chances is I think what we're really seeing is very important here. What do you think in terms of answering that question

of what's kind of stuck out to you watch in a lot of these games? A few things sort of along those lines. I think it's critical that a team has multiple sources or methods of being able to manufacture offense, especially when you get to, like you can be a one-trick pony in the regular season and it can work,

but if you get to the playoffs and you only have one main method that, hey, like the Canucks, for example, that, hey, we're predominant, a four check cycle-based team and we're going to span point shots, low to high plays. That becomes difficult to reliably score that way in the postseason because teams can pre-scout you and if you have one go-to, you don't have a backup game to manufacture offense, that can be problematic.

I also think about it in the opposite direction, the old Panthers teams under Andrew Brunette where they were high-flying off the rush. won the president's trophy that year, but even in round one against Washington, it was really difficult for them to advance because teams adjusted in the neutral zone and by the time they got to the Battle of Florida against the Lightning,

I think they only scored three goals that entire series maybe because they had no sort of like fallback offensive game, right? Whereas now you watch the evolution of the Panthers, now they can create off the rush, but they also have elements of they can crate down low. They have players like Matthew Kachuk, that could create havoc around the net.

They can play both the speed and a sort of power game. Similar sort of thing with the Oilers, right? Where they can manufacture a lot off the counter attack. But as the Vancouver-Edminton series progressed, we also saw their forecheck do a lot of damage and okay, now they're hemming the Canucks in and they're able to create that way too.

So I think multiple ways of generating offense analysis is another team, right? that they aren't a one-trick pony. Like, that sticks out to me more of a, more at a strategic and tactical level. Certainly, yeah, being able to play it, because you're going to encounter different types of opponents and game settings along the way. One very niche when I was thinking and watching this game four is,

and the series as a whole, really, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I always talk about how I don't care about face-offs at all on the show. Offensive zone draws, and in particular, what you're choosing to do on them with the lines you're using, because I think a lot of coaches, the way they're either fourth line is, like, they don't trust them necessarily in their own zone and they don't want to have a situation where

they wind up pinned against the other team's top line and surrender a scoring chance or give up momentum and then feel guilty for it. So they generally try to like carefully manicure their minutes and give them offensive zone draws here or there. But there was an instance in the third period last night where the Panthers had their fourth line out there for an offensive zone draw. And exactly what we were saying, the Rangers I think win the draw, try to go up the wall to get it out. Kulikov makes a nice play to knock the puck down and gets it. to a Panthers forward who's in alone against Shostrick and all of a sudden one on one with like two minutes left. And that forward is Kyleik Pozo because for some reason Paul Maris had sent

out his fourth line for an offensive zone draw. And it's like, with all due to say Kyleopozo, I would much prefer if this was Carter Verhegey or pretty much any other Panthers forward. And on the other side, we've seen there's been a couple times like that third period or that game three overtime winner was Sergey Bobrovsky inexplicably stops the puck, gets a defensive zone draw and then they wind up losing off of it right and so like optimizing these faceoffs are so important because the margins are so low in these games like every single game is essentially decided by one goal and if you have an opportunity to manufacture something that could give you a tiny edge wherever you can get it i think that's imperative for a coach and so just kind of watching what's happening on a lot

of these late game offensive zone draws i think that game within the game is becoming so increasingly fascinating to me and not just the deployment aspect but also strategic what can you cook up in terms of offense's own set plays? From a defensive standpoint, how prepared are you for the opposition's potential set plays? Because maybe it's confirmation bias just because the broadcast talks about it so often, but it does feel like many times the playoffs in these tight games, there is key offense zone draw after an icing, and it ends up being a massive moment in the game.

Well, the reason why we care about like rush opportunities and why they're dangerous is because it's a rare instance where you get the other team out of their defensive structure, right? It's like all of a sudden an opportunity to attack from a clean sheet of ice. And you almost kind of get that off of a nice set playoff and offensive zone draw win because they're naturally, not everyone is in the right position, right? Guys are kind of in the wrong place. There's miscommunication on who you cover and all of a sudden someone winds up open in the slot or in front of the net. And so that's what you see. And that's why it matters. Harmon, we got to get out of here.

This is a blast. Thank you for coming. on. Everyone go check out harm on Twitter. We're on social media everywhere. Check out his work at the athletic. We'll have him on again here this postseason soon. Thank you to everyone for listening to us. We'll be back tomorrow with plenty more of the Hockey-Pedocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.