The Hockey PDOcast - What We Saw in Game 1 of the East Final

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jesse Marshall to break down Game 1 of the East Final. They talk about what they saw, what matters from it moving forward, and where each team can gain a competitive edge on the opposition. 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.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Fulpovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? How you doing, buddy? Good to see you. Great to see you. We are recording this the morning after game one of the East Final.

We saw the Panthers win a tight one. The score was certainly not representative of how tight that game was for the majority of it. To kick off the conference finals and the plan for us today is the brinkering. break it all down. We're going to talk about what we saw, things that either surprised us or reinforced ideas we had heading into the series and what matters moving forward. What do you think of game one from either team's perspective, whether just the terms at which it was played or something one of the teams did that might be surprised you. Would you just give me your general thoughts on game one and we can just dive into it? So I thought, I think like the story, right,

of both of these teams going into this series is the rate at which they've been able to, to control the pace of the play like vis-o-vis their forecheck and just controlling the neutral zone, right? I think if you look at the Rangers path here, that's an area that they've done really well in. I think their best mitigation has come from the strengths of their offense, Dimitri, or they've had long periods of time playing in the other team's own, like cycling the puck, activating their D when they can. It's been enough to hide the dents in their armor, and there are some, right? So up to this point, like you acknowledge like, okay, the Rangers sometimes have like

defensive pairings that occasionally get exposed and turn the puck over. That is not a problem because XYZ all the way down the list. That takes us to Florida, Florida, a team who runs a very aggressive forecheck and generally speaking controls the pace of the play with the fours they have up front. It's like the irresistible object and the unmovable force here. But I think the takeaway for me was like, you knew one of these teams. games, whoever one was going to be the one that successfully flexed that four check better than the other one did.

I guess the Rangers dense for me last night, Dimitri, turned into like huge warts, right? Or you go back to the first period, Jacob Truba, turnover under pressure, right? Coughs a puck up, takes a penalty. Like immediately, like right in the first period of the game, you're seeing this like degradation almost of like the way that the Rangers like to play the game. Now, if you listen to what the Rangers said afterwards, Demetri's. they said their breakouts were too fancy and it's not anything florida did right they just lacked urgency they didn't want to get pucks behind the d and you're never going to see this from them again

that's like a great idea in theory right but you have to have the practical roster to be able to execute on that idea and look we have to acknowledge there are certain defensemen on the rangers blue line that really over the course of this playoffs handled the puck like a grenade missed assignments in the slot they've been so good and their goaltending has been so good that it's by and large been a wash for them, right? You don't notice it. It's, you know, you live to fight another day. But last night, like, those warts were on display. We saw Florida, I think, sort of mitigate the Rangers' offense from deep within their defensive zone. It wasn't even anything the Florida was doing in their own D zone. They were, they were proactively playing defense, like way up

ice. I know, like, a lot of people, how do you categorize Florida's four check? Is it a one, one, three? Is it a two three? I don't care. There's two, you do whatever you want. There's two forwards up ice just creating hell. And the Rangers are, what they've been really good at, is getting that first pass out, Dimitri, and then having puck support in the middle of the ice.

But when Florida lingers, that second four check are just a little bit high. They're almost like, that's the fail safe against you making a good D-to-D pass or a good first pass out of your zone. Here comes the second layer of pressure. Now, how do you respond to this?

The takeaway from me was I just was surprised by how the Rangers didn't just fail that test, Demetri. there was like an F minus, right? Like they didn't have anything really to write home about. They hit up, you know, Alex Winberg had a really great shift, I think, in the third period. And there was a post that came off of that sequence where they hit a pipe late. But out of that, you never really felt like they had it together cohesively coming out of their own end.

And look, the story to beating the Florida Panthers is that narrative. Make no mistake about it. You got to beat that forecheck if you want to beat this team. And it's no surprise they were where they were in the standings. You look at the way they're playing right now. Yeah, you know what? classify Florida's forfeit guys as a five zero all five guys are involved it's not just not just two forwards let's get everyone in there certainly that is the story and they just put you in hell with that

the the rangers are never i think i think they're right in terms of their sort of diagnosis of what went wrong because they're never even at their best against an inferior forechecking team going to be mistaken for like the colorado avalanche or take your breakout team right like they're going to need to get the puck into the neutral zone and win 50-50 battles and then sort of play downhill from there as opposed to stringing together multiple passes in crisp breakout fashion against this Panthers team. It's incredibly dangerous because the bind they put you in is, you know, the Rangers got through a very strong for checking team in Carolina in the previous round.

But what separates this Panthers team from the hurricanes is they're so lethal at turning these broken plays into immediate scoring chances as well, right? it's not just a matter of keeping you in your own zone and stifling your own breakout. They generate so much of their looks and scoring chances off of it. And so they had a lot of trouble with that. I thought the Panthers fourth line in particular really excelled here, right? Like they had numerous shifts where the PDOC's favorite Lamborghini, Ryan Longberg, was just flying around like a madman, just throwing his body around,

creating a bunch of turnovers. I thought the broadcast, the sports night broadcast made a good reference of how the Rangers defensemen looked like they were kind of hearing. the footsteps at time and maybe making some mistakes even when someone wasn't there because of the threat of that and the idea of it. And so you put all that together. And that's a big, that's a big, I think, focus for for the Rangers in particular, right? Because we know the Panthers is just going to keep doing this. This wasn't an aberration for them. This wasn't an outlier performance. The Rangers are going to need to figure out how to at least get the puck into the neutral zone

so that they can attack from there and not just keep kind of having a circle back the way they didn't game one. Yeah. You raised. I'm glad you mentioned that point about the SportsNet broadcast because I wasn't watching it. And you raised such an important point about the difference between the Carolina Hurricanes Forecheck and the Florida Panthers Forecheck, which is Florida removes the rules of engagement. They're physical. They wear you down. They're much more in your face. You know, we'll roll the 5-0 example you gave.

It's all hands on deck. And I think what Carolina looks to do is angularly take your, that's a tough word, angularly take your lanes away. right it's more of a less ominous type of pressure it's more of a directional pressure and a funnel pressure where you feel like you only have one option it's the option that they want to give you this is this is not that this is we're going to hit you and i think you know there's a lot of nonsense that gets drawn up around hits right like i think that it's it's as a statistic dmitri is much more mythical uh than it truly is in practicality but like anyone who's played the game in any level knows that if someone's like punishing you over the course of a 60 minute game, like you develop

a sense of want to that's much faster than what you have in front of you, right? And like, and there are always thing that was like helpful for me was when people would yell that I had time, right? If I'm going back to get a puck that's been dumped in, you know, you get that from the bench because people are trying to calm you down because you know that you're running rushed, right? Florida does that to you, right? That forecheck into this latter half of a game, especially.

after you've dealt with it for 15, 20, 25 minutes already, is there's an anticipation there that I'm going to get hit and the faster I can make this play, the better off I am. But more often than not, these are, you know, hope plays, right? You're just jettisoning the puck up the wall with the anticipation that it's an area past that one of your teammates can get to. But again, this forecheck does not allow for that kind of stuff. You've got to be much more direct.

And if you're under duress and you feel that pressure, I think against Florida, Demetre, your best option is just to, escape. Just keep going. Eventually something, you know, I feel like you have pressure on you. It's come, maybe it's coming from behind or the side, but you can work your way out of that if you have the ability to do so. And again, some Rangers defensemen, I think, are showing that they maybe they don't have that ability or that skill isn't necessarily at the forefront of their arsenal. They have to develop it. I mean, point blank, right? I mean, this is, this is a layered forecheck where not only are you getting attacked at the principal point of attack, where you're

breaking the puck out of the zone, but your second layer, Your plan for when you get out of that first layer of Florida's pressure is also under attack. Right. So I mentioned this because it's really popular. And we talked about this on our last show we did together. Super quick pass out of the out of the zone. Someone up by the red line tips that puck in. And then you have someone else going to get it.

Florida is not giving you that option. They have a four checker over there. So you, even in situations where you want by design to get pucks deep. And that's, you plays drawn up to accomplish that. your option's probably not immediately available to you. And that's why I go back to either you come back deeper as a forward group or your defensemen make the move of themselves and they skate through that initial layer of pressure. You've got to do something to break yourself off that glue, right?

Which is what it is and tree your team. And this is why I mentioned rhetoric. So in my first part of this, Demetri, is the Rangers said, it's just we got to get them deep. We got to get, we have to make them turn around. You also have to get to the point where you could do that, right? Like there's a whole area there before the red line that you have to navigate through before you could start making those plays.

Well, and you'd think, you know, relatively speaking, while I think they're flawed in a lot of ways this Rangers blue line, there are one relative skill, I think, would be more so skating than actual traditional passing as a puck mover, right? Like whether it's Keondre Miller, even Jacob Truba, you go on down the line, they should theoretically be able to make some, forecheckers miss and do what exactly what you're saying easier said than done right and because florida's just so aggressive i think you're going to need to see a little better that good old

fashion nchl postseason subtle interference as well right where you buy your partner a little extra time to go back and play at the puck without worrying about being hit where in the reps are never going to call it and smart teams typically get away with it but yeah this this panthers team i mean they just take off the wall they take away the wall right you're not going to have that chip play available to you you're playing right with their hands and you don't want to want to pass the pocket into the middle of the ice either. So it's a bit of a bind for them, certainly. I mentioned the fourth line for the Panthers and how I like the way they played. I thought they had a couple of good shifts. Stanland even set up the OEL goal, which wound up being

called back because of Lomburg's interference. Contrasting that to the Rangers fourth line, I was sitting at sitting at home watching it, and my wife was sitting beside me and she kind of casually tunes into the intermission interviews. And they had Barclay Goodroll on talking. And she's like, oh man that guy has got some deep bags under his eyes he must be really tired i'd look out for him i don't think he's going to play very well and then i was like yep he is not playing very well and then you look up and i think the rangers are out shot like 16 to one in terms of attempts in his 5-1-5 minutes so the contrast between those two four lines was interesting maybe i got to get my you got my wife on here she's probably got good takes uh after being subjected to watching as much hockey as i as i make her

watch we should have our wives do a film club study together one day and uh see how that goes Yeah. Okay, here's the point that I was going to make. Let me just jump in on this one and then I'll give you the floor. I was going to say, because I putting this all together, if anyone listened to the series preview I did with Jack Hahn earlier this week, then you probably filled out all the squares on your bingo card and like almost in the first period entirely because we got a Braiden Schneider breakaway early on, right?

And I was kind of noting how him and Lindgren were much more aggressive offensively against Carolina and then I'd become accustomed to. We had Foresling making a great defensive play that led to the Panthers first goal. We had the mistake you mentioned by Truba, where he misplays the puck, then winds up taking a penalty. Honestly, should have been called for a second one and maybe even a double minor at that when he got Nick Cousins with the butt of a stick. Cachin Verheagie scored.

And then Crider after the game referenced the bad quality of the ice and how that affected the Rangers passing ability. And I got bad news for him because if he thinks that was bad game, games three and four of Florida are going to be quite troublesome for them then. But we made kind of notes about all those things in the preview. And then sure enough, it all played out. So I'm sure we're going to get plenty of things wrong along the way beyond that. But I couldn't help but watch that game one and just think about how it was all kind of holding true to form.

Get that bingo. Get that bingo out of the way early, you know? Yes. Set yourself up with the rest of the night. You mentioned at the middle or at the beginning of our discussion here, to me too that the Rangers rely on the neutral zone sort of redline back or at redline really to generate their turnovers and sort of play their style of offense off that. And I think the Lavie-A-Let sort of system is more of that like, I guess, sort of one-three-one essence,

if you want to call it that. I saw him juggling lines a lot last night more so than I think you'd saw from him at all any point up to this point in the playoffs, even when Carolina was winning and sort of sneaking back in. That to me, like, you know, you're dealing with this forecheck pressure, you know, you're kind of trying to like find a way to get around it. I just, I think you need more of a presence yourself up front in your own forecheck, you know. I think packing three guys in the middle or really trying to protect the red line is only good when you're playing ahead when you have a lead or you know, you're dominating the shot clock or the scoring chances.

I think they need to be more involved. They have the players to do it. You know, even some of like their lower line cardio merchants have enough legs to get up there and disrupt a forecheck. But this is a situation for me where you have to fight fire with fire. I don't think you can be willing to wait for Florida. You know, Florida right now, for me, even on controlled breakouts, has too much of a runway to get started.

And that that cursory pressure that the Rangers are sort of providing, is it enough right now? I think Lavie-Lett has to turn the heat up a little bit. And if you want to start living life in the offensive zone a little bit more, you kind of have to give Florida, I think, a taste of their own medicine a little bit. Well, it was an interesting game because I don't know what the final count was, but at the second intermission, so through 40 minutes, they ran a graphic that had Florida at about 10 and a half minutes of ozone time compared to like seven minutes for the Rangers.

And that shouldn't necessarily be surprising. Like, I think heading into this series, we would expect that the Panthers are going to get more of the volume, whether any category you look at, And certainly based on the first 15 minutes of the show, we kind of illustrated why that was the case. I did think, though, that despite the fact they were held off the score sheet, they got shut out by Bobrovsky. They had a very low shot count particularly early on. I thought the Rangers were doing a few interesting things whenever they were actually able to break out in the neutral zone, moving downhill and attacking off the rush.

I think Sporologic had him at like 4-0 on-nought-man rushes. it certainly felt like they were getting the better once they were in transition of the rush chances being traded back and forth. And Sam Reinhardt had this really interesting, whereas as long as we're talking about sort of player interviews or coach interviews, he had this very interesting comment during one of those flyby interviews in second intermission where he essentially, Sean McKenzie asked him like, all right, you guys only gave up 12 shots on goal through the first 40 minutes. What do you like about the way you were playing?

And San Reinhardt goes, well, I didn't really like how at the end of that period, we sort of opened it up and we allow them to get some opportunities because they're really good when they're playing up the ice and their forwards are very dangerous. And he like instantly jumped into this sort of monologue about how they have to be careful. And part of that was sort of a sign of respect for what we know that the Rangers are very lethal off the rush with their top forwards. But also, I think you were kind of seeing that. So I don't think it's necessarily a case where there's anything incredible. alarming for Florida, but I also do think that if you take a step back and look at the way the game was played, there are some encouraging building blocks for the Rangers. I don't want to make it seem like it was like, all right, well, they're just getting punished

by this for check. They have no chance because whenever they did get into the neutral zone, I actually did think they were getting kind of the better of the high quality chances compared to the opposition. Yeah. And I think that note that Ron Hart made about like speeding the game up being a bad thing is a result of the way the Rangers play. I mean, I think that they do a really good job of hitting you in the middle of the ice, not physically hitting you, but attacking your system and your breakout in the middle of the ice

and generating like turnover opportunities for themselves to come redline in. And you've seen it through all the playoffs. Like their entire group of forwards they have is, no matter what line they're on or what their skill level is, they all seem to be extremely adept in all mean rush situations and they constantly are making the right decisions in those circumstances, which is probably a result of them living in them for most of the year. So, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that's accurate. I mean, I think that if you're wanton against this team in the middle, you know,

they have the resources dedicated along, you know, in between the blue and the red to not only attack, attack you on the counter, but to do it with a significant amount of numbers, right, three, four guys, you know, based on the circumstance. So that's, that's, that's to me, the Rangers pathway back in, you know, if they can, you know, jump on Florida, I think, a little bit sooner and make their lives a little bit harder coming out of their end, tighten that screw in the neutral zone a little bit. You know, they're going to find those opportunities and converting on them. You know, I'm so bewildered by Sergey Bobrovsky and like who he is. And like, like, like, and goal tendings like so unpredictable, but like he's been unbelievable.

I think, you know, those types of chances where either you have traffic or you're running off an odd man break or something like that, that's the best opportunity is to beat him, right? You need those clean looks where you can make them, make a move or have to go down early. So yeah, that's to me, the Rangers pathway back in for sure. Yeah, he has been so good one-on-one and kind of off those, like we close your eyes and you think about

what Sergey Barowski is his best. That's exactly what he's been, like making those sort of acrobatic saves and scramble situations, right? I think you saw a number of them in game one whenever he was tested. I will say it feels like following him and tracking him this postseason.

Whenever he goes behind the net to play the puck, I'm like Bob, get back in that. And he had another one of those dicey moments in game one. I feel like that would be something I'd be stressing. If I was the Rangers, I'd almost be tempting him to go out and play the punk more because it feels like he gets himself in a little bit of trouble there and he's playing with fire.

But yeah, when he's been tested one-on-one, he's been phenomenal. On the note on the odd man rushes and kind of the rush game itself for New York, that was a point of emphasis for Peter Labelike clearly when he took over, right? Because last year and in previous years under Gerard Glant, they were so heavily skewed towards being sort of what the Canucks were this year, right? Like a very opportunistic rush team where they wouldn't really generate much of their own. And then occasionally a situation would open up and they would flip the ice, take advantage and unusually score in it because they have such high efficiency with their forwards. This year, they made a much more concerted effort of generating their own rush looks.

And that really stood out to me in that Carolina series, right? I think the Hurricanes are a team we typically think of as gaping up so aggressively their defense are. so active and everyone is so tightly connected that they don't really give up much off the rush. And as that series went along, the Rangers were just giving them so much trouble manufacturing these three on twos and two on ones almost out of nothing where Carolina would have the puck for 90 seconds. And then all of a sudden you'd look up and Panarin and Trochik or Panarin and Lafranier would be in two on one.

And you'd be like, how did that happen? And you saw a few of those instances started to seep in in game one as well. And I think that's where the Panthers need to be really careful, particularly with, I think, that second pair of Montour and Nicola, I think they got exposed a little bit there in game one, and that's something that the Rangers can attack. Like whenever Forrestlings on the ice, I feel very

safe from a Panthers perspective. I think that second pair, though, is where the Rangers can make a bit of hay offensively. Yeah, no, I would agree with that. I mean, not that it's like that big of a weak link, right, but I think it's one that

potentially could be exposed. The Rangers do such a good job of giving themselves a multi-option approach to attacking you on the breakout. You know, when they, when people are generating speed and trying to, like, forwards are generating speed and trying to come through the neutral zone, the primary option almost always has that puck support player at his hip. And they drive sort of this like F3 decoy wide, sort of slightly ahead and to the side of them. So it's just, I think if you can successfully pressure the initial,

puck carrier or even like knock him off the puck there's a side car right they always have a seemingly have a side car and if that side car gets in trouble f3 activates it comes over puck side and like it's just this sort of like wave of forwards and i think the lab you let way to coin a phrase so to speak is like never reinventing the wheel in any way shape or form and i think there's anything and this is not this is not a criticism by the way it's not taking anything new and or innovative it's taking stuff that people have done for decades and making teams really good at it. Right. And I think like you can look at these systems the Rangers employ and most of these guys

have been playing, you know, these styles play since they were like 11, right? I mean, these aren't these aren't cutting edge. You know, their set plays are great, but like, you know, that's a separate bucket. I'm talking about raw system. The Lavie-a-let way, I think is very straightforward. It's very standard. And I think the good news is for Rangers fans in this situation is very versatile, right? And I think that the structure and the look of this breakout,

out the options that he's got available to him beyond the line changing that we saw last night, because I think that's just layer one. I don't think he's necessarily going to go down without a fight. I mean, if you get into a situation where they're in a O2 bucket or something similar to that, and it's very clear that what they're doing is not working. I mean, I think Lavi lets the kind of guy in recent history we've seen that's gone back to the well and tried something different. But the strength in it is, you could just move the forwards back a little bit and probably,

you know, like I said, gain a little bit of success against what Ford is doing. out of that. So there's a lot of versatility in their breakout. I don't think it's very straightforward. I think it allows for the defense to be involved. Like you mentioned, a lot of the key players they have love to do that or adapt to do that. I think that that's what is most interesting about the coaching matchup to me moving forward is that like you kind of get the sense that if this is a boxing match, round one, I think very clearly went to Florida. But you've got to figure that the corner is given them a lot of information for round two, and I want to see what, if any, changes the Rangers make. Maybe, I mean, if they, you know, maybe there's, I don't,

I think it would be panic to make, you know, sweeping adjustments now, right? And there's a lot of credence to the Rangers just having an off night for multiple reasons. But I think that if you go back to this, everything, square one again for game two, and the result is the same, I want to see what bag of tricks Peter Labellet has or what change. ability he gives this roster to potentially come in and give this system a maybe more fresher or aggressive look. Well, it's always tough to tell. Like, we're doing this after one game, right?

I think the series can wildly change. You don't want to make any sweeping proclamations after just one of these games. We've seen that time and time again. I think it is interesting just to kind of note what we saw and then compare it as the series goes along. I'm curious to see how much, because the game started off really low event and slow. There wasn't much happening. And I'm not sure how much of it was a byproduct of the two.

teams essentially having like a week off each because they closed out their second round series a while ago. How much of it is the nature of like a game recognized game in terms of they're both aware that the other team poses a lot of challenges. And so there's a feeling out process at the start of the series where you don't want to make a mistake. You want to see who sort of blinks first. It really opened up. And I think part of that was a byproduct of the rangers being down, needing to push a bit more. And then things started to really happen in the later stages of that third period. So hopefully that's a sign of things to come. You kind of note like in terms of of the boxing match and sort of who got the better of it.

I think one area that the Rangers really need to in game two and whenever they have a chance to be on in the series mix things up is freeing up their top players to get away from Barkov a little bit more because he once again just took their lunch. He played 622 against Abinajad, F515, shots on Gold War 3-1, Florida. He played four and a half minutes against Panarin, shots on Goldware 2-0, Florida. So the Rangers got absolutely nothing with their top players on the ice against him. And it was a vintage Barkov game, I thought, where he played like 21 minutes. He had two shots on goals, zero points.

So you're looking at sort of the traditional stats. And you're like, all right, he didn't really do much, right? And then you go back and watch it. And he just dictated the game and the flow of everything happening in such a unique fashion where he was just in control the entire time. It felt like anything that was happening was his choice. and his sort of pushing it in that direction. And I just thought it was a masterclass performance.

It was about as good of a performance as you're going to see from a player in that position where they're not actually producing a bunch of points. And so from the Rangers perspective, one adjustment I would make is trying to figure out how to, in particular free ups to Benajad, right? It seems like he's going to get his on the power play certainly and get those one-time looks, but they need more from number 5-1-5, and that's a thing we keep talking about. But that's because it keeps being the case, and they didn't get nearly enough from him in game one, and they got to get him a few extra opportunities.

And that's going to be on the coach to manufacture those because he's certainly not going to do it head-to-head against Barkoff. Yeah, I know 100%. The Barkov-Rinehart combination together is just defensively suffocating. And it was, like, to me, like two players that just behaviorally, their entire careers have been super adept and great defensively. So I would agree with you. I don't know for me if the answer to that, like, is just strength.

strength matchup, right? I think that if you find a way to get that Trochec line out there against them, maybe even, you know, whatever the case may be. I mean, Vince Trochuk is not any slouch defensively himself. I know that he's on a Barkov-Rinehart level, but, I mean, he's not incompetent in the defensive zone. I would do it, yeah, so 100%. I mean, I just, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I don't know that last night, we really look

at the forward versus forward matchup of that. that there was a big issue. The issue for me was, again, like, they just couldn't, no one could get them the puck, right? Getting out of their own end was the nightmare. You know, I think, again, afterwards, that rhetoric all goes back to where we got to get it deep. We got to get it deep. But if they're going to, if they're out there with Lindgren and Fox, and Lindgren and Fox are going to have to navigate that, that pressure. They have the skill set to do it. Adam Fox is one of the best puck movers you're going to watch in the National Hockey League. that that first initial pass and that breakout may just be a wash.

You know, maybe you have to work your way around that pressure and find, you know, the option for the pass in the second layer. Whatever the case is, or however you find a way to get out of it, they're just not getting the puck enough. And I think Zabenejad's good enough for me, Demetre, that if you could just give them clean opportunities to get their legs under them for dump pucks, I mean, that line is brutal in the boards, just brutal on the boards, and they're not, they're not speed merchants, but they're not

incompetent with their footwork. I mean, I think that's their strength there is not necessarily trying to give them a runway to skate through Florida's pressure, but make Florida turn around. Just get yourself in a position where you can make them turn around and give, you know, Zabinajad or Roslivik or whoever it is, an opportunity to gain some headway and get some speed to go after that loose puck, because we've seen it throughout the course of this playoff, and that line knows how to eat and they know how to keep. keep possession in the offensive zone for a really long time. That's their strength. Yeah.

For as much as they've struggled. But I mean, at the end of the day, there's the north, and you know, you think the Rangers get it to meet you because they said this last night that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? We have to just get north and that's where the success is going to be. To some extent, I do agree with that, right? I would like to see them force Florida to turn around and go get some of these pucks because that's where their strength is and how they operate. Yeah, the issue with that. matchup though is I agree with you but the beauty of Barkov for the Panthers is that clean

passes don't happen when he's on the ice so getting the puck to those forwards just becomes such an uphill challenge like if he decides that he's going to take someone away and you're just not going to be able to get that puck there it's going to happen and he's so good at that and so I think that's one of the issues they bump into I'm with you on on making florida's defenseman work though in particular erinette blad I thought there were a number of times I mean throughout this postseason we've been documenting it, but even in this game, you saw what he has to go back and play a puck. I mean, he's skating at such a glacial pace right now that he almost eliminates any benefit of time that he has. And then by the time he goes back and gets there, he's so easily

pressured now. He's just so prone to throwing the puck up the wall aimlessly and turning it over that on the one hand, I'm worried about from the Rangers perspective, matching up with Foresling, because you see him against Panarin. He eliminates him one-on-one on that rush and instantly flips the ice, turns defense to offense, and they score a goal on the Kachak one. But also, I think you can exploit Ekblad if you can sort of isolate him in those situations.

And so that's something watching the video and then preparing for game two and beyond. I think that's something they need to hammer, just going after him because it feels like he's going to be very mistake prone in those instances. And now it's just a matter of putting him in those positions to do so. Yeah, Flores has been getting it deep to Demetri. there. It's not something they're obviously scared of when we talked about the effect that

their physicality has back there. I mean, if there's an area where you can really impact the game, it's strategic dumps, right? Like, if you've got a defenseman that you know isn't a super adept at handling the puck, you know, I think having watched Chris LaTang in Pittsburgh for all these years, you know, you rarely see teams giving him the opportunity to have an easy retrieval, right? Like, it's always his partner. It's Brian Dumlin, right? Or someone similar to that. You want the puck on their stick, not on the tang stick. And you could be very directional about that and how you attack. So I wouldn't, you know, I think if you get and look back at game one and consider,

I think some of the areas where they have an opportunity to impact the game. I mean, that's certainly one. I think every, you know, I don't think Florida's defensive group is particularly weak, right? I think overall they're real strong. But I think if you look down, up and down their lineup and you look at their pairings, there's one player, I think on every pairing, you know, you could probably throw a puck at and target to try to get a turnover out of, right? I mean, there's discernible, I think, strength and weakness in that bucket on every single bearing Florida has. So you, I mean,

the opportunity exists for you to be able to jump in and exploit something like that. Well, yeah, they're certainly not weak in the aggregate. I think they, as you kind of mentioned there, there's ways to attack them. The reason why they get by and are so successful is because of their system and the way they play. They do such a good job of insulating them so that they're never really vulnerable in those situations. Their exposure in that regard is very limited, but it's incumbent on the other team then to force their hand

and change that up on them. So we'll see if the Rangers can do that. Jesse, let's take a quick break here. And then when we come back, we'll keep chatting about this game and a few other things. You're listening to the Hockey, Kodi-Kad streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockeypediocat with Jesse Marshall. Jesse, we are doing our observations and takes from game one

of the East Final last night. I've got a few other things here that I had in my notes before we move on from the game. One was the Kachuk-Vri-Hagie combination I thought was notable because in the preview that I alluded to earlier, I sort of noted how they had struggled against Boston relative to their lofty standards. They got outscored 5-3, F-I-1-5 in that series. They had combined for just two goals on 84 attempts combined. They scored the two goals here. The Kachuk one was kind of fortunate off the rush.

The Verhege one was certainly an own goal off Lafranier's stick. So it wasn't necessarily anything brilliant offensively they did. But I thought they were very involved and it was good to see them on the score sheet from Florida's perspective because it feels like heading into this when you're sort of lining it up. One area where I think Florida can exploit New York is getting the puck behind the net and then attacking from there. And in particular, in those quick actions where Kachuk passes it out front and Verhege just shoots it high as he does and tries to pick a corner. We didn't see that in this game necessarily. They tried a couple of those behind the net passes. But that's something I'm going to watch for because I think if Florida is going to succeed

offensively in the series, it's going to come mostly from them. And so far so good from a results perspective, but I think that process of how they generate themselves and how that looks is going to be notable. And we talked about the coaching and the adjustments, credit to Paul Maurice as well. I think he sort of watched the end of that Boston series, saw that Sam Bennett, his hand is clearly messed up. like he's struggling. He cannot handle a puck right now.

He can still forecheck and throw the body around, but he cannot puck stick handle at all. And he was killing plays. And so what he did is, all right, I'm just going to flip flop him and Lantan Lundell. He puts Lundell in that line, looked way better in connecting plays for them.

And so I think that's someone to watch for moving forward in terms of how they use those guys and whether that combination sticks. Yeah, it's really hard to do, like, no matter what your defensive system is, it's really hard to defend like bang,

bang plays like that to come out from the side of the net or the corner and they've been so good at getting them all year long. So yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm looking for that in the future of this series. I think that the way that Florida sort of diamonds up low and utilizes the corner and even strength, again, it's just a really tough thing to defend. You have to have your forwards involved. They're generally, you know, Verhege is generally sliding in an area where the defense have this like gray area of responsibility. And like, who's man is this? Well, I think the answer is like you got to have like a your your f1's got to be there ready to get a stick lift or break that up uh eventually so now that's a good cop well yeah i just bring it up because you know when you

think of carolina sort of shortcomings or limitations everything they generated it's like all right but it kind of played into what just irkens really good at every goal he's going to struggle against that type of play but i think that florida can actually sustainably generate it over and over again and potentially put him in compromising positions i will say though like i despite the three nothing score and I kind of, I think this was generally reflected in the tone of part one when you and I were chatting about, off the top. I had scoring chances 18, 14 for the Rangers here. That 14 for Florida is the lowest they've had all postseason.

The only other time they were under 20 scoring chances in a game was game three versus Boston when they built that four nothing leading kind of winning cruise control. And you look at that, you look at the Rangers penalty kill, which once again was a strength of them. I think they were short-handed three times. They didn't give up anything. The broadcast did a good job of highlighting how it. aggressive they are on the PK, like defensively, I think despite the zone time Florida had,

they didn't really generate that much of significant quality. And so if you're Peter Laviel and you're the Rangers, I think you do have to feel good about that now. You just got to create a bit more yourself. But would you think like a lower event kind of more low scoring chance, low opportunity series probably does favor the Rangers, right? Just because we know they're like a much more efficient team with their opportunities, whereas Florida has historically needed that more copious volume, I guess, to generate enough goals to match what Rangers are capable of in a lower amount. And a lower amount of, yeah, in a smaller sample size.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a good call out. I will say, though, that I think if this series does slow down and turn into like maybe slog-like, I think Florida still benefits from that. I mean, I think the nature of their structure and the way that they align themselves defensively, you know, there's sort of a natural blanket of limitation that gets thrown on their team by how, by proxy again, of how aggressive they are and how much they make you play in the muck. So, yeah, I think stylistically, you know, with the way that the Rangers are, I think are a little bit more reserved in their attack, you know, it creates individually unique chances for them. as a team to be able to play off the counter and get in there and do some special things

and that kind of game does favor them. But with how good Florida is defensively, both by proxy of how good they are offensively and how naturally good they are defensively. Guys up and down that run up, like Evan Rodriguez, right, always been strong, I think in all three zones and in his own end especially. So there's layers of defensive specialists all throughout that team. What you say about the volume is true, but if they have low volume, Dimitri, and they're still getting like grade A quality chances from turned over pucks off the back of bad range or passes or them coughing it up in really high danger areas. I'm not sure that the volume will matter, right? I mean, I think if they can if they can triangulate their attack in a way that

causes a specific type of scoring chance or a specific instance of turnover, that can oftentimes be the medicine to make up what you've traditionally needed in volume throughout the course of the playoffs up to this point. Yeah, that is really interesting. I wasn't, I wasn't really following it online as closely, but I think I saw a bunch of Rangers fans sort of, and I think correctly noting that a lot of the narrative

during this game was all the, the Panthers are dominating because I think a shot at some goal were like 20 to 12 or something at one point. And I don't think that was the case necessarily. Like I think both teams certainly have stuff that they can be constructive about and stuff to work on. But I think it was very evenly matched,

despite the score and the score in the shot down goal. So I thought that was notable. Hockey's also such a cruel sport, though, right? Because Lafranier led this game. He had four scoring chances himself. He hits the post or the crossbar in that mad scramble. In the third period, they could have tied it up, right?

Off of that Wendberg chance, and then he gets it out front. He doesn't score on that. He had three scoring jenses set up as well, which both of those were the highs for the game for either team. And yet he winds up scoring on his own net. And the guy who gets credit for the goal is Carter Bray. Heggy, who had gone 15 scoring chances since the Boston series between goals himself. And so, like, on the one hand, if you're ever Heggy, you're probably thinking, well, I was due

for one because I had so many opportunities and I'm going to get one eventually. And then Laugrenier has such a good game offensively. And all he has to show for it. The only goal he scores is in his own net. And so just a reminder of like how the margins in playoff hockey, but also how cruel it can be. And it's not always necessarily a meritocracy. Yeah.

Both teams had plenty of opportunities to add to their tallies in a very important. variety different ways in this one. And I don't know that you could walk away from this game and legitimately say that either team truly tested the opposing goalie in like a, you know, make them stand on their head and steal a game away fashion, right? I don't feel like their best shot was fired in this game necessarily towards the other goalie in either way. So on either direction for either team. I think certainly not Bobrovsky's way, though. I feel like, I feel like the really high quality chance that like you got up on the edge of your seat for, was probably that shift where Wenberg had a really good look.

I think I was in the third period that immediately preceded the post by Lafranier. So that's the one that stands out to you. But I think otherwise you're like, I think they have a lot more to give in terms of their quality. And I think it's true for Florida too, right? I think that first goal was even, you might even say uncharacteristic in terms of, you know, what you've seen from Shasturkin historically in this playoff run and probably wants that one back. So I think both these goalies have yet to make their indelible marks on his series. Yeah, I think it's a be a fun series.

The other subplot that I've been really fascinated with during this Florida run is how different their approaches this year compared to last year. And there was actually this Paul Marie's quote that they ran a graphic club at the start of the game where he said essentially, like, comparing last year's version to this one is like last year's was just this wild group that had to mix it up to try to compete. and so they were just all over the place and they took a bunch of penalties as a result whereas this year, especially in rounds one and two, they were such heavy favorites that they kind of approached it as such and they just knew that if they played their game, they didn't need to do anything crazy.

They would probably win on talent alone. That's not necessarily the case in this series, even though they won game one. I think I'm curious to see how it plays out and whether that changes their approach, but they only took another two penalties or got called for two more penalties, I should say, in this game.

And so if they can keep that down, like I think they do have to feel relatively good, about the 5-15 play and even strength, especially with some of the defensive players they have, just keeping the Rangers off the power play, right? Because even in those two chances, there was that play at the end of the second period where Fox goes cross-ice to Zabinajad,

and he gets a good one-time look-off, and Bobrovsky has to make a good lateral save. And so they're just so threatening. In a blink of an eye, this ranger's power play is so good at passing the puck that you just cannot give them those opportunities. And, you know, the Panthers didn't really in game one. I'm curious to see if that's something

that continues moving forward in this series. Yeah, I think it's a lot more of a controlled aggression this year, isn't it? Like, I think that last year, Florida, like, they played sort of like this want and four check, you know, this wide open, go get its style. It's not, that's not dissimilar to the way that they played today. That predicate you to play fast, aggressive, and they have to play physical in that system. But I think it caught up, like, there were times where it just got a little bit out of control, right? Or I think there's a baptism by fire that occurs at some point in the NHL playoffs

for every group of really young players, right? Not really young, younger, on the younger side players that are fresh into their journey as being like a potential favorite, you know, in the tournament. I think that last year, it got away from them a little bit and caused them to hemorrhage some unnecessary scoring chances in the other direction, right? This Florida team, to me, Dimitri,

is a bit more discerning about when they need. to take the lid off. And I think that they play with a more, again, reined in style of aggressive forecheck than you saw last season. Where there's still, I mean, look, there's no team in the league right now still in this tournament today that or even really, I think at the start that played as an aggressive of a style as Florida does. I don't think maybe like Colorado maybe you put them there,

they toss their name in the hat like to some extent. But like this to me is the most voracious team, systemically in the national hockey league. I think what you've seen from them this year is the ability to be, again, more discerning about that, more controlling with it and harness it, I think is the word I would use in a much better way than they did last year. And I think the compliment of players is a much more familiar

with how to get it done in this environment. Do you have any other... But I go ahead. No, no, no, you go for it. I just was going to say, I was going to say, I'm so impressed by the way that they've got this team playing right now in terms of the layered approach to the forecheck. I mean, I keep going back to that,

but it's not just your first point of attack that you've got to solve for. It's the second two. It's up ice. It's everywhere. They've created this sort of, you know, swarm-like approach to hockey. I think they've doubled down on from a roster perspective in some ways, and I think they've fully embraced. So, again, the coaching part of this to me is the most intriguing.

is the part that I'm looking forward to the most as this series goes on. Well, yeah, they don't give you any free pucks, right? Whether any of the zones, like, they're going to compete for everything, and they're going to try to take away your time and space and gap up and pressure. And so that's why I think that was part of like, that's just the reality of if you play that way, you're going to be in more positions where you do take penalties, right? Because you're just like being more aggressive and sometimes a stick is going to get caught in a skate or up high.

It's just going to happen. You go over the line a little bit and get caught. So the fact that they haven't yet, despite the fact that they haven't, It's more controlled certainly, but they're still going after every single puck and they're just taking fewer penalties right now. So that's a key in this series, certainly. Any other, we got a couple more minutes here. Any other notes on this? Like in my show notes, I had a lot of stuff on this game and I thought, all right, we might actually do a full show on this.

I also had some stuff about the coaching carousel and just coaching in general, right? We talked a lot about Paul Maurice and Peter Labielette in this series. I think that's one of the most interesting parts of the postseason, especially in a series like this that's so evenly matched where there, are little advantages you can find on the margins, and that probably will be enough if you can exploit them to put your team over the top. Now it's just going to be which coach does a better job of it. And so the coaching in these postseason matchups,

especially as we get later into their postseason is always of such intrigue to me. Yeah. And I'm wondering, too, what we see from Florida on game two, right? I mean, if we think about this logistically, we're saying the Rangers of the team, and again, not that they got blown out, right? the score, again, not being indicative of the end result of scoring chances, but you kind of

of get the sense that the Rangers have a lot of things to figure out, right, in terms of their breakout, in terms of getting around Ford's floor check. And I wonder if that affords Paul Maurice an opportunity to innovate in terms of like set plays off faceoffs or, you know, I just don't get the sense that Paul, that they're going to be spending as much time figuring out how to solve for what the Rangers are doing is their Rangers are going to be spending time trying to solve for what Florida is doing. I don't know. But I, I, I feel like that's a shit. Because both of these teams,

I think, have done a good job of utilizing alignment to get their shooters into specific situations, off face-offs, or running specific plays off the power play, once they learn a little bit about an opponent. The evolution of this series, I think, will be fine. I hope it's along,

just from the sake of a spectator, like, this should be fun. I think it should be entertaining one way or another. And I, you know, again, I wonder if there's, If there's a little time being spent in the innovation lab for the Rangers in terms of in terms of like how they can mitigate this forecheck, I just wonder what that, what time affords Florida in the interim between this next game. Well, I think we saw a little bit of it and it's a very, a peek into it was very scary because

earlier this postseason, they put together Barcov with Verheagia Kachuk at 5-1-5, and they were as you'd expect, absolutely outrageous. And in this game, there were a couple of shifts, particularly in the offensive zone in the second period, where they loaded them up with the foursling-ac-blad pair. And they just spent the entire shift cycling the puck around the offensive zone, getting a couple opportunities. I think the Chuck actually passed it out from behind the net, the way we illustrated to Barkoff for a good chance out front. And so I don't think they're going to go to that full time because I think they like having those combinations of players split up. And it gives them more diversity and variety in their matchups. But man, if they do that, you're almost kind of just hanging on.

for Deer Life in the meantime and hoping you can get through that shift. And so maybe we see a few more of those as Florida sort of tries to manufacture more offense because I didn't think they had nearly enough of it in game one. And so maybe we see a bit more of that. And from the Rangers perspective, we saw Heidel come back, right? And they put him and he's playing with Wenberg and Kako mostly. I really liked Will Cooley on that line with him and the way they were able to kind of control territorial play previously.

And I think that might be an answer for the Rangers in terms of a line that you can kind of throw against Barcov or even Kachukin-Berhegey and freeups have been a jet a bit more offensively. I think I keep coming back to like you keep talking about the Panthers Fortrick. I keep coming back to. I think the Rangers need to free up their top six in this. I don't think they can afford to go head to head power on power with the Panthers because the panthers power is just absurd from a two-way perspective.

And so this is this is the good stuff. This is why we love the postseason hockey. And it sort of like ended up being keto that ended up getting the, the, the, the most of the musical chairs last night, I think. He ended up taking a couple of shifts with Criter and Zabenejad in the middle part of the game. And then the kid line was back intact again for a little bit there in the middle as well. So it seemed like they were shuffling him around to try to get something going.

I don't know if that was a compliment to him or an indictment of him. But whatever it was, I don't think it worked much. But that seemed to be the big mix up last night. And we saw a lot of different combinations from the Rangers, but it was mostly him that was slotting in to sort of make these marquee appearances. They leaned. I thought that, you know, in the middle, yeah, the middle half, middle part, not middle half, the middle part of the game, that was where the things sort of really went dry for New York.

And then we saw a lot of those line changes come into play. But I, again, I didn't think that, I think, I don't think that, you know, I do agree with you that they need to free up that top line. I do agree with you. I just, I think that's. more of taking advantage of the matchup you have at home than it is like shuffling lines, right? Because I don't think there's, I don't think there's a combination you can draw up. And this is, again, and not an indictment of the Rangers. I would say this probably about any team in the league.

I don't know that there's a combination you can draw up that suddenly makes Florida's four check, like not as effective against you. I mean, you could circumstantially put yourself in situations where like you give yourself tactical advantages to get around it. But I think it's much more of a philosophical change that's required. almost in those situations than it is, you know, trying to find the right group of guys. No, I mean, I definitely agree with that. There was that play at the end of the second period where I think Florida kind of took like a very silly icing call where they just dumped the puck out

and it went down the ice. And then they had this combination of like the Bennett line and then their bottom pair out, I believe. And the Rangers just instantly went with Fox and Panarin and they drew a penalty off of that and then got a great scoring chance at the buzzer in the second period. And I think that was kind of a bit of a microcosm for me of like, this is what you need. Like you need to isolate these guys to give them a bit of a chance, right? Because otherwise, like in the grand scheme of the game in the series, there's certainly bigger fish to fry. But also this series is going to be so tight that if you could manufacture one or two extra

scoring chances easily for those guys, you have to jump at that. And so that's where coaching comes into this. Jesse, we got to get out of here. This was a blast. I'm really glad we got to catch up and chat about that game. It was a fun one. There's a lot to look forward to in the rest of the series. Plug some stuff on the way out.

Let the listeners know where they can check you out. I'm going on vacation, so I got nothing coming. Okay. There you go. And we'll be talking about whatever the Stanley Cup final is at McKean's coming right up around the corner here. Awesome, buddy. Well, I'm glad I got to catch you then before the vacation. Enjoy the time off.

And we will check back in with you then for the Stanley Cup final. Listeners, thank you for listening to us. Enjoy the rest of this series. We'll be back on Friday to chat about the Western Conference version after game one of the West finals. So looking forward to that. In the meantime, thank you for listening to the Hockey, Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.