"Next Day" Review: CBJ vs VGK 3/25
**Sorry for the really late one on this, I went to the Columbus Fury Pro Volleyball game on Sunday afternoon . It was a fun experience at Nationwide and though my partner knows much more than I do about Volleyball, they have some really exciting young players on the team.
Additionally, this game proved much meatier than I was expecting on tape, there’s some exciting systems at play and a lot to learn from what the Front Office has often described as the archetypal team**
The Blue Jackets were dominated once again by a contender with smart deadline additions who are gearing up for a playoff look. Second half life adjustments once again drove the way for a strong surge from Vegas.
The Stats
Haha whoops! The Blue Jackets held it together and escaped the first period with a single goal lead.
The Vegas Golden Knights swapped some lines around (moving Eichel with Stephenson and Amadio, William Karlsson with Anthony Mantha and Pavel Dorofyev and Nicolas Roy between Marchessault and Barabanov) and completely dismantled the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The story of the game, as it should be, was Johnny Gaudreau, Boone Jenner and Alexander Nylander getting completely annihilated on the shot chart. The forward line was on the ice for 1 shot attempt which came from a defenseman.
Texier-Sillinger-Marchenko, once again, were deployed against the teams top lines. In fact, the opposing coach once again had to switch the top player away from this line (Jack Eichel’s losing shot map shows just how much he was moved away from them after the first period).
The third line, Meyer-Gaunce-Olivier was also handed their matchups to them. I wouldn’t say Pyythia-Voronkov-Fix-Wolansky was particularly good but certainly got a lot of quality in at the end of the game when Meyer was replaced for Fix-Wolansky.
Similarly, Werenski and Severson had poor games. Struggling to find their footing in a second period where the CBJ gameplan completely failed.
I share this deployment graph only to comment on how lopsided these shift starts are. The Blue Jackets only had 4 offensive zone shift starts this entire game.
Texier-Sillinger-Marchenko ate a significant share of defensive zone starts. Sillinger took the most faceoffs of the game winning 7 and losing 7 against Vegas’ veteran centers.
The Tape
This isn’t particularly relevant for the game but just my commenting on how much better my experience watching games would be if we could use this wide camera angle more. It’s so nice being able to see players move near the blueline so that you can have an idea of the forces that are shaping the actions on screen.
Instead, we get a very zoomed in picture where you can’t really focus on anything other the immediate action and I wonder if this is a disservice to fans watching from home.
Primarily, Vegas won this game through excellent and highly efficient neutral zone regroup play. To start, the Blue Jackets once again had a plan to throw loose pucks into the neutral zone. Whether this was tactical or players responding to unusual defensive pressure is hard to determine.
It started with the Blue Jackets’ top line. They simply did not have the defensive details to make a difference against a top Vegas team.
It starts with Jenner being late to this pressure at the top of the zone. Largely, he’s going in a straight line with a fully declared stick to force a poor decition. Unfortunately, the pass to the middle isn’t too hard for Vegas and they split the Blue Jackets two pressuring forwards.
This was a theme for Vegas all night. They were very effective in exploiting the gap between forwards in the neutral zone to the middle of the ice.
Largely, it doesn’t matter. Pavel Dorofyev regroups and passes the puck off so he can build speed going into the wall. This is how Vegas loves to run their neutral zone rushes.
Ultimately, this failure is on Alex Nylander who attacks the puck carrier in a direct straight line and tries to stab for the puck. He doesn’t get it, and Dorofyev can move to the middle without pressure. I’d have like for Boone Jenner to be more responsive to the disturbance Nylander has caused but he’d need a bit more pace to make an impact. Instead, he whacks his stick in Dorofyev’s midsection to no effect.
The “sin” of this shift, at least from my perspective, is in the Blue Jackets’ inability to disrupt possession at the blue line. Nylander’s mistake was the release valve but Boone Jenner’s backchecking and Johnny Gaudreau’s route aren’t really helping.
Boone Jenner’s posture, here, isn’t indicative of a veteran playing his best hockey. He checks out and puck watches while William Karlsson builds speed and attacks the middle.
To me, Jenner should be anticipating the rotations in coverage from his defensemen and moving ahead of those rotations. Gaudreau is in no man’s land and was beat by Dorofyev’s middle entry and early pass to space.
As a principle, it’s better for Gaudreau to try to effect the middle play but he didn’t move with intention and didn’t make a move to pressure the opposition winger either.
Christiansen has to rotate over hard, the Vegas wing has a lot of time and space to work with. Gudrbanson is going to have to slide over to take Dorofyev as the most imminent threat, which means Jenner will have to make sure he picks up the next person.
Unfortunately, he isn’t totally aware and his habits aren’t taking him to a default winning defensive position.
Karlsson moves past Jenner and has first priority on the slot. Fortunately for Jenner, his fishing and reaching with the stick gets the job done. A good defensive play but an emergency one that could have been prevented with more proactive movement.
From there, Nylander’s unrefined defensive habits get exposed by Noah Hanifin.
Here, is a simple but poignant example of some of the better defensive habits for a forward. Nylander comes around the edge of the defense and fully extends his stick. He has “declared” his stick. Hanifin can read this and finds the seam to put the puck on net.
Personally, I’d prefer a player who keeps their stick blade close to their feat and moves out in response to opponent stick action but a pressuring stick can also move inwards towards their feet to block a pass (something we saw from Sam Girard in the last game and will see later with Voronkov).
Nylander doesn’t have a lot of time to try to react to Hanifin’s shot but he doesn’t react at all with his stick and his straight line, declared stick make it easy for Hanifin to “sense” and make a play around it.
Similarly, moving on arcs or a moving stick (Gustav Forsling is a master of both, Kent Johnson can be tricky with both at times) are much harder for a player to implicitly process and can create hesitation and lead to blocked pucks. Nylander did this last game on the exit kill but it doesn’t appear to be in his high coverage bag of tricks.
Likewise, Hanifin created advantages for his team at the blue line by beating Nylander’s late pursual. By being collapses close to the slot, Nylander has a lot of ground to cover to pressure activity at the blue line. This means he’s usually coming pretty hard and his straight line habits make for something easy to exploit by a seasoned and poised defender like Noah Hanifin.
The Blue Jackets were allowed to play even in the first period because they create a couple of neutral zone turnovers by jumping a specific route in Vegas’ exit scheme.
They have plenty of players who receive the puck at the blue-line and they almost always send a pass to the middle. Here, Carson Meyer found the interception but at other times with was Trey-Fix Wolanksy or Dmitri Voronkov.
It didn’t make a dramatic difference but it prevented the Blue Jackets from being drowned in Vegas’ forecheck, possession offensive zone and neutral-zone killing and re-grouping.
Here, Johnny Gaudreau finds a clever takeaway on the forecheck. At first, Nylander bumps the puck down the wall. Jenner arrives after Gaudreau tries come clever under leg battle techniques. Jenner works hard and forces Hanifin to turn around, Gaudreau takes away the middle with his stick but is ready to spring and stop the puck along the boards.
Unfortunately, his response to winning that puck is to throw it blindly into the slot where it finds William Carrier. Carrier moves behind the net, drawing both Jenner and Gaudreau, and them beats them both with a simple and early pass to the front of the net. The pass misses but if finds Brett Howden at the half wall with no pressure, for some reason.
This is really where I’d like to have a more zoomed out camera because I’d be really curious what Alex Nylander, Zach Werenski and Erik Gudbranson were doing when we can see 4 Vegas players on the screen.
Nylander comes late off screen from the high ice but is far too late to stop an easy and very dangerous pass. Gaudreau and Jenner are both beat off the wall and Vegas has huge numbers to solve whatever blue line defense is coming.
Turns out, there wasn’t any blue line defense coming
I cannot be sure what this gap is from Werenski and Gudbranson, they had been on the ice for approximately 50 seconds so perhaps they decided against changing at the last minute, but boy for those 4 Vegas forwards on screen look pretty cozy.
Ultimately, Vegas has a 3-on-2 rush and the Blue Jacket are lucky that it wasn’t any more creative players. Carrier moves it to Kolesar on the wing and moves quickly to attack Werenski’s heels.
Werenski steps up aggressively and kills the possession entry. Werenski was noticeable in this area this game. I think overall he struggled, with a significant turnover and trying to solve Vegas’ forecheck with little help, but I will say that I liked some of his more aggressive rush play killing and even one sequence where he stopped an early Eichel reception on the breakout.
But I digress, Werenski can’t win the loose puck he created as he’s battling 2 on 1 because Vegas has more numbers and Columbus’ are very late in arriving.
Vegas puts the puck into the corner and Columbus is still scrambling. Werenski tries to create another loose puck but it’s late in the shift and Kolesar is strong. Jenner is floating in the corner and the puck gets around him.
Werenski converges on the net and Gudbranson mans his post. Unfortunately, the pass gets through both. I think, ideally, Werenski stays attached to his man coming off the wall. Plays the body rather than the passing lane but either way the puck gets through both him and the post patroller for a high danger chance.
Here is where the tactics of trying to beat Vegas get really tricky. They are a heavy and punishing team. Prior to his faceoff win play, in the first period, they had jumped Werenski’s retrieval route and forced a turnover.
This time, Werenski chooses to simply chip it out. Unfortunately, Vegas is a seasoned and efficient neutral zone re-entry team.
Marchenko can’t quite recover the loose puck and Vegas moves it across the ice and into the Blue Jackets zone. Nicolas Roy is excellent beneath the dots and in the cycle game and Kirill Marchenko and Cole Sillinger do their best.
His physical dominance and play connecting is perhaps why he was moved to take this matchup over Eichel’s more skilled and cerebral perimeter playmaking. Perhaps Bruce Cassidy didn’t even think that hard and just made a change, saw it worked and stuck with it.
Kirill Marchenko has a couple of nice D zone breakups but unfortunately Nic Roy solves the first one and on the second he puts the puck into the far corner, a really rough spot for the Blue Jackets as far as defensemen retrievals go.
Werenski doesn’t win the battle for the puck but keeps battling as he sees opportunities to clear the zone. He takes the puck from Marchessault and tries to get off the wall but is battling through multiple Vegas players and continues to force the puck away from the middle. Nicolas Roy displays his protection and play connecting talents again as he diffuses the clear attempts from Marchenko and Werenski.
At this point, the Blue Jackets have been defending in their own zone for 50 seconds. Severson gets involved, Sillinger has a clever stick handling play (a feature for him this game) but can’t exit. Now, Vegas has changed lines and William Karlsson is attacking.
Cole Sillinger chips out but Vegas get back on the attack. Eventually, after some battling from Carson Meyer, Sillinger and Werenski, the Blue Jackets exit the zone and get the puck deep.
From this shift, the Blue Jackets struggled to get any sort of offense. Multiple icings and a lethal regroup game had Vegas take complete control and the Blue Jackets couldn’t really ever get back.
For this clip, the only thing I thinkis important is in VGK28’s tracking. Carrier gets beat to the middle but follows Gaudreau with his stick in his pocket to force him onto the backhand.
This is a staple defensive tactic for the Vegas Golden Knights and was used to make middle entries uncomfortable for the Blue Jackets across the roster.
Here, Severson pops the puck through the middle to Cole Sillinger. William Karlsson is then tracking through the middle in that exact same posture, preventing Sillinger from coming back to his forehand and befuddling the young players at the blueline.
Here, though Cole Sillinger comes up with a decent solution, we can see that the Blue Jackets don’t have a great plan of attack for a middle-carry. Where Vegas, or Florida or Dallas, would move the puck and attack give and gos, the Blue Jackets had to try to improvise a solution.
Dumping the puck is one idea, but Sillinger doesn’t necessarily have the speed to beat Karlsson who is coming from behind and he can’t try to rim the puck to the weakside winger because of Karlsson’s stick position making it awkward.
Notable Performances
Anthony Mantha
Anthony Mantha was a deadline acquisition and it appears he fits right into the Vegas stable of large humans.
His puck protection was wielded to give them significant advantages in their puck possession scheme. At times, he was simply dominant and immovable on the back wall. Other times he couldn’t be disrupted in delaying after the blue line.
Cole Sillinger-Kirill Marchenko
If there’s anything to take away from these two games, it’s that the Blue Jackets have good budding young players who could form the basis of a good matchup line.
I’ve been skeptical of Sillinger as a matchup center but over the past few weeks he’s shown he has the ability to take competitive steps in big moments. Perhaps he’s still miscast in a primarily defensive role (it was never his strong suit in Junior) but if he can use some of his handling skills and competitive intensity he could continue to grow.
Marchenko, similarly, has made great strides in renovating his game for the NHL. Where before he was a blue-line turnover machine who loved dangling through traffic he’s now focusing much more on recovering pucks and getting under sticks. More work to be done.
Dmitri Voronkov
Voronkov had an excellent game that featured his quick and clever transition passing and his battle winning dominance. It wasn’t fully connected and he did make mistakes but as a home-seller would say “it’s got good bones”.
Johnny Gaudreau
Johnny Gaudreau was quite poor this game. While he’s still a good player and does often find times to do good things, Vegas really exposed some of his weaknesses in transition. He struggles to get through pressure partially because he has a tendency to slow down and stop his feet while he’s trying to problem solve.
Additionally, he rarely attacks players one on one in a way that can leave them exposed to passes through. He’s always fighting “up-hill” in that sense and avoiding pressure rather than trying to break it
Still, he’s probably better suited for less responsibility in beginning transitions and playing through better puck support in transition.