Game Thread: Lightning @ Red Wings - Game 4

[RP-29]

Babcock just instructed his agent to call Shanny, Chiarelli, Murray, Hextall and Wilson.

...to tell them not to wait around for him. What a courteous guy!

 

[Bloody Brian Burke]

...to tell them not to wait around for him. What a courteous guy!

I know last night's collapse was epic, but I don't think Babcock is going to kill himself over it.

 

[detroit_schlegs]

What the hell has happened to Kronwall? Recently, his play has been detrimental to the Wings success far more than it has ever been before. For an assigned #1 dman, he certainly shows some of his failings far too often for the better side of his team. How many times of late have we seen him miss a simple pass (without the instance of a bouncing puck)? It seems that it has been coming down to a coin flip whether he can either keep a pass on his tape or be able to make a successful connection to deliver the puck to a teammate's stick. On the other side of the puck, how often have we seen him back up so deep into his zone when an opposition player skates in on our net minder with the puck, where we find him not only screening his goalie but also is so far in the crease that it prevents the goalie's mobility from making a reasonable save. In some of those incidents, he would have been able to create a much more successful result by stopping short of the paint and putting a body on the puck carrier in order to lessen any opportunity for the opposition's success to finish what they had set out to do. In yesterday's game, he did a very similar thing on the second Lightning goal, although he was to the left of Mrazek on that play. As the play got deep into the Detroit zone, he attempted to reach with his stick to poke-check the puck, but the puck got to Mrazek, and the trailer, who had got behind Ericsson, scored the equalizer. In that case, Kronwall could have greatly improved his chances to eliminate that play by changing his defensive strategy by merely standing up the onrushing puck-carrier as opposed to continuing to backing up. But, he has been doing that same thing for so long now, that what was once a commonplace occurrence of his to bring that similar play to a screeching halt, now seems to only be a memory in the minds of past fans of long ago.
In another aspect of his more modern style of play, we will see him at times fanning on a pass to a teammate in his own zone, or by doing his usual waiting to make a play, deliver that pass to an opposing fore-checker. The front edge of the chairs of so many observing Wings' fans have shown signs of wear from his recent play out of the D-zone. And, speaking of his carrying the puck out of his end, he tends to resorting to that in lieu of an outlet pass far too often when on the PP, which kills the time on the clock; which brings up another point of why he is on the first unit in the first place. He makes too many mistakes in the O-zone in those situations - failure to hold the line when the puck comes to his side of the ice, bailing out too early, mostly because of his lack of foot speed compared to that of many of the opposing forwards who are defending in their end, and, lastly, his inefficiency of getting the puck to the net. For the most part, he generally finds the equipment of the defenders with his shots, or, if they do get through, most of them are clearly no where between the pipes, as was the case yesterday, when he took a shot from about 4 meters from the TB net. The shot got through, but it's final destination was not between the posts. There certainly are better choices for the #1 PP group than him who are carrying far less baggage than him. Where have you gone Niklas Kronwall - the one that we once seemed to know so well?

 

[RP-29]

I know last night's collapse was epic, but I don't think Babcock is going to kill himself over it.

It was epic. I lost sleep over it.

I keep seeing Johnson burn past Helm (the fastest skater on the ice), Ericsson taking a terrible defensive angle (and himself out of the play) and Mrazek leaving the short side wide open.

I keep seeing Ericsson out of position to negate the cross-crease pass and the forwards late getting there.

I keep seeing Quincey gaze at the puck while it slides right through him.

Just a moment ago, NOTHING got through. Detroit's defensive tightness went from prepubescent to Paris Hilton faster than a Murcielago.

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was check some sites to see if there was an update on Glendening's status because Tyler Johnson ran wild with Glendening in the locker room. Obviously Cooper is going to keep Johnson away from Glendening as much as possible in game 5, but there's very little hope of making it to game 7 if Glendening is not in the lineup.

 

[RP-29]

Where have you gone Niklas Kronwall - the one that we once seemed to know so well?

Kronwall began to lose it when Lidstrom retired. DeKeyser has been the best positional, passing and decision-making defenseman on the team since the moment he first donned the winged wheel last year.

If the Wings had a big-bodied right-handed heavy-shot defenseman to pair with Kronwall, they would have a true #1 defense pairing and Kronwall's play would drastically improve. Ericsson is not a #1 guy; ideally he would be a 3rd-pair guy. DeKeyser could be one of the best #2 shut-down guys in the league if he had a better D partner as well.

 

[detroit_schlegs]

RP, I take the same position regarding DeKeyser as you had alluded to; I feel that he will get much better as his career progresses. He makes some of the usual few mistakes that many of the younger dmen make in this league, but, without question, he is high on the chart with respect to all of our players on the back end.
In so far as Ericsson is concerned, his game sense and his tool box dynamics were poor at best yesterday, especially in the 3rd period. He seemed to be in the 'Sunday skate at the public rink' modus operandi for that entire period, similar to the way that many people in his homeland approach everyday things in life - without an over-abundance of immediacy along side of a stress piece.
I have the tendency to watch every game from a coaching standpoint from what I do nearly daily, and the enjoyment part comes as a secondary element from that, so I watch almost every player's game sense and dynamics as a segmented game plan, and what I observed about Ericsson was that he was totally out of sorts with what he usually does in similar situations throughout the year. I have felt that for most of this season, his improvement within a set of designated categories have improved this season from past ones, and, in some of the cases, much improved. But, it seemed to me that yesterday his usual reactive senses and cognitive thinking skills went south. Most of that period, his focus was to cover one particular defender. He would go behind our net to apply pressure there, then he would follow that player where ever he went without any thought of reading the play at the moment. When the play came into the D-zone, he casually skated in the zone without his usual aggressiveness. This caused him on three occasions to allow the opposing player to get past him, one of which allowed the 2nd TB goal. On the first TB goal, after Tyler Johnson got past Helm on the left wing, due to Darren's slowing down when he got to our blue line, Ericsson was skating backwards, keeping himself between Mrazek and another TB forward, but when he realized that Johnson had a clear path to the net, he chose to remain where he was, instead of reading the play better, than to react and readjust to try to reduce the high probability of that particular scoring chance. In that situation, the player off the puck, although a very high risk if you leave him, especially because of his proximity to the front of the net, has to become secondary in the case where the puck-carrier is about to skate in alone on your goaltender. It seemed to me that his thought processes in more than one case, his ability to read the play and ability to physically make plays, and his overall demeanor in that period was more aligned with someone who had tasks to accomplish while being on vacation.