Comments on: Tom Benjamin’s post-mortem on his own Vancouver Canucks

By: Niesy

Niesy — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:56:00 +0000

The big contrast between St Louis/LA vs. Detroit/Vancouver is that the former go for the big, heavy bodied aggressive forechecking style to apply pressure and the latter favor skill and speed. But I thought Vancouver tried to match their physicality in the series rather than exploit the Kings’ slowness. They also added more two-way players and heavy hitters at the deadline (Palhsson, Kassian). Maybe they didn’t work as well because they were sort of a hybrid?

By: Niesy

Niesy — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:50:00 +0000

The thing is, St. Louis and Detroit were both at the tippy top of the league in possession numbers all year (#1 and #2). And the Kings had more zone time than Vancouver over the course of the season! His argument doesn’t exactly make sense.

By: DougS

DougS — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:59:00 +0000

Yeah, it’s strange to describe the Kings as a “trap team.” And as for puck possession, the advanced stats show that the Kings are a high puck-possesion team.

Casual observation bears this out as well; ever since Sutter took over, I’ve noticed that when the Kings have won they spend a lot of time holding onto the puck. Come to think of it, that was also kind of true under TM as well. A couple of years ago, I distinctly remember a prospective playoff opponent (I think it was one of the Canucks) saying that Kings were no fun to play against because they never let you have the puck.

By: Geoff DeSouza

Geoff DeSouza — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:05:00 +0000

The thing is… the Kings don’t really play shut-it-down hockey. They generate a lot of chances. When Vancouver got Sedin back, they were getting their fair share of chances.

They’re not the 90s Devils. Look up some of the shot totals from, in particular, the 1995 Cup finals. There’s a LOT more chances being generated these days – Mike Smith stopped more shots in Game 6 than Brodeur used to in two whole games.