Which is exactly what happened last night. Henrik Lundqvist, who is back to his old self after losing playing time to Cam Talbot early on, was being matched by likely Vezina finalist, Ben Bishop. If you don't know who Ben Bishop is, he was stuck on the Senators depth chart behind Craig Anderson and is a 6"6 beast who could be the exact goalie that the US can ride to an upset Gold run in Sochi. Except he got left off because of worries that he can't handle a bigger stage. Last night showed what he is capable of and he was an absolute wall. After Rangers played their usual conservative style after taking a 1-0 early lead. After Victor Hedman scores on a 55 foot slapshot from the point on the PP, Coach AV decides to roll out the defensive pairing of John Moore and MDZ for the following faceoff. Granted, McD and DG5 had just been on the ice for the tying goal but at home, in a likely low scoring game, I would rather see Staal-Stralman pairing, who have been the Rangers best pairing on the season as shown on this player usage chart:
To quickly explain, the Y-axis represents the quality of competition on the ice at the time, where a positive number means the D-man is facing a line that is better than the average NHL line and where a negative number means the competition is lower than average. The x-axis is where the puck/faceoff is when the player comes onto the ice. Since we are only dealing with defensemen in this example, you expect to see a lower offensive zone start % and higher quality of competition for premier defenders for the logical reason that you want them on the ice to defend against top lines in your own blue line where the highest % chance of scoring takes place. The last thing to know is that a "red" bubble means that player has a - relative corsi score on the season and blue means positive (Note: Corsi is a rating given based on shots for/against while a player is on the ice and includes blocked shots). The reason why it is important to use this chart when analyzing corsi is because you will see
2 pairings that are negative corsi and think "they must both be having equally bad years". But a closer look shows that eventhough Girardi-McD have a negative Corsi, they are facing the best competition and start in the offensive zone only 46% of the time. The other red pairing, MDZ-Moore are the complete opposite. They have every reason NOT to give up shots since they are facing below average competition and start over 55% of the time in the offensive zone.
You only need a brief understanding to follow this next point. See that little red dot on the bottom portion smack in the middle? That is Michael Del Zotto's red dot. He is by far their least trusted defenseman when it comes to quality of competition and John Moore is a close second. So who comes out at neutral ice once the Rangers lose momentum and give up a tying goal? The 2 least trusted defensemen on the roster and they live up to their reputations by giving up an inexcusable breakaway opportunity to Tampa's 3rd line and ultimately, the GW goal. Here is my breakdown of the play....specifically what Del Zotto did (or lackthereof).
This first image shows the back end of the designed play by TB off of the faceoff win. The eventual goal scorer, Nikita Kucherov, is seen on the far right, circled in blue, changing directions from end boards to the middle of the ice. If you look closely, you can see Del Zotto, the Ranger in the blue circle, with his skates completely squared up and his right foot is even facing toward the end boards while giving a good amount of space for Kucherov to maneuver however he wants and take a clean path to the middle, which is shown by the red line. The least Del Zotto can do here is close the gap of space between him and the guy he is supposed to be defending so it can throw off the timing of the play. But Del Zotto, as Rangers fans have seen many times this year, decides to sit back eventhough he lacks the speed to make up for lost strides. This is just brutal positioning on his part as we take a look at what happens next...
Here you can see what is beginning to develop. John Moore is the Ranger on the top left corner who has to watch for a cross-diagonal pass to the left winger who is not shown in the picture. That leaves MDZ 1-on-1 with Kucherov with the middle of the ice wide open and MDZ drifting further toward the end boards as explained above. The yellow space is the separation shown in one stride (compared to the first image) and as you can see from this angle, it would take an absolutely blind d-man to not see the breakaway opportunity. The other thing to notice is the change in position by Ranger forward, Benoit Pouliot, who is more known for offensive ability than defensive. In the first image, he is taking away the middle of the ice pass but in the 2nd image above, you see just how far past the TB defenseman he has gone. If he stayed in line as the original image, this pass probably doesn't get through or at least throws off the timing. So now you see 2 Rangers overplay toward the endboard leaving the middle of the ice wide open. The pass is already being sent off the stick at this point and the next image will completely shock you...
Finally, you see that yellow space become wider than a full body length. If this were the NFL, this would be the equivalent of a pitch and catch 80 yard TD on a 10 yard slant with nobody in sight. Del Zotto is just as close to the TB bench as he is to Kucherov, who now has the puck. He has zero chance of closing this huge gap since he didn't put a body on his man to slow him down in the slightest bit and is probably slower than the man he is chasing. In fact, Del Zotto hasn't even hit full speed since he has to do a full change in direction where Kucherov is already on the same path (as the red line shows). John Moore get partial blame as you can see he is now way out of the picture and probably overplayed his man and failed to recognize that the middle of the ice has been completely vacated by Del Zotto.
If blame %'s were being handed out: Del Zotto get 70%, Pouliot gets 20%, and Moore gets 9% (I give Henrik 1% for making first move to a 3rd liner by going for pokecheck when he is clearly a talented enough goalie to just force some no name forward to make the first move instead).
The main point I am making is that there is a trend that Rangers tend to get conservative after first periods when they have the lead. They blew a 2-0 lead in Chicago this past week and even when they hold on for the win, they seem to score early and rely on defense/Henrik for the win. This has worked in past years when Rangers were almost unbeatable with a lead in the 3rd period but that was under Tortorella's system...a polar opposite of AV's. In AV's system, Rangers actually have been outscoring their opponents nicely in the 3rd period and are one of the best in the league believe it or not. This can be explained as well....
(Note: I HATE when the Rangers do this conservative style with an early lead as you can see from the graph below that only after they go down 2-1 against TB do they completely dominate according to Fenwick)
The question is: Why does the gap seem to widen by the end of the 2nd until the end of the game? Forget goals scored, this graph shows 2 completely different games being played right at the midway point. This is something I hope as a Rangers fan that AV can fix because they have the depth at forward to be at least 3 maybe even 4 lines deep to sustain pressure throughout the game. Instead of rolling out the worst pairing they have after giving up a tying goal, I would like to see MDZ-Moore miss some shifts and get closer to 12 minutes of ice time instead of the 15+ they have been seeing and consistent with the usage chart above where it's against 3rd line in the offensive zone.
But we all know the ideal way to handle this is to get the Avalanche GM so drunk that he thinks he sees a talented defenseman on the ice and offers a guy like Stastny to help us get rid of MDZ once and for all!
