Earlier this week I was having lunch with two fellow coaches.
One of them asked me about the new tactical trends I’ve seen at the NHL level.
I told him there really weren’t any.
In the past five years, the league as a whole has moved toward aggressive puck pressure, a four-man rush attack and more fluid OZ movement.
Lately the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.
Here’s what I wrote about the defending Stanley Cup champions in the Hockey Tactics 2024 ebook.
The Vegas Golden Knights are currently up 2-0 against Dallas, the top-seeded team in the Western Conference.
The Stars have not received the best goaltending from starter Jake Oettenger, but have also been frustrated by VGK’s old-fashioned counterattack.
So how can the Dallas Stars turn the tables?
It’s about mindset.
DAL players need to be patient. They’ll seldom be able to overwhelm the Golden Knights directly off the rush or after a five-second OZ play.
The idea is to gain the zone, prod for openings, retrieve rebounds and then hurt VGK off re-entries.
Here’s a great example from Game 2.
DAL forces an OZ turnover on the forecheck.
Stars move the puck quickly out of the reach of VGK’s zone defense.
They force an NZ turnover on a failed stretch pass.
DAL4 re-enters against flat-footed defenders for a rush chance.
DAL53 steps off the halfwall into a soft spot in coverage.
DAL11 re-enters through the middle during a VGK line change for another rush chance.
Dallas doesn’t score on this sequence and winds up losing the game. However, if the team perseveres, it can still win the series.
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