L K
Active member
Frank E said:CarltonTheBear said:OldTimeHockey said:As for "run and gun" what would you call the way Toronto was playing in October?
It seems to me that many are asking for the Leafs to fix their issues they had in October without changing the way they play the game.
Let's talk "run and gun" for a second. You would agree that this sort of style would result in a large number of shot attempts going both ways, correct? Here are some Leafs stats from October and November/December:
GP CF/60 CA/60 Sh% Sv% October 12 61.15 (9th) 57.95 (12th) 11.11 (1st) 90.32 (27th) Nov/Dec 21 58.07 (15th) 61.47 (26th) 8.66 (7th) 94.32 (3rd)
The Leafs, apparently playing "run and gun", had just the 9th highest shot attempts rate and the 12th lowest shots against against rate.
The Leafs, playing "safe" dump and chase hockey, are of course getting loss shot attempts now but also allowing way more shot attempts in their own end.
The Leafs weren't playing 80s hockey in October. They were playing with speed. They were playing with controlled entries and controlled exits. They were playing with the puck on their sticks as often as they could. Those are all things that they've deliberately stopped doing since November 1st. They were also making dumb mistakes defensively. Those weren't systemic though, they were just dumb human errors. And they were running with sky high shooting and save percentages on opposite ends of the spectrum which led to very high goal totals for both teams playing.
So, if we assume that Babcock isn't an idiot, and he's watching the same games we are, why is he using this strategy?
Is he trying to show a different look, and then change it up later when goaltending cools off?
I think the big thing to remember is that a good coach can still be biased and make poor decisions. We are looking for logic behind his decisions and sometimes the logic they Babcock is using is simply flawed.
In October every odd man rush seemed to end up in the Leafs net. Now Andersen is standing on his head. If Andersen could get his game going on day 1 I wonder if we see a big change in style as of November. What I am disappointed to see is the leafs stopped using the high flip into the neutral zone. Instead of simply dumping the puck you flip the puck, keeping the defender facing the play to watch the puck biut giving your forwards more time to chase instead of retrieve in the corners.