Blackhawks making key adjustments in the middles of NHL’s 2-game series - Chicago Sun-Times

The NHL formatted its 2021 schedule largely in two-game series to simplify logistics, save costs and limit COVID-19 exposure.

The NHL didn’t format its schedule to intentionally change the way teams approach their matchups against each other.

But while the actual reasons have certainly been fulfilled — “it’s been easier travel, that’s for sure,” Duncan Keith said enthusiastically Monday — the latter has also been the case.

“There’s always little adjustments you make from game to game to try and give yourself more of a chance to have success,” said coach Jeremy Colliton, for whom the new strategizing opportunities matter the most. “I like it a lot.”

Coronavirus-related postponements and the North Division’s odd number of teams have made it so only most, not every, game is part of a two-game series.

For the Hawks, though, every game has been. Their 10 games to date have been against just five opponents, and their next two — Tuesday and Thursday against the Hurricanes — will follow the same pattern.

And in the second game of every series, the lessons learned by both teams from the first game — and the adjustments made as a result — have been vividly apparent.

The Blue Jackets on Sunday, for example, dialed up the intensity of their forecheck versus how they’d played Friday, hoping to take away space from Hawks defensemen retrieving dump-ins. In turn, Colliton modified his own game plan at the first intermission.

“[Columbus] seemed to have more energy tonight; they came a lot harder on the forecheck,” Colliton said Sunday postgame. “The puck was really bouncing in the first period, so that’s something we talked about: we’ve got to have closer support, just because a lot of times, our puck-carrier didn’t have time to get his head up because there’s someone coming and the puck’s bouncing.

“We did a good job of being in closer support [and getting] better pressure on the puck early on [the Jackets’] way up the ice, to force them to get rid of it so we did have a little more time to make a play.”

In the previous series, the Predators noticed the Hawks frequently exiting their defensive zone along the boards in the first game, and adjusted to take away those easy chip- and pass-outs in the second game. Their new tactic forced the Hawks to look toward the middle when crossing their defensive blue line, and that caused some juicy turnovers.

And in the series before that, the Red Wings reacted to the Hawks’ two power-play goals in the first game by making their penalty kill more aggressive in the second game, pressuring the puck far higher up the ice.

The Hawks, meanwhile, saw the Wings’ spacious neutral-zone gaps in the first game leaving them open to longer blue-line-to-blue-line stretch passes, and capitalized on those quick transition opportunities in the second game.

“If we can break pressure and have some time, then we’d like to stretch, we’d like to have a quick-strike offense,” Colliton said Jan. 24 after that second game. “Tonight, I thought we were able to execute on a few of those plays.”

Never in a normal NHL schedule, with different opponents nearly every game, would such specific game-planning be possible.

And such specific game-planning has seemingly also had a tangible effect on game outcomes.

Entering Monday, teams that lost the first games of series were 29-20-6 in the second games, a remarkable above-.500 record especially when considering the first-game loser is more likely to be the inferior team in the matchup (and the inferior team should be more likely to lose the second game, too).

“You get a little bit of familiarity there, so in a lot of ways, it can work to your advantage,” Keith said. “At the same time, the other team gets to see us as well. So it probably evens it out.”

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https://chicago.suntimes.com/blackhawks/2021/2/1/22261177/blackhawks-series-schedule-adjustments-gameplan-red-wings-predators-blue-jackets-hurricanes

2021-02-01 23:06:45Z
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