What was the problem with the PK in 22-23?

[LabattBlue]

Forwards, defense, goaltending, scheme?

Once again, I didn’t watch many games this year, so I don’t know much except they were near the bottom of the league in PK. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by LabattBlue

[SDS]

I am surprised at how passive we were given how fast this team is now. The better teams really seem to take away our time and space on the PP. It didn’t feel like we did the same to them. 

[Randall Flagg]

Imo you should be able to get good penalty killing out of any nhl roster, even bad ones, at least in terms of the play of the forwards/defense. So I would say our problem was goaltending and scheme 

[Weave]

It feels like scheme to me.  They were consistently not aggressive with pressure on the puck, and often susceptible to cross ice plays down low.

[GASabresIUFAN]

DG said in the presser it was a matter of "confidence" whatever that means.

What was wrong with the PK?

The guys taking the faceoffs were a league-worst 38%

The two main goalies, Comrie and UPL had under 840 save % on the PK.

Our scheme was terrible and the coaches failed to make the necessary changes.  Could it be they lacked the personnel to run an effective PK?  Absolutely.  

 

[Carmel Corn]

As stated by others above, the PK was simply too passive, thereby allowing the other teams to operate with too much space and time.  I'd also prefer to see our D-men more active in terms of pushing opposing forwards out of the crease area to let our netminders see the puck more easily.  Last, I feel the D-men literally "faced" the puck when there were loose pucks in the crease.....I'd rather see them turn away from our goalies and face the forwards in the area and neutralize them from getting to the loose pucks.

[PerreaultForever]

Can't win face offs, can't clear the front of the net, aren't strong enough on opposing sticks and players around the crease. We simply do not have good PK personnel. 

18 minutes ago, Carmel Corn said:

As stated by others above, the PK was simply too passive, thereby allowing the other teams to operate with too much space and time.  I'd also prefer to see our D-men more active in terms of pushing opposing forwards out of the crease area to let our netminders see the puck more easily.  Last, I feel the D-men literally "faced" the puck when there were loose pucks in the crease.....I'd rather see them turn away from our goalies and face the forwards in the area and neutralize them from getting to the loose pucks.

The turn away angle is interesting and correct. It comes down to size and strength to some extent. There are far too many times that our D come in late or from the side/behind on their check and end up either making no play or checking the player towards or on to our goalie. This is a long standing problem. Dahlin does it far too often. Jokiharju is horrible in this regard. We've had injured goalies from this and just generally been ineffective stopping scoring chances. It's a product of poor positioning and lack of physicality. 

Most of the PK problem is on the D. 

[Taro T]

Several things were the issue with the PK.

1.  The goalie is your best PKer.  Enough said on that one.

2.  Because Granato philosophically wants to be able to attack at all times he puts his scoring forwards with reach on the PK.  Thompson and Tuch probably would not be regular PKers on most teams except late in the game down a goal.  Cozens was either the 2nd or 3rd PKer and he'll get very good in that role, but he is still young.  Quinn was getting PK time at the end of the year and Krebs too.  Young guys getting their 1st crack at it are still learning and will get better but it doesn't do much for the PK today.  

3.  The PK is ridiculously passive.  IMHO that is due in great degree to #1 above.  If guys agressively attack the puck carrier and close the primary passing lanes, they will typically cut down on the shots given up but when there is a shot it will be from a high danger area more often than when playing passively.  If they have no faith in the goalie, they will rather suffer the good shot from outside and the opportunity for a rebound chance rather than trying to force a turnover with the knowledge that if they fail in their pressure they are giving up a shot their goalie probably can't stop.  It'll be interesting to see if they get more agrressive next year with Levi between the pipes.  Expect they will, but we shall see.

4.  They are REALLY bad (even at 5v5) at defending when the puck is below their goal line.  Far too often BOTH D crash below the goal line at 5v5 leaving a F crashing the low slot open unless the F realizes what is going on and gets back to cover.  They tend not to crash both D down below the goalline on the PK but they still get too low to the goal line IMHO leaving space in the slot.

5.  The one place where they do pressure the PP is when it is down low near the boards.  Several times this season, we'd see Lyubushkin chasing a F to the boards and then one of the yound F's also cover the puck carrier leaving a 4 on 2 in the rest of the ice without any passing lanes taken away from the puck carrier because the D and F were on top of each other rather than at least working in tandem.  (See Carolina's PK for how teams are supposed to pressure the puck carrier.  The Sabres DON'T do that.)

6.  As mentioned by posters above, the D try to play the puck when it is low rather than boxing out the F in the low slot leaving the puck to either his partner or the goalie.  Take the PP F out of the play and then let your teammate (ideally the G, but the other D or even the lower F is a better choice than the 1st D on the scene) get the puck out of danger.

7.  That doesn't even take into account smaller things like losing the initial face off far too often or having poor reverses or F's losing battles for loose pucks when the puck is close to the blue line.  Getting another Samuelsson type should help with the poor reverses.  And a legit 4C should help with the lost face offs and lost puck battles high in the zone.

And  if you get Levi a legit NHL goalie to tandem with, you will necessarily fix several of these other problems (or should be able to do so).  Am HOPING a lot of the poor scheme was due to #1 and not simply having really poor concepts from the start.  Because doing a lot of these other things right, with the goaltending they had most of the year would've very possibly (or rather likely) resulted in them being even worse.

My 2 cents.

[Night Train]

Goalie..yes...but my thoughts were in line with what many here have been wanting. A couple more rugged D-men who move players out of the crease. Opposing plyers were always allowed to just stand directly in front of our net. That was obvious to this fan. Hammer them. Make them pay.Tell our goalies to watch old films of Billy Smith, who would take his stick and carve up their shins. 

In addition, the forwards up front would be stationary too often instead of moving. 

 

[DarthEbriate]

Everything listed above + not active enough sticks in passing lanes. Tuch is good at it... in the final week he diffused an entire PP by himself with about 3 pass breakups in 20 seconds and then a clear. Greenway, Girgs, and OK are fine because they're experienced. The rest of the kids are still learning that skill and the anticipation that you know where the puck is going before the passer does.

[French Collection]

HNIC has a segment with Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde between periods. He was the Bolts PK coach for many years and he explained a few subtle things the other night.

He talked about where sticks should be, depending on where the puck is. He said the four man unit places their sticks in a certain position to minimize passing and shooting options. 
He showed video examples as teams were  moving the puck around in the PP. 

 

[mjd1001]

I think it falls under the category of a 'development year' again. They Sabres did NOT try to do bad intentionally on the PK all year, but they did put guys out there to try them out or give them PK experience who may not have been the best.

Girgensons has traditionally been this teams best PK forward, but this year, at times during the season, Greenway, Mitts, Quinn, Asplund (when he was still here) Thompson, Cozens, Jost, Tuch, Okposo, and Krebs all got looks at it.  I'm not talking a minute here or a minute there. At the very least there were 5-10 game stretches where those guys were tried out as regular PKers. For some (Like Mitts), after his 'trial' on the PK was done he didn't really get another chance on it......but it still shows that the coaching staff didn't simply identify the best 2-4 forwards and stick with them, instead they put a bunch of guys out there to 'try them out' to see how they would do.

On the back end, I think losing Fitzgerald hurt. Was he a great overally D-man? No, but he was good on the PK and when he was here he was getting almost as much time as any other guy on the backend. Their 2nd most used guy back there? Samuelsson, who also missed a good portion of the season.  So the back end didn't go through the 'trying out' as much as the forwards, but the 2 guys they 'trusted' the most back there, one is no longer with the team and the other missed a lot of time.

Thompson wasn't that bad on the PK, but honestly I don't want him used there. I think he was good because of his reach and he doesn't chase the puck much.  But going forward, Tuch, Girgensons, probably Jost, and find one other forward to focus your PK on.  Samuelsson should get the most PK time on the back end, and find one other of your 'new' guys to pair with him.

I always thought Hinestroza might have been the best Penalty killer on this team, even better than Girgensons, but whethere he is back with this team or not, or if he was him likely not playing much hurts that option.

Besides goaltending the best way to fix the PK is to get the following:

-Guys who maintain their position and know how to cover for their teamates and not chase the puck (why Cozens has some issues on the PK)

-Forwards who are very fast and D-men who are tall and have reach.

Edited April 22, 2023 by mjd1001

[matter2003]

20 hours ago, LabattBlue said:

Forwards, defense, goaltending, scheme?

Once again, I didn’t watch many games this year, so I don’t know much except they were near the bottom of the league in PK. 

They seemed to do well a lot of times keeping the puck to the outside but there were a few continual issues that seemed to cause problems a lot.

1) Goals on a quick play 5-6 seconds after losing a faceoff in their own zone. This happened way too much from what I remember. Would seem to get better and then would randomly happen again. Obviously they aren't going to never allow these but the number of times this happened was too many.

2) Goals off rebounds from point shots. Either because the goalie allowed a rebound or because the Sabres were not in proper position to stop them from getting their sticks on them.

3) Goals from guys wide open. This was another maddening thing. They would go 3-4 games where this wouldn't happen at all and then it would happen 2 times in the same game or 3 games in a row.

4) Goalies simply letting in goals they should have stopped. This was another huge one. Too many times our goalies let in goals that shouldn't have been goals. Clear look, shot coming from far out and not a one timer and just cleanly beating them in a way that shouldn't happen with the regularity it did for NHL goalies.

5) Inability to clear pucks out when they have control and a seemingly easy way to get it out of the zone. Too many times when they struggled, this was an issue. Again, wasn't constant...they would do great on 3 PKs and then be terrible on 1 and it would end up in their net.

Seemingly it was an inability to eliminate all of the above on a consistent basis like the good PK teams do. They'd do it well for 3 games and then suck at it for 3 games. They'd do some of these things well during games but then be terrible at the others. They'd do all of it well for 3 out of 4 penalties in the game but suck at it for the other.

Like everything else it seemed this season, inconsistency in their game was a constant, which was to be expected on some level as a very young team, but you would have liked to see more improvement in this area over the course of the year with how bad they were.