Red & White Game Review: Special Teams in Focus

Team Red took a 6-4 win over Team White in Sunday's Red Wings' intra-squad scrimmage. Here's a deep dive into the triumph of both sides' PKs over their PPs and other notes from the action

On Sunday, the Detroit Red Wings held their annual Red & White intra-squad game at Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City.  The Red side—headlined by captain Dylan Larkin and defenseman Moritz Seider—took down the White team—led by Jeff Petry and Lucas Raymond—by a 6-4 scoreline.

The two sides played one period of even strength, one all special teams period, and closed with a period of four-on-four, three-on-three, and finally a shootout.

Daniel Sprong opened the scoring early, finishing a bad-angle one-timer off a feed that came via an assertive Joe Veleno rush to put the Red side up 1-0.  Artem Anisimov then fed Tim Gettinger for a rush goal to make it 2-0 Red in the 5-on-5 portion of the scrimmage.

In the special teams period, the power plays combined to go scoreless against the penalty kills.  Each side had eight one-minute power plays, and neither could convert.

Predictably, the situational period provided the bulk of the scoring and the game's brightest highlights, including a remarkable display of patience by Jonatan Berggren to deposit a 3-on-3 goal and a tidy shootout finish from Seider.

Of course, the outcome of the scrimmage is trivial in the long arc of Detroit's season, but the special teams period in particular can provide us with some early insights into the state of the 2023-24 Red Wings.

After the game's conclusion, Derek Lalonde described the afternoon as "productive" and expressed pleasure at the way the team "worked on a lot of things today" and the pace of the game.  

Heading into the exhibition portion of its schedule, Lalonde said that his priority will be on "getting our game in order" with respect to structure.  He added that there will be personnel decisions to finalize as well during the exhibition slate, which begins Tuesday night in Detroit against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

After Sunday's scrimmage, Detroit made its first round of cuts from its NHL roster.  2023 second round pick Andrew Gibson was re-assigned to the OHL's Soo Greyhounds, while 2022 fifth rounder Tnias Mathurin was sent back to the OHL's North Bay Battalion.  Neither move should come as a surprise.  Meanwhile, nine players were released from their tryout deals with the Red Wings.

When asked for his assessment of Detroit's special teams effort Sunday, Lalonde commended his various power play units for creating a steady volume of chances.  He went on to credit strong goaltending and the different penalty kill outfits for holding the power plays' scoreless.  With that as a basic frame of reference, let's take a deep dive into the Red-White special teams clash.  

Before diving into the tape though, I want to offer a quotation from Manchester City's coach Pep Guardiola to give us some direction.  Guardiola is famous for his unique style of possession-based attack, which has re-defined modern European soccer through his overwhelming success at City, and Bayern Munich and Barcelona before that.

The specific quote I want to focus on is this: "The intention is not to move the ball, rather to move the opposition."

In the clip above, you can see Guardiola's City team steadily carve open their arch-rivals Manchester United with a 44-pass sequence that winds up in the back of the United net.  As Guardiola says, the key to this success is not moving the ball for its own sake; instead, success lies in baiting the opposition into moving and then taking advantage of the space they've vacated.

On the power play, we often talk about "zone time" or "puck movement," and those are of course important factors, but both are means to an end rather than ends in and of themselves.  

A successful power play doesn't just move passively around the perimeter of the offensive zone and expect quality chances to fall into its lap; instead, deliberate and incisive passing has to manipulate the penalty kill into vacating valuable ice.

Earlier in the summer, Lalonde spoke at a coaching conference in Ann Arbor about "the simple habits of an effective power play."  Among the tenets he stressed was the importance of "moving the box" or forcing the opposing penalty kill into a scramble that destabilizing their structure as a means of creating quality chances.

Fundamentally, this is the same idea as Guardiola's: success comes from forcing the defense to move, moving the ball/puck alone isn't accomplishing much.  As we'll explore throughout four clips, this notion of "moving the box" was central to the power play's struggles Sunday.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZ_zFEj_Qo[/embed]

This sequence shows the first power play of the period.  Team Red's top unit of Dylan Larkin, Moritz Seider, David Perron, Alex DeBrincat, and Shayne Gostisbehere are going to work against White's J.T. Compher, Andrew Copp, Jeff Petry, and Simon Edvinsson.  That Red group, while a work in progress, represents Detroit's top power play unit if the regular season began today.

The first thing that stands out from this clip is that it offers us a chance to see the Red Wings' shape defensively while short-handed.  Detroit's PK is playing a "wedge plus one" or 1-1-2.  The two defensemen (Petry and Edvinsson) and Copp form the three-man "wedge," while Compher plays as the free "one" at the top of the formation.

The benefit of the wedge plus one is that it takes away down-low plays for the power play and it is effective in controlling the net front.  Because of the three-man wedge surrounding the crease, there isn't much room for the opponent to make plays into the slot, and the kill is well-positioned to swallow up any rebounds that might come free.  The drawback of the wedge is that it affords the opposing power play lots of time and space in high ice to make plays.

For the Red power play, that means that the task at hand is to get the wedge scrambling, destabilizing the PK's control of the net front with passing plays that draw it out of its comfortable defensive position.  This is what Lalonde means by "moving the box."

We can see that Team Red does solid work here, producing the kind of chance creation Lalonde alluded to even if it can't find a goal.  First, Perron's craftiness to slip along the goal line beneath the defensive coverage generates a (bad angle) chance.  Then, DeBrincat slips in from his flanker spot for a solid slot look.

Toward the end of the sequence (beginning around the 0:28 mark of the video), Detroit gets an even better look.  Seider, DeBrincat, and Larkin perambulate the zone with clean, crisp passes.  Eventually, DeBrincat makes a "royal road" pass across the slot for a Gostisbehere one timer, which gives Perron a whack at the rebound.  It's perhaps the best chance either power play would generate throughout the session.

However, you'll notice as Seider and DeBrincat work from right to left across the zone and then as DeBrincat slips his pass across for Gostisbehere, the White PK's wedge can sit back relatively comfortably.  Though Red is moving the puck with some alacrity, they aren't moving the penalty kill.  As a result, when Perron vies for the rebound, their are three White PKers ready to intervene and prevent him from making a play.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAgUMMa4rKU[/embed]

In this clip (taken from a Team White power play opportunity), we can see the direct relationship between moving the box and creating quality chances.  In the first half of the clip, the White group does this well, and they gain solid inroads into the inner slot, where they will ultimately find goals.  However, in the second half of the clip, their passing is not nearly as incisive, and they struggle to make progress.

Here, Gostisbehere, Christian Fischer, and Olli Maatta make up the Red wedge with Anisimov as the free one up top.  Throughout the first thirty second of the clip, pay attention to the distance between those three wedge players.  You can see the gaps between them stretch and compress as they chase White's passes around the offensive zone.  That is what it looks like to open up space for quality, interior chances.

Then, things change at the 0:28 mark.  Petry misses a one-time chance wide, and though White gets the retrieval, it doesn't get back to forcing the Red PK to scramble.  Instead, we see a string of perimeter passes, with White still in control but unable to unlock the defense.

This sequence helps us to see that those high quality looks open up when the box is moving.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNNC_fqH3ng[/embed]

Here's a string of three decent one-time looks for Daniel Sprong.  Among Lalonde's other power play tenets is embracing "a shot-first mentality," and this sequence makes clear that Sprong doesn't need any convincing to do just that.

You can also see that Sprong plays his flanker role from a deeper position than we saw earlier from DeBrincat.  This is what I meant when I said the wedge plus one affords space in high ice.  With the wedge taking care of the net front, Sprong has plenty of room when he drifts higher in the zone out toward the blue line.  Of course, the drawback here is that none of Sprong's shots come from an especially potent scoring area.  

These are not high quality chances—all from comfortably beyond the the tops of the circles.  Elmer Soderblom provides something of a net-front presence, but he doesn't manage to take away the goaltender's eyes on any of Sprong's three blasts.  Because the box never moved, the wedge is in position to make certain that Red doesn't get much of a chance at the rebound from any of Sprong's shots either.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKHySt9Lww[/embed]

Our final clip comes from Team Red's last power play of the afternoon, and it offers a solid encapsulation of the dynamic at work throughout the scrimmage when it comes to the tug of war between the power plays and penalty kills.

The Red Wings PP units had a number of good things going: they maintained puck possession and zone time well through solid puck support all over the ice.  However, Detroit struggled to move and break down the wedge to generate quality looks from the inner slot.

This is best illustrated by DeBrincat's work beginning at the ~0:28 mark.  DeBrincat receives a pass from Seider and finds himself with lots of time and space along the goal line just a few feet to the right of goaltender Michael Hutchinson.  He is able to slip an incisive pass across the slot for Gostisbehere, but the three-man wedge remains in sound position and Gostisbehere has nothing to shoot at, instead playing a pass back out to the point for Seider who works it back to DeBrincat.

DeBrincat finds himself in the same circumstances, but once again, the White wedge is unperturbed by Red's perimeter passing, and there isn't a play into the slot available, so DeBrincat tries a bad angle stuff attempt, which Hutchinson swallows.

I don't disagree with Lalonde's assessment that the Red Wings power plays generated a solid volume of chances (especially in Clip #1 above), but they did struggle to create quality opportunities in the slot.

The Red Wing PK deserves some credit for this.  That unit jumped from a 73.8% success rate in the final year of the Jeff Blashill era to a 78.1% success rate in year one under Lalonde, and it looks well on its way to more progress this year.  

It's no secret that Steve Yzerman has made a point of adding big bodies to his blue line, which makes quite a bit of sense in a wedge plus one.  Those big D-men can take care of either post and use their size and strength to take away net-front opportunities within that structure.

It should also be said that you'd expect a natural uptick in fluidity, timing, and chemistry from Detroit's power plays with more time.  The Red top unit we saw above features two players new to the Detroit line-up this season, so it's no surprise to see some growing pains as that group discovers its rhythm this early in the pre-season.

Still, the struggles with breaking down the opposing structure and moving the PK box shouldn't be ignored either.  I'm not sure that Gostisbehere makes a ton of sense on the flank with the other members of the top unit.  While a proven power play performer, his strength isn't threading passes into the interior from that position.

One player I'd love to see more from in that role is young Jonatan Berggren.  I don't think Berggren had a great showing in this power play session, playing opposite Sprong on the right flank of Red's second unit.  Berggren was uncharacteristically passive, declining to spend much time with the puck on his tape and instead moving it quickly and re-positioning as a one-time threat.  Still, Berggren is an exceptional playmaker, and I suspect his ability as an incisive passer could help open things up for that top Detroit unit.

When Detroit makes its pre-season debut tomorrow, it will be interesting to check in on what adjustments we see from their Red & White work yesterday.

Matt Luff was unfortunate to sustain the one injury of the Red & White game when he careened into the side boards.  Lalonde noted that it "did not look good" but "fortunately, there's nothing wrong with his head."  Instead, it's an upper body injury, and Luff "will be out for a little bit."

Ben Chiarot remained out as he attends to a personal matter.  Lalonde mentioned that he expects the veteran defenseman back late next week or at least before the conclusion of the Wings' eight pre-season games.

Lalonde also offered an initial insight into the state of the back-up goalie competition.  He said it was "really hard not to notice Reimer" throughout the scrimmage, while adding that Alex Lyon and Ville Husso were also "good."  Though Reimer appears to have the early upper hand to back-up Husso, Lalonde added that the race between Lyon and Reimer is "something we'll keep evaluating."

Earlier in camp, David Perron made a point of saying that he doesn't just want to be a veteran leader in the locker room, he wants to be a leader with his on-ice performance.  Jeff Petry showed those same qualities with his performance Sunday, playing beside young Simon Edvinsson.

Lalonde praised Petry for not just bringing experience to Detroit but for bringing "calming experience."  "He's a very laid back personality very calm in a lot of situations, just an absolute professional," Lalonde said.