Amid a period of penalty kill prosperity, the Red Wings are focusing on faceoff play to help them stay successful
Amid a period of penalty kill prosperity, the Red Wings are focusing on faceoff play to help them stay successful
The faceoff might take three seconds or less on a penalty kill, but it can mean the difference between success and failure. Win it and a team can punt the puck down the ice, killing clock and buying time to set up in its structure. Lose it and a team’s penalty killers will find themselves sweating it out trying to crack the opponent’s structure off the draw.
In a hot streak in which they’ve allowed just one power play goal across the past 20 kills, the Red Wings’ penalty kill is priding itself on faceoff play, an area it has seen measurable growth in its games since the All-Star break. If they can hone those details, winning draws could be another strong suit for a penalty kill that has been crucial in games this season.
“I think it obviously starts with our faceoff details,” said Red Wings center Joe Veleno, who has been a part of the penalty kill units this season. “I think if we can win the faceoff obviously right there it kills 20, 25, 30 seconds. But I think just our pace, our urgency, our details (contribute to success). When loose pucks are there, we’re hunting them down. We’re putting a lot of pressure on the power play, and we’re making them have to make two, three passes that’ll beat us clean. But I think we’re just working a lot harder than powerplay is, winning our battles and getting clears.”
Most of those details have aligned for Detroit’s potent penalty kill in recent weeks, but the faceoff play is a rather new success story. Before its recent four-game road trip, the unit had only gone 2-for-11 at the faceoff dot to open up its kills. However, in the past three games, that rate climbed to 6-for-9.
To be clear, winning a faceoff isn’t the be-all, end-all to penalty kill success — a lot really boils down to the pace and urgency that Veleno described. But when Detroit wins the draw, it can play to those strengths much easier than if it's immediately caught on its back foot. When the Red Wings’ centers can win the opening draw — namely the likes of Andrew Copp, J.T. Compher and Dylan Larkin — they can not only chomp away at a good 20 to 30 seconds of the two-minute kill, but they can also buy time for the defense to set up. Structure makes beating an opponent's zone entry a much easier endeavor, giving them a bit of an advantage as the attackers try and set up themselves.
This proved especially true against Calgary, for example, when Detroit's penalty kill blanked all five Flames power plays in part because it won the faceoff on four of those five kills. The Red Wings prevented an easy set-up for Calgary most of those times, which gave it an advantage over a bottom-five Flames power play.
In Detroit's most recent game against Seattle, though, the opposite showed. It gave up its first power play goal in eight outings, in part because a faceoff loss by Compher gave the Kraken time to set up their power play and generate scoring chances through it.
The Red Wings hope to strengthen their already successful penalty kill by paying attention to the minor details on faceoffs. By controlling how a penalty kill begins, the Red Wings have much more control over how it ends.
“There’s definitely a lot of structure into that,” Veleno said. “But I think it's just details such as on the faceoff — obviously they got an extra guy, but not letting their guy put pressure on our D, retrieving that puck off the face off, giving a little bump just to buy him a split second.
“Being able to get that clear (is) a lot easier than having pressure come off the draw and then they’re lifting sticks and then maybe they get a stick on the puck and they end up keeping it in. But I think it’s just little details like that. Obviously the structure has a lot to do with it, but I think just the mentality — we’re getting in front of pucks, we’re getting a lot of blocks from D’s and forwards and, and just being able to get a lot of clears and kill some time out there.”
Faceoffs might not be the only detail the Red Wings want to get right, but they’re a building block for everything to stem from. Winning the puck in the first three seconds of a kill makes defending on the penalty kill much easier than getting caught in a chase for the remaining 1:57.
As Detroit continues to hammer home these faceoff details, its already strong penalty kill gets that much tougher to compete against.
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