Controlling Momentum, Managing Chaos: How the Red Wings Approach Response Shifts
Response shifts after a goal can determine how large chunks of a game play out. Here's how the Detroit Red Wings approach their response shifts.
Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports - Controlling Momentum, Managing Chaos: How the Red Wings Approach Response ShiftsIt’s the second period of the Detroit Red Wings’ April 5th game against the New York Rangers. Dylan Larkin just scored on the power play, and Detroit has a 3-2 lead over NHL-best New York. This is what the Red Wings fought all game for in a do-or-die game in the playoff race, and they’re a huge step closer to getting a big win. But first, they need to keep the momentum. They need to build on this.
They need a good response shift.
So, Derek Lalonde turns to his fourth line of Austin Czarnik, Daniel Sprong and Robby Fabbri, as well as his then-third defense pairing of Jake Walman and Shayne Gostisbehere. The shift starts off with a win — the Red Wings get the puck in deep against the Rangers’ own fourth line, and they dig to try and wrest possession. But in the blink of an eye, the Rangers’ Jimmy Vesey blocks a shot, sends Johnny Brodzinski the other way on the rush, and Barclay Goodrow ends up beating Alex Lyon on a rebound. New York ties the game with this shot, soon to win it 4-3.
“I’m even kicking myself back at the Ranger game, we just score and we’re strict to the matchup — that matchup got us a 3-2 lead,” Lalonde explained Monday “The Rangers are an animal with how deep they are, and they score 30 seconds later. Was it the matchup? I don’t know. We trust everyone throughout our lineup.”
Such a sequence illustrates an often overlooked and yet vital part of a coach’s decisions: who to send out, and when. Particularly, response shifts are some of the most defining in a game. Get the decision right and they have the potential to take charge after a goal or continue a surge in momentum; get it wrong and a lead could disappear, or a deficit can multiply.
So how exactly have the Red Wings approached response shifts this season? Compiling shift log data found at Natural Stat Trick, the Red Wings’ response shift trends come into focus. This data tracks response shifts where Detroit fielded five skaters — no extra skaters or shorthanded situations.
In part, Detroit is looking for energy. A strong start to a shift can put an opponent on its back foot, especially when extended zone time and tight defending can help successive shifts stack on each other. A good response shift inherits neutral ice and advances its field position into opponent territory.
Out of all forwards, the third line of Michael Rasmussen (10.5%), Andrew Copp (11.3%) and Christian Fischer (8.9%) have played the most response shifts. Largely, it’s because this line thrives at controlling play on both sides of the ice. They forecheck and defend, and they rarely get caught up ice. Considering their control, it’s no wonder that Lalonde turns to these three most often.
What exactly a winning shift looks like varies by situation. There are different criteria at play for the top line versus the fourth, especially depending on who they match up against. Simply defending well against the opponent might be a saving grace in games where Detroit is playing from behind, but the efforts might be a weak shift if the Red Wings are already dominating.
There are also rest considerations at play. Usually a goal comes when the five skaters on the ice are deep into a shift, so coaches have to choose a new group to get fresh skaters on the ice. Sometimes, the stoppage of a goal allows Detroit to work in players lower in the lineup; in a fair number of games this year, the Red Wings’ injury woes have forced them to skate 11 forwards and seven defensemen, something also taken into consideration. Ultimately, goals mark the culmination of a span of chaos, but they also serve as the door to controlling the next batch of chaos with a reset.
“We talk about momentum all the time,” Lalonde said of the Rangers' goal. “It’s important, and we talked about momentum starts to periods, ends to periods and then after goals on both sides. It’s real and it’s a thought and we talk about just winning those shifts and those key moments because momentum is real in our sport.”
The tiresome strain of either pursuing a goal or getting scored on can take a lot out of players, and high-event hockey prevents some players from getting into response shifts. The top line of Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond has played the highest number of minutes for Detroit of any combination this season and all rank top four in ice time. However, they don't play as many response shifts as that usage might suggest. DeBrincat ranks fourth (123 total, 8.4%), Raymond ranks sixth (115, 7.9%) while Larkin ranks ninth (105, 7.2%) among all Red Wing forwards. This line plays high-event hockey, with the highest expected goals for and against of any Red Wings line combination, and the give and take of goals often means that this line has to sit during a response shift to catch its breath.
Ice time elsewhere also sways the usage for response shifts. In the case of the goal against the Rangers, Sprong (5.8% of response shifts), Fabbri (5.0%) and Czarnik (2.8%) all rank in the bottom four response shifts per game among all Red Wings forwards. But, Lalonde's other options had just come off the power play. Needing to give his skaters a rest, he stuck with his fourth-on-fourth matchup, but his decision didn’t pan out.
In such a play, Lalonde explained that he pays more attention to response shifts after a goal against than a goal for. “It’s just winning the shift after what that (goal against) looks like,” he said. “Not giving up easy offense. Again, you’re looking at that Ranger game. We finally work our tails off to go up 3-2 and we lose the shift, ends up in our net, all of a sudden you're dealing with a 3-3 game going into the third.”
In theory, these responses after a goal against get more of a focus. However, when put into practice, exactly who skates out is still largely the same as when Detroit scores a goal itself. When Lalonde sends out a line, the situation of a goal scored for or against beforehand doesn’t correlate to playing one line in particular — the percentage of response shifts after a goal for or against did not fluctuate more than a decimal point for any skater. It doesn’t fluctuate for defensemen, either, where many of the same principles apply as the forward corps.
The third pairing of Olli Maatta and Shayne Gostisbehere has played the most response shifts of any defense pairing for Detroit. Gostisbehere has taken the most at 17.6% of the response shifts, despite playing the fourth-highest share of possible ice time among defensemen at 31.4%. Maatta is tied with Ben Chiarot for 16.4% of response shifts, while second-pair defenseman Jeff Petry sits at 16.1%.
What you’ll notice here is that the top pairing — Jake Walman and Moritz Seider, for most of the season — hasn’t started a whole lot of response shifts. In fact, they’ve played the least amount as a pairing, and only late-season call-up Simon Edvinsson plays fewer response shifts per game. This is most likely due to the fact that this pairing sees a lot of goals scored both ways — just like the top line among forwards. But whereas the first line forwards still worked into a fair portion of the response shifts, the top defense pairing has instead watched as teammates shoulder the workload.
This indicates that Lalonde prefers to have fresh legs on the ice for his defensemen, who take slightly longer shifts in general but can also get trapped without a line change depending on how plays unfold. Considering that Walman and Seider match up against opponents’ top players, they need rest, and Lalonde has turned to his deeper defensemen to make up the difference.
But there’s another angle that could tie into players from the bottom half of the lineup playing in response shifts. Winning and losing response shifts is rarely as definitive as a goal scored for or against. More often, these shifts end up a stalemate as both sides change. So, successive shifts have to be able to win control, too. Turning to top line players is more reliable to win the response shift than trying to do so through depth, but if they fail, this puts a huge emphasis on the rest of the lineup to get back momentum. All this is to say, the top line can come in and win a shift if its teammates mess up a response shift. Players lower in the lineup have a more difficult path to doing so.
Response shifts aren’t the be-all-end-all to momentum swings in hockey, but they’re incredibly noticeable when they go right and wrong. They have the capacity to determine a game’s momentum for significant spans of time as seen in the Rangers game example. More often, the result of a response shift can dictate the tone of the next few minutes of play depending on its outcome.
This showed just last night in Detroit's 6-5 overtime loss to Pittsburgh, when Raymond and Larkin combined for the 5-4 goal against the Penguins last night with 7:04 left in the third period. The duo took the response shift with DeBrincat and set a tone that their teammates built off the next two shifts. Within two minutes, the line earned the game-tying goal.
Response shifts control chaos, and there's an art to getting them right. Sometimes, the game can hang in the balance.
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