Breaking down a defensive flaw of the Buffalo Sabres

Breaking down a defensive flaw of the Buffalo Sabres

I’m going to go over what we do when we have like a rush chance against specifically in a two two on two situation because this is a very common Rush that you’ll see and you can watch it during the game A A lot of the times I only ever notice that this is

Happening because Dalene will make aggressive hand signals to whoever is with him and so it kind of points out that this is happening so basically in a situation where you have uh two forwards bearing down on your defense for a rush so you know F1 F2 going going uh towards your

Net the way that we play defense is called surfing or the way that we defend rushes is called surfing so what would happen is say F1 has the puck we would have the second defenseman curl around to take the spot where the first defenseman was and we’d have the first

Defenseman kind of shift into the area that’s being vacated by the second defenseman what what this does is in theory as the forward one moves in with the puck defenseman two can meet him with speed and then obviously defenseman one’s crossing over to then cut off this

Pass option that is that is coming into the zone now the issue with that is if we do this every time which we mostly do if you watch our play whenever there’s like a two on two Rush against we are oftentimes doing this little crossover

Here and as I’ve kind of stopped it here with these with well the crossover is happening you can see that it just kind of creates space where you have either a pass option available to your second forward here like they can they either have the space vacated by defenseman 2

Or def or Ford one kind of gets a lot of space opened up around if they want to just take it into the Zone they don’t get pushed too aggressively right away like they they have time once this crossover happens where they can analyze the play

It just gives them a moment to think about what they’re doing I think it’s holy or like mostly unproductive because it gives kind of that Gap where you can say hey I have forward two who’s gonna be open for a brief moment of time or I can just take

It into the corner myself yes this person’s going D defenseman 2 is going to be pressing you faster than defenseman one could because you know you’re crossing over you’re approaching with speed but if you just kind of turn to the outside if you if you take this

Opportunity and you move the outside now you can wait for more reinforcements yeah maybe the rush was killed but you just gave up kind of like or or like free entry into the zone you you’ve just pushed them to the outside more or if they do manage to if you don’t execute

The crossover perfectly F2 if they see the Gap they can just Sprint through and now you have a SAU pass through the seam and that happens to us way more often than is probably AC acceptable I just don’t see the value in the system it’s a cool thought it’s a unique way to

Approach it and it’s fun because like we are the only team that does it and I even think it was probably an acceptable uh an acceptable experiment as when we first started doing it I think it caught team teams off guard but now that we do it every single time now

That it’s known now that people have the Playbook you just have to wait for that moment where the crossover is incomplete or if they don’t step at the exact same time you’re giving up gaps and so I think without perfect execution which you know is hard to do instead of the

Theory of approaching them with speed when they’re entering the Zone you’re really just creating gaps in your defensive coverage and that’s why I personally am of the belief that you should probably just do what every other team in the league does and continue pressuring F1

With D1 and F2 with D2 just cover the pass with the one defense or the one defenseman and just kind of keep the other guy at Bay don’t let him get a good shot off and trust that your other defenseman is going to make sure that no

Pass can be completed every other team in the league does it like this I think this would be a good like mixup every once in a while if darene or whoever is on the back end is sitting there and they’re like I don’t think that I

Can like like I don’t think I’ve managed my Gap well and I want the other person to kind of switch with me I think having that in your toolbox is actually helpful making that your primary tool is predictable and that is a coaching issue

Sam from the Sabres Edge breaks down a defensive flaw of the 2023-2024 Buffalo Sabres.