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Hockeytown0001

12/21 GDT : Avalanche 2 at Red Wings 1 (SO)

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On Dec. 2nd, the the middle of our best stretch of hockey all season, Babcock said...

"We're a pretty good hockey club when we play with pace, " Babcock said recently. "When we don't play with pace, we're not. The thing I don't like about what's gone on lately is we're giving up too many goals. We want to get back to giving up no goals...I don't mind if we score goals but I'm not interested in giving them up."

http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2014/12/detroit_red_wings_gameday_7.html

We had won four in a row prior to that night, and three in a row afterward, and seemed to be creating offense pretty consistently. I don't know where that went.

If you think that they've been fine all season that's cool, I don't want to argue with you. But Babs certainly thought they were giving up too many goals. Since that time we've failed to duplicate the offensive output we were seeing then, and we've failed to get a lot of points that we probably ought to have.

A coach saying he's not interested in his team giving up goals. And? He also said they're a good team when they played with pace. The Wings haven't been playing with a ton of pace lately.

My point was mainly that they didn't go on some big win streak where they played more wide open, then really clamped down defensively and suddenly started losing, which seems to be the narrative you were putting forth. They've won the majority of their games when allowing two goals or less.

I think they'll be trying to find that balance between offense and defense all season. They have a lot of young and relatively inexperienced players. That inexperience often shows up as a lack of consistency throughout a season.

Add to that they're missing Weiss and have two key players on big cold streaks, and it's not that surprising they're not winning. The two guys in question (Mule, Z) are veteran players who've been very good defensively while still managing to produce. I don't see some recent defensive focus causing them to go cold.

But that version of events doesn't make the losing skid the coach's fault for implementing a strategy change during a win streak.

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A coach saying he's not interested in his team giving up goals. And? He also said they're a good team when they played with pace. The Wings haven't been playing with a ton of pace lately.

My point was mainly that they didn't go on some big win streak where they played more wide open, then really clamped down defensively and suddenly started losing, which seems to be the narrative you were putting forth. They've won the majority of their games when allowing two goals or less.

I think they'll be trying to find that balance between offense and defense all season. They have a lot of young and relatively inexperienced players. That inexperience often shows up as a lack of consistency throughout a season.

Add to that they're missing Weiss and have two key players on big cold streaks, and it's not that surprising they're not winning. The two guys in question (Mule, Z) are veteran players who've been very good defensively while still managing to produce. I don't see some recent defensive focus causing them to go cold.

But that version of events doesn't make the losing skid the coach's fault for implementing a strategy change during a win streak.

The goals against average dropped by almost a whole goal after he made those comments compared to the previous winning streak. Add that information to his comments and its not hard to see why I'd conclude that an emphasis was made to "tighten up defensively". That the offense dropped off at the same time could be spurious, but I don't know why you won't even entertain the thought. Look back over all the games played and you'll notice the lower the goals against, the less we are scoring as well. Did Babcock make a deliberate decision to sacrifice offense or defense? I don't know. But based on his remarks and the correlating drop in goals against AND goals for, I don't think its as outlandish a proposition as you're making it seem.

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The goals against average dropped by almost a whole goal after he made those comments compared to the previous winning streak. Add that information to his comments and its not hard to see why I'd conclude that an emphasis was made to "tighten up defensively". That the offense dropped off at the same time could be spurious, but I don't know why you won't even entertain the thought. Look back over all the games played and you'll notice the lower the goals against, the less we are scoring as well. Did Babcock make a deliberate decision to sacrifice offense or defense? I don't know. But based on his remarks and the correlating drop in goals against AND goals for, I don't think its as outlandish a proposition as you're making it seem.

For starters, your theory hinges on a single quote from the coach and extrapolates that to a significant change in coaching strategy. That's a big leap, especially considering Babcock rarely says anything particularly revealing about his actual strategy and already is intensely focused on defense.

Then there's the fact that the very game after that quote, the Wings put up 5 goals, then 3 goals the two games after that. So did it take a full week for the team to finally implement Babcock's message from Dec 2nd and focus on offense at the cost of defense?

It also requires believing that he wouldn't adjust the new defensive focus at all during a 6-game losing streak.

I haven't seen all the games, but I haven't noticed anything remarkably different in how he's running things. Majorly changing some offensive players ice times. Sitting back in a 4-1 trap in the third period if they have the lead. Something. The team has looked lackluster a lot of the time, but not in anything I can pin to a new strategy. Babcock is already an extremely defensively minded coach, so how much more could he get players to clamp down without some obvious changes?

It's not that I didn't entertain the idea, in doing so it just seemed a little thin for an explanation to the losses.

EDIT: to simplify this long winded response, I could see focusing on defense at the cost off offense as a larger criticism for Babcock's strategy with the Wings. I just don't think it's specifically significant for this losing streak.

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On another note, I'm amazed this went by so quietly, but with his tenth game Dan Cleary just made himself a million dollar bonus.

I thought about that during the game. I have no qualms with the way he's been utilized so good for him and belated happy birthday. He may not be what he once was but he still seems like a good dude and a fine 3rd/4th line fill in.

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For starters, your theory hinges on a single quote from the coach and extrapolates that to a significant change in coaching strategy. That's a big leap, especially considering Babcock rarely says anything particularly revealing about his actual strategy and already is intensely focused on defense.

Then there's the fact that the very game after that quote, the Wings put up 5 goals, then 3 goals the two games after that. So did it take a full week for the team to finally implement Babcock's message from Dec 2nd and focus on offense at the cost of defense?

It also requires believing that he wouldn't adjust the new defensive focus at all during a 6-game losing streak.

I haven't seen all the games, but I haven't noticed anything remarkably different in how he's running things. Majorly changing some offensive players ice times. Sitting back in a 4-1 trap in the third period if they have the lead. Something. The team has looked lackluster a lot of the time, but not in anything I can pin to a new strategy. Babcock is already an extremely defensively minded coach, so how much more could he get players to clamp down without some obvious changes?

It's not that I didn't entertain the idea, in doing so it just seemed a little thin for an explanation to the losses.

1. Not just one quote, he said the same thing four days later here: http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2014/12/red_wings_look_to_tighten_up_d.html

2. I didn't suggest anything about a "strategy change". He's always had the same strategy. When our guys get away from it, and open up, they score more goals and we win more often. When he reemphasizes the system (as I believe he did after his comments), they score less and lose more (or so my theory goes). Babcock didn't change, he just reemphasized something the players on the ice were getting away from.

3. Finally, I'm not sure why this comes as such a surprise. We all remember how Yzerman's points dropped off after he started playing defense. It seems (admittedly speculative) that Dats and Z would likely have scored more often under more offensively open systems. So why is the rest of the team any different? The more you emphasize "defense first" the more guys will prioritize that over offense. Which is a little less of an issue for guys like D and Z who will score either way, but for everybody else who aren't superstar two way players, I imagine being more defensively responsible could easily translate to being a little less offensively threatening.

4. None of which would be a problem except that we aren't winning the low scoring, closely contested games. We're losing them. We're also not losing because our defense is terrible and can't stop other teams from scoring. When we lose it's because we're not scoring much. When that happens six (very close) games in a row, it's a trend. And when I see Babcock emphasizing "tightening up defensively" during our best stretch of hockey; and the corresponding reduction of goals against, reduction of goals for, and six strait loses starting less than a week after his comments, I have to at least consider that those things are related.

The only real way to know for sure would be to regress the goals for and goals against to determine the strength of that relationship. I'd imagine almost all teams (with the odd exception of Chicago) would see their goals for fall off as their goals against goes down. However, if the strength of the relationship was greater under Babs' system, then I'd have all the evidence I'd need to suggest his system is prohibitive. Sadly, while I know what type of statistical analysis you'd need to perform, I don't know how to do it...so my theory remains exactly that lol.

On another note, I'm amazed this went by so quietly, but with his tenth game Dan Cleary just made himself a million dollar bonus.

Because he hasn't been bad at all this year. He hasn't hurt the team on iota so far this season. Which I'd imagine is why the critics (myself included) have had to eat crow on the Dan Cleary signing. So good for Dano. A million dollars richer and nobody's complaining.

Edited by kipwinger

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OH!! GEMS!!!

Anybody think our lack of right handed shooters are CONTRIBUTING to our losses in shootouts Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, that's it. Absolutely.

I think it has more to do with not having an enforcer. Opposing teams might think twice about dangling on Howard if Punchy McGrattan was staring them down.

At least SOMEONE would have been there to avenge the Smith hit and the Nyquist crosscheck. AMIRITE?!

I think lack of righties has to do with poor play and lack of goals.

Depending in where the play is at you can't have a one timer with only lefties. It also can hurt the defense to play on your off hand in certain situations.

Certain situations lead to other situations. Those situational plays can be rectified by working hard or handedness. Depending on the situation.

You must have an entire album/folder with pictures like these by now

A stroke book, as some might say...

All of which have been committed to memory for quick recall.

...hmmm. Point reinforced. ...or ENFORCED.

Does Joe Thornton like fighting in the game?

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