so much for that
Diagramming the Powerplay
Today we are going to breakdown the Powerplay goals from the Michigan win over Notre Dame on Saturday night. (Ignore the mouse burnouts)
Goal #1:

Here we start out with our basic cycle, Notre Dame is in a normal 2-2 box penalty kill. Notice how far the forward is playing up, he will not be able to get back fast enough for and lose puck or rebound.

Like stated before, the ND forward could not get back in time so anything that gets through to the right is a goal. Quick shot from the wing goes wide left and around the back boards, Wohlberg gathers and starts the cycle again.

Once again the forward is playing Pateryn high, streching the box out. Guptil is screening and no one in gold is paying attention. Pateryn cranks it and gets super lucky, the shot just misses hitting the forward because his hips are swinging to the right.

Money
Video
Goal #2:

After a faceoff win and a good keep in, Treais brings the puck down to face a pretty normal rush situation.

Treais uses a great shot fake to freeze the defensemen, who loses position going down to block the shot.

The move was great, the defender is beat, but the angle is bad. The only way Treais scores is if the goalie guesses wrong.

Summerhayes takes away right post and 5 hole. He is wrong, and the bent knee gives A.J. just enough space to fit it in left side.
Video:
First time doing something like this, so suggestions to make it better are greatly appreciated.
I don't know much about hockey.
My only suggestion comes before even reading it, maybe put something in the title to indicate hockey. I thought this would be diagramming the "Power Play" that Hoke always talks about being the staple of his offense. Not really a huge deal, because this is a worthy thread and shouldn't make people cry about "Change the Title!!!", just a suggestion.
ND was caught sleeping on this play, but I'd be interested to see where they went if ND had tied Guptil's stick up like they should have, assuming an M rebound...
Definitely not the PP system I'm most familiar with, but the obvious move seems to be going to the RW, drawing the closest defenseman and opening up a lane to the LW to shoot, or pass if the C has position on his man.
Again, I really can't believe how wide-open Guptil is. I had to catch the game on a radio stream and hadn't seen that before tonight.
Go Blue!
1) not every team kills penalties the same way (ND runs a diamond), that may explain why this looks unusual as opposed to a box.
2) with that being said, it looks to be a low umbrella on the first pp playing off of the diamond formation. By placing the wingers lower, it draws the killers down low leaving the lone high man on an island between the two D
3) finally some quality hockey talk
Bo' Money Bo' Problems
The diamond doesn't seem to work unless you're running a true umbrella. Obviously it gets run, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to do a pretty poor job if another team gets fancy (bringing a winger back behind the net, moving the RW down while sliding a defenseman over like M did). It always looks to me like there are more passing lanes, at least on a dry-erase board.
There's not much you can do when a team is good at cycling, other than blocking shots and seeing if you can break up a pass, but I think the box is a much more simple answer, and one that has less structural flaws (open passing lanes that suck defenders out of position).
Go Blue!
A team will run a diamond to counter an umbrella. A box leaves that point man open. They'll run a lot of overload with the bigger bodies on the team ala Brown, Wohlberg, Glendening. Trouba will be a huge acquisition especially at that point spot on the PP.
Bo' Money Bo' Problems
The diamond works against a lot of different PPs. In this case, the high forward's job is to pressure the puck and break up the passing lane between the two Michigan Ds. The two middle guys are there to break up the passing lanes between the Michigan Ds and the forwards on the flanks or to try to clog up the shooting lanes. In most cases, the low D's job is to make sure the goalie isn't being screened, hit the guy down low (if there is one) and make sure there are no rebound chances.
A key advantage of the diamond over the box is that it's much easier to effectively collapse into the slot with two guys playing in the circles. They don't have as far to go.
Good diary. If you have time could you maybe explain things that have been going wrong in Michigan's PP this season?
Abort, Retry, Fail?
I haven't gotten to watch a lot of M hockey so far this season (probably ten games, four being since Merrill got back) but I'm confident enough with my experience in hockey that I'm willing to venture a guess.
To me, the most likely explanations are: a) talent deficiency (this isn't the case) b) weird coaching decisions (Red hasn't really changed anything and the PP has been fairly decent the past two weeks) or c) weird hockey chemistry explanation. If you don't have that intrinsic trust on the ice, goals aren't coming, and the problem could be anything.
I might have my timeline wrong, and correct me if it is, but our true number one line hasn't emerged until recently, which is when the PP got pretty much back on track. Those two events being intimately related would be my guess.
Go Blue!
Players had to step up and figure out what was missing in their individual and group play to make the PP more effective, which re-forged the new first line.
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Exactly. A team/line needs time to gel; at youth levels that might take an entire season, for a veteran pro team it could be done by the time the season starts. Hockey, much more than any other sport, IMO, relies on predicting what your teammates will do and where. If football is a science in this sense (I'm sure Denard can tell you that on Blue42, Roundtree will be running a curl route eight yards left and curling right on the hashmark) hockey is an art, and sometimes it just takes time to get that down.
Go Blue!
Where does puck possession fall in your list? It seems to me that on many of the PPs I've watched, we sent the puck into the zone, and it gets sent right back down the ice (repeat ad frustrationem), so we weren't able to set up the offense, or had little time to do so.
Michigan Resurgent? Michigan Resurgent!
The beatings will continue until the uniforms improve!
Probably either B or C (A isn't really an issue, IMO M has the talent on paper to match up decently with basically every team out there).
I didn't mean to make Red infallible and put everything on our guys, Red could have had the wrong guy designated to "quarterback" the powerplay or stubbornly stuck with a dump and chase strategy that just wasn't working. OTOH a lot of that could also be explained by a lack of chemistry/familiarity/focus, especially when you look at all of those plays as seperate events.
As I said though, I wasn't able to catch enough of the games during the first part of the season to give a very good answer. What I said to BlueDragon could basically be inserted to any "why did things go badly in a hockey game" question. I'm sure yesman2221 or someone who lives in Michigan (and therefore has been able to catch more games) could more easily answer specifics than I can.
Go Blue!
I wish we had more hockey breakdowns around here
But the lack of game film doesn't give me much to work with



it might be nice to highlight the puck in the freezeframes, for those of us who haven't seen the video beforehand. (i realize the video is included, but it was a little hard to follow the breakdowns without watching the video first.)
RIP my avatar, June 14, 1998 - October 26, 2012.