25-26 GAME 7

VIENNA 3 - 1 OLIMPIJA

THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

CAPITALS HAND DRAGONS FIRST LOSS 

From MemeDroid. I don't know if Beyblade reached Slovenia back in the day, but it was one of my favourite Primary school breaktime activities (that and pretending to understand Yu-Gi-Oh).

Lineup changes

Worryingly, Sabla is back out again. Maybe last game was too early a comeback for him. Ćosić also remains out. Interestingly, perhaps as a result of Sabla's absence, the 1st and 2nd lines 'change places', Mad Hatter-style. Mehle joins Boychuk and Meyer once more. 

Goals

P1

VIC - Vienna turn defence into offense. Olimpija populate the Vienna OZ wholeheartedly, which means that when we wobble with possession, trouble is afoot. Boychuk passes to Mehle, who deflects it back towards the blue line. It starts 2v2, but Vienna end up transitioning into  3-on-1 after TJ Brennan's backcheck gets sidestepped and he briefly falls to his knees. They pass to the middle, leaving Mašič contorting in futile fashion, and beat Horak's glove.

P2

OLL - PPG - since Flashscore have been getting so many wrong recently, I don't entirely trust them that Mašič scored. Polei seemed to think he had the final, redirected touch. It's either Polei from Mašič and Meyer or Mašič from Meyer. Regardless, a long-range shot did go in, albeit on the man-advantage.  

P3

VIC - Horak can't control the rebound and Halbert accidentally knocks the puck in for his 2nd OG of the young season. Call it the beefy defender tax - when you're a bigger unit, you're simultaneously more likely to block a shot, as well as deflect it in!

VIC - Another rebound off Horak and neither Gregorc nor Crnović can help him by finding the puck before the Vienna forward.

Loss Dissection

My Uncle says that, on Sunday evening, 'you can smell Monday morning'. I could certainly smell that our unbeaten run was ending soon. We probably deserved to lose to AVS, yet managed to squeak out a win after OT and penalties. While I never expected OLL to go on an Arsenal 2003-4 Invincibles-type run this season, the manner of this one was disappointing. We destroyed this team 8-1 to start the season. We were consistently shooting twice as much as them. Yet, we lost 3-1. Yes, it was an away game, but so what? We trounced Innsbruck 9-3 away. 

Euro Hockey Hub's fellow Brit said that it was the best he'd seen Vienna play at home for a few seasons, which is encouraging. I don't feel they played in a way that fully prohibited us from winning the game, though. In Socrates' words, I still have much to learn, but here's my analysis.

Why did we lose?

• Vienna came much better prepared than the first game. They have had a few weeks to gel better as a team and it showed. 
• Sebastian Wraneschitz, the VIC goalie, played well. People called Sebastian are great, everybody knows that 😇. I don't think 'we got goalie'd', as in when a goalie plays out of his mind and steals the game. Don't let the 14-30 shot differential in our favour sway you entirely; shot quantity does not equate to shot quality. Was it Wraneschitz's good positioning or our poor shot placement that meant most of our shots thudded into his chest area? Most of our shots were long-range and Vienna, just like AVS, did a better job than the first 5 teams we faced of ensuring tip chances off the back of these long-range shots were limited. Outside of the pesky Zane Franklin, they also limited our powerplay opportunities. In Polei, we have someone who can consistently access the danger zones, but the Vienna defenders managed to slow the number 9 freight train down considerably.
• What Wraneschitz and Vienna did better than Horak and Olimpija was controlling rebounds. Horak, by his lofty standards, did not have a great day at the office - but this was compounded by occasionally-clueless-looking defenders. Halbert, fresh off his 30th birthday a few days prior, had his second own-goal of the season, while the usual 3rd pair suspects of Gregorc and Crnović were unable to find the puck and help Horak out after a good save, leading to a Vienna forward stabbing the puck in. One little nugget that I spotted is that when Rožle Bohinc made a mistake and turned the puck over, he went back into the DZ and solved his own problem, ensuring the puck left the DZ. That is part of why I keep advocating for him over the current 3rd pair - I don't trust them as much to solve their own problems.
• As ZG first suggested to me, are teams working out our new system under Coach Cooper? I need to do more learning to fully analyse this, but I do know that being at the top of the standings means teams 'give you their best shot' and prepare extra hard for you. As I have enjoyed writing about multiple times on this blog, this is where the Belichickian NFL adjustments come in. Teams have adjusted to our style of play - now, how are we going to adjust to those adjustments? That's Coach Cooper's job to work out. 
• Vienna limited the rush chances they gave up and exploited rush chances against us. Simply put, that will help you win these Jose Mourinho-style, 'park the bus' games. To be clear, I don't think they fully 'parked the bus' defensively, but they did pull off a 3-1 win while shooting half as much as we did and using defensive fortitude to create fast offensive breaks, all of which is very Mourinho. I don't think Didier Drogba could do much on the ice, though (I will try to resist the masculine urge to bring up random old footballers' names for the rest of this article).
• We were not clean enough in possession or passing. This relative malaise was a hangover from the AVS game. Look, it's one thing to get nullified by a historically very strong defensive team like Fehervar. It's another to have the same thing happen by a team you crushed 8-1 three weeks ago. How do we sort this out? Is this loss sufficient in itself to prompt a mental reset, now the pressure of maintaining an unbeaten record has dissipated? Bolzano, coming off a convincing victory over no less than Red Bull Salzburg, is going to be an enormous test.
• Maybe the ICE League's consistently low xG (expected goals) rating for us was correct, after all? I assumed they were still working out how to use it, as it's a new thing for them this year. Yet, perhaps we were scoring 'lucky' goals that shouldn't really have been going in, or playing against sub-standard goalies? Now that teams are better synced and more in the flow of the regular season, are teams tightening up? Again, we have to see how we adjust to the adjustments made against us. We also need the 1st and 2nd lines to activate against Bolzano, as they were both quiet tonight. The 3rd line, again, was the one that looked most fluid, with Simšič and Quince working together to feed Kapel in front, repeatedly. I tip my hat to those guys, after a low start to the season and after receiving frequent criticism from me.
• EDIT - We went 33% on the PP and 100% on the PK, so special teams are still clicking very well. The issues are definitely at 5-on-5.

Final thoughts

I don't expect to beat Bolzano after these past two showings, but as long as we exhibit some exiting of our offensive funk that we have sunk into, I will be happy. They are 1pt behind us with a game in hand, so our time at the top may soon be over. It was nice while it lasted - the main thing, of course, is to make the playoffs automatically. In a similar fashion to how I address my students during report season, losses will come, but the path we are on is the most important thing. Let's see what that path looks like over the rest of October.