OLIMPIJA 6 - 7 INNSBRUCK (OT)
SHARKS BITE BACK AS DRAGONS SLAIN IN OT
A POINT IS SALVAGED BUT THERE IS MUCH DEFENSIVE WORK TO BE DONE
Lineup changes
Kolin starts with Hebar as backup goalie. Where is Horak?! It's slightly concerning, but hopefully it's just to ensure he's fully rested after being hit by a Linz forward last game.
Kolin must not have been as hurt as I first thought, after the apparent vineyard accident. Clearly they do not trust Hebar to start yet, which is fair enough, as he's still very inexperienced.
The refs tonight:
Goals
P1
OLL - PPG Boychuk from Brennan and Mašič. If Brennan intended to shoot this wide for a backside rebound, he is a genius. I don't think he did, though. No matter! Boychuk puts the puck in as the goalie wonders where it's gone.
HCI - We lose a DZ faceoff and unfortunately end up with weak coverage on the side that the puck comes out to. The HCI defender, in acres of space, blasts one over Kolin's glove. It shouldn't have to be Quince, who took the faceoff, leaping to try to block the shot. Somebody missed their assignment here.
OLL - Pance from Mahkovec and Brennan. Mahkovec gains the zone after a nice DZ exit pass into the NZ by Brennan. Mahkovec moves up ice and drops the puck behind him for Pance to take over, before firing a partly-screened shot glove side.
HCI - PPG - We are content to leave Owre, one of the league's most dangerous scorers, in calm possession of the puck on the outside of our PK formation. He says, 'thank you very much' and snipes one in through Gregorc's legs (a 'nutmeg' in English, or a 'piške' in Slovene, from what I hear in the school playground!) over Kolin's shoulder at the near post. A goalie connoisseur might say that Kolin dropped into his butterfly stance too quickly, leaving space open for that kind of high shot. That's NHL advice, though - most ICE League players cannot shoot like Owre can.
P2
OLL - PPG Pance from Mahkovec and Petan. It's another Arsenal-style gorgeous passing goal. This is the type of stuff that would wow you in the NHL, yet we get to witness it before our very eyes. Thank you to the players and Coach Cooper for making it happen. Halbert passes down to Petan, who instantly swings his stick around to give it on to Mahkovec. Mahkovec takes a touch and then swings the opposite way to Petan to find Pance at the back post, while the HCI PK unit's jaws drop to the floor (along with the crowd's).
HCI - off the rush, as Pečo is still announcing our goal, Innsbruck win a 2 on 2 and Kolin fails to stop a reasonably routine shot from our left circle. He gets his arm on it, but the puck finds its way through. His reaction tells you that he thought he should have saved it. A brutal goal to give up, timing-wise, but we have more than enough time to respond in kind.
HCI - PPG - sadly, it is not us who respond, as HCI score on a pretty nifty redirect in front of goal.
P3
OLL - PPG Meyer from Mašič and Quince. Meyer shoots through heavy traffic from distance and the HCI goalie never sees it.
HCI - again, Pečo is finishing his announcement of our goal and HCI go back up and score. This time, we get sucked in like primary school kids chasing the football around as an HCI forward dangles through 3-4 players off the rush. He maintains possession and uses it to make a clever pass into space for another incoming player, who scores on a one-time shot that beats Kolin's blocker.
OLL - PPG Boychuk from Brennan. Our passing in front of net fools their goalie into keeping his pads wide, opening up the 5-hole (through the legs) shot of which Boychuk smartly takes advantage.
HCI - the sharks end up doing something similar, with a 5-hole goal of their own. It's hard to see if Crnović accidentally contributes to this going in, but either way, it's another goal that is not a particularly impressive one to concede. It leaves HCI up 6-5 with 2:26 to go, too.
OLL - Quince from Halbert and Petan. It's a brilliant, sweeping move from Nate Halbert to set up Quince, bravely manning the net-front post, who deflects it low-to-high over the diving goalie's right pad. We equalise with 1:18 remaining.
OT
HCI - PPG - unfortunately, Petan conceded an OZ penalty in the final seconds that HCI delayed until OT by possessing the puck until the end of regulation. As a result, HCI have a PP to start OT and they make use of it. They pass just out of Gregorc's reach and shoot from the top of our left circle, finding the nook in between Kolin's blocker and body to sink the winner.
ED stats section
I took a professional hockey analytics course to try to improve my abilities in this regard over the off-season, but I ended up realising that my strength is not the number-crunching quantitative analysis, but the qualitative, wordy side of things. As a result, I felt my limited efforts would be better spent on what I know I'm good at (I am about to start a professional coaching course to help understand tactics better, to help with this). It was a pleasant surprise, then, when ED sent me the following messages:
Loss Dissection
- To say this game was a back-and-forth affair doesn't really cover it. 12 goals and 18 penalties went back and forth, punch for punch, before the OT decider.
- Post-game discourse:
- I was very displeased to hear (in person) and see (on social media) OLL fans blaming Luka Kolin for the entire loss. We have had the luxury of excellent goaltending for so long that I think it's a bad look to just heap everything onto him. Let's find some perspective. When was the last bad OLL goalie performance in recent memory? For me, it's Robin Rahm as injury replacement for Horak in the 23-24 season. We've been rather spoilt with way above average goaltending for years. As such, we need to calm down a bit when one of our goalies, shock horror, has a bad game. The fact that it hasn't happened more often is testament to our players and our goalie coach, Miro Seppanen, who has quietly survived a regime change and thrived throughout my time following the club, from Karhula to AT to Cooper.
- We need to keep criticism constructive here, not destructive. What good does it do to blame him for everything? Let's instead focus on how, as a team, we can limit chances against to help our goalies. ED had a choice quote: "the defence wasn't there, but neither was Kolin". I think that's fairer.
- Some of you need to try and explore the concept of empathy and think about how you would lead a team of people. "Yeah, it's all your fault, sorry mate" would not have you lasting long in a leadership position, FYI. I highly doubt Coach Cooper is saying "It's all Kolin's and the refs' fault, don't worry boys". As in Stoic philosophy, controlling the controllables is the way forward - how can we help our goalies as much as possible, regardless of how well they are playing?
- Let's try to keep more of that empathetic and constructive mentality in our discourse about the team, because otherwise you will look pretty immature. I realise that's almost impossible in the age of throwaway social media comments, but you've got to try!
- Penalties. Oh my gosh. 18 penalties in the game is ridiculous - 9 each! Petan's trip in the OZ in the final seconds was the most memorable and most ill-advised, even if I sympathise with him busting a gut to make something happen before OT. It was eerily reminiscent of Ville Leskinen's OZ trip that led to a PPG from HCP that sent us out of the pre-playoffs two years ago. NR pointed out to me that the league changed its criteria for awarding penalties recently, which perhaps explains why today they were giving them out for almost anything. At least the refs kept it even, I suppose - there are no excuses for either side, as they had equal opportunities! We certainly can't complain, having scored four PPGs to HCI's two.
- Post-game, Coach Cooper said he would "probably not say something because I'll regret it...but I'll just say that it's frustrating...for both teams...it's hard to know what the standard is". Hopefully the refs can recalibrate their decision-making in line with the new criteria because this was not really how a pro game should be called, for either team. He went on to say that he was "most upset" about us "not playing to our standard" rather than the penalties, some of which "were totally preventable". So, he agrees with me on taking accountability even during tough situations, woohoo! Interestingly, the HCI coach said, "the league's gotta figure something out with the way they're calling these penalties...that being said, we know that they're penalties, so...we've got to be more diligent". I think that sums things up well.
- I'll go back to the Seattle Kraken's new head coach, Lane Lambert, for a mini-discussion here. His system is to play defensive, structured hockey. To do this, he keeps his defenders relatively far back to try to deny rush chances against. Coach Cooper's more attacking style requires sending them further forward to pressure, possess and score. How do we deny rush chances against in this system? Well, I have noticed that wingers have been diligently tracking back to cover the activated defenders, notably Meyer and Mahkovec. Judging by this game, though, it is not enough. Improving how we defend and give up chances is key to the future of this team.
- It's really disheartening to concede 7 goals against a poor team like Innsbruck. Clearly, they have improved since we last faced them, but we need to do the same. To ensure we reach automatic playoffs, we need to be dispatching these kinds of teams and competing with the best.
Bright spots in the darkness
- Marly Quince is an absolute warrior. The amount of net-front punishment he took to score the equaliser that sent us to OT was eye-watering. I respect him and his game so much.
- Kirichenko was making up for Polei's absence and demolishing people, including a NZ hit that I loved. Finally, we are using our bodies as well as our sticks to defend.
- Salvaging a point was important, as it would have been gut-wrenching to not find that late equaliser and come away empty-handed.
- We scored a lot of goals, which is a positive. 4 PPGs is great on the one hand, as we could only dream of clicking at such an effective rate in previous seasons. On the other hand, though, it speaks to how difficult we found it to make things happen at 5 on 5. Again, it felt like our opposition had figured us out, defending our long-range shots for tip chances well and taking advantage of our Jurgen Klopp-esque high-press/possession system to counter-attack decisively.
Final thoughts
This is one to learn from and move on, I think. It's Wayne Gretzky-era hockey again, with huge amounts of goals. I heard some more casual fans say they really enjoyed this game. Good for them - I hope it brings more fans to watch the games and support the club. I, however, was furious that we let a team like Innsbruck drop 7 goals on us. I hope that's the last time we'll be letting that happen at home this season. RBS next week will be a good opportunity for a bounce-back, hopefully with Horak in the fray once more.
OLIMPIJA 4 - 3 SALZBURG (OT)
DRAGONS BURN BULLS IN OT
COACH COOPER REIGNS VICTORIOUS OVER HIS OLD TEAM
Lineup changes
Hvala Bogu, Horak is starting and everything seems fine with him. Polei also returns, sending Pance back to the 4th line, alongside Beričič and Bukovec.
Stars of the game
* Lukaš Horák - he made some otherworldly, full octopus-mode saves tonight that gave us a chance to win, which we ended up taking.
** Rok Kapel - scored our opening goal with great anticipation to give us belief that we could climb back into this game and then set up Pance's go-ahead goal with a simply gorgeous pass.
*** TJ Brennan - overtime fears this man. He skated right up and scored at the start of OT, crushing RBS's dreams, as well as those of the people who ill-advisedly tried for a brisk toilet visit at the end of P3. Don't worry, Maris Bičevskis made me feel that pain before, I learned my lesson!!
Goals
P1
RBS - During a 4-on-4, Petan gets pressured at the blue line and panics as the puck nearly leaves the zone, passing it straight into an RBS player's path. RBS swing this immediately for a 2 on 1. The puck possessor doesn't pass, instead doing a fantastic job of attacking with speed, going wide while patiently waiting for Horak's centre of gravity to fall, before going around his outstretched pad and in. We had been dominating the opening period thus far, so it felt like a hammer-blow to concede this way.
RBS - RBS's first extended OZ possession results in another depressing goal. They run rings around us before the puck rebounds off a block and finds its way to an open back post for the same guy as before to score.
OLL - Kapel from Quince and Kirichenko. Really clever play from Quince, who takes it off the back board and swings a pass around the net into a perfect position for the onrushing Kapel to one-time home. Great anticipation from both Quince and Kapel on this play.
P2
OLL - Mašič from Polei and Petan. Lovely work from Polei and Mašič on this play. Mašič starts and finishes this move by way of Petan and Polei, who perfectly weighted a pass into Mašič's path. Bine does very well to activate so far up the ice, control the pass and find the armpit gap of Atte Tolvanen, the RBS goalie (whose brother plays in the NHL for my favourite team, the Seattle Kraken).
P3
OLL - Pance from Kapel and Kirichenko. Kapel delivers a sensational stretch pass to Pance, who receives it in stride and scores off his own rebound just past the outstretched skate of Tolvanen. He first went for the 5-hole, but deftly picked up the rebound and scored on the second try.
RBS - with 2:12 left, RBS score through heavy traffic. Horak had no chance of seeing it.
OT
OLL - Brennan from Meyer. Sometimes, a complex sport can look easy. We lose the faceoff, but a wayward RBS pass goes to Nico Meyer, who beautifully sets up a zooming TJ Brennan to go down centre ice, move slightly left and hit the winner in - all in the space of 11s! After all the back-and-forth in the previous three periods, it's over in a click of the fingers! There have been times this season where Brennan has looked like a bit of a cheat code for us; this was certainly another one of those!
Things I liked to see:
- Our passing - there were two real 'wow' passes tonight, both in huge moments - Kapel's stretch to Pance for the go-ahead goal and Meyer's backhand to Brennan for the OT winner. Kapo dol to those two!
- Ćosić making a crunching hit in the NZ - let's keep defending attempted entries to our zone with force (hits) as well as finesse (sticks).
- Mehle showing the confidence to enter the zone and take on defenders
- I continue to believe that Marly Quince is an extremely underrated performer for this team. Coach Cooper seems to agree, as he appears to trust Quince in 'big spots', as Dan Hanzus of Heed the Call would say (an NFL podcast well worth listening to).
- Mašič showing off some of the offensive skill which was his hallmark; we haven't seen that much of it recently, but I hope this is a kickstarter for more.
- Pance scoring is always a highlight. We needed that goal so much and I was so happy to see Pance on the receiving end of Kapel's wonderful pass.
Things I would like to see:
- Fewer turnovers and better rush defence - I understand that turnovers and ensuing rush chances will happen and that the latter are high-danger, but we play so high in the OZ that we keep getting taken advantage of by other teams off the rush on turnovers at the OZ blue line. Coach Cooper may well say 'you have to risk it for the biscuit', or something along those lines, but I am concerned that we keep getting exploited that way. How do you fix that, when it seems to be an in-built flaw in our system?
- Sodja back from injury soon - don't get me wrong, I like Pance and Bukovec a lot, but the 4th line appears to be something of a shadow of itself without Sodja on Beričič's flank. Pance has been dazzling further up the lineup and scored a huge goal today, but I feel we're really missing Sodja's heroic energy on the PK and in general. It's a testament to how effective he is at what he does that it doesn't really feel like the 'real Olimpija' without him out there.
Final thoughts
To all those Austrian fans frenetically commenting "but they won't win the league!!!!" on the posts showing Olimpija top of the table and miles ahead in goals per game, as Die Antwoord would say, "suck on this". Beating the back-to-back-to-back-to-back champions is a big statement win that we can hang with the very best in this league. I am proud of this team. Now let's put PIV in their place on Sunday afternoon.
Nice content ⚪🟢
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mr/Ms Anonymous!
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