KLAGENFURT 3 - 4 OLIMPIJA (PENS)
OLIMPIJA CLING ON FOR VICTORY
DRAGONS SCAR KAC ON PENALTIES
Lineup changes
None! (EDIT - I forgot that Brennan missed the game due to neck stiffness right beforehand. Oops!)
Stars of the game:
* Marcel Mahkovec - Marcel scored two NHL-level goals tonight. Enough said.
** Zach Boychuk - our knight in shining armour comes to our rescue once again, with a goal and the winning penalty.
*** Lukaš Horák - it's the same story, but it never gets old: he kept us in it to win it.
Goals
P1
KAC - With 55s left in the period, Ćosić pinches high up the ice and leaves space that KAC immediately take advantage of. Petan and Bukovec try to get there but can't and the KAC player beats Horak's glove. EDIT - As we found out from Boychuk in the bottom report, this is the Olimpija system - aggressively defend to keep the puck up the ice. It can go wrong and leave space in behind, though, which we are continually seeing. Conceding in the last minute hurts, too.
P2
OLL - Mahkovec with an awe-inspiring solo effort, where he weathers a big hit, navigates through defenders and still beats the goalie's blocker.
KAC - A wraparound try unfortunately finds the tiny gap underneath Horak's pads for the 5-hole goal. He would have wanted a defender's stick there to disrupt that attempt, but it's a well-taken goal for KAC.
P3
KAC SHG - Maybe I care too much, but I had my head in my hands for this one. I was watching with my Mum and just cut any conversation we were having for a while there. KAC take the puck up the ice and manage to extricate it very effectively/unexpectedly with a big swing of a skate from a crush on the back boards into the slot / net-front area. A messy clash follows where Horak cannot freeze the puck and it eventually gets bundled in amidst poor net-front defending by the offensive-minded PP unit. Horak was incensed, as was I. This kind of goal can be such a deathblow, as I expected it to be. But the game and the PP wasn't over yet...
OLL PPG - Mahkovec from Halbert. Marcel strikes back in the same PP with a beautiful one-time shot that got him Alex Ovechkin (greatest goalscorer in NHL history) comparisons from Evan Polei after the game. Halbert with a wicked pass across on the assist, too.
PENS
Boychuk scores and nobody else does!
Overall thoughts
What a resilient win! This was such a tight game, made even tighter by conceding the SHG. I loved seeing Kirichenko enforce his will on the game with multiple moments of physical dominance. I loved seeing Mahkovec take over the game twice with attacking magic. I loved seeing Boychuk bring it home for us and I loved seeing Horak shut the door on KAC's penalties. Let's cut the SHG and keep the rest, then replicate this in the playoffs because this was absolutely a playoff-esque atmosphere tonight and it reflects very well on the team that we came through that adversity to win.
- A resilient penalty kill, despite the refs handing out penalties like Halloween trick or treat sweets.
- Another high-scoring performance against a lively team.
- Mehle doing good work on the top line, both in offensive creation and defensive denial. I hope he can keep a top-9 role in the team once Sabla returns.
- I enjoyed the shots of the FTC fans chomping on Langos. It's been 20 years since I was in Hungary, but Langos made such a good impression on me that it lasts to this day!
- Some more obvious in-game adjustments. I may not be skilled enough to tell if some more subtle tweaks were made to respond to what FTC were doing, but I do know that I felt genuinely worried when Braeden Shaw had the puck on his stick, the first real time I can say something like that with Horak in net. Shaw was making him look like a mere mortal out there, so I would have liked to see us more obviously adjust to Shaw's shocking shooting by giving him less space to work with. Will that open up space for other players? Of course! Are those players likely to shoot as dangerously as Shaw? I highly doubt it!
- I would like to see the commentators be able to read the jersey numbers. They had 12 instead of 72 and 14 instead of 74!
- I am worried that our PP, despite doing so well, is relying too heavily on TJ Brennan in the same way as we relied too heavily on Sabla last season. Our success rate will nose-dive if teams can key in on one player to stymie the whole operation. I'm not too concerned but it's something to monitor, as tonight the PP felt laboured and lacking ideas, which is obviously something OLL fans are very familiar with in recent seasons.
- More consistency in the refereeing. Here's Mark from Euro Hockey Hub's enlightened take (edited for clarity, any mistakes are mine):
- I think the amount of dumb slashes set the tone for the season. First few weeks there were some flying sticks and lumberjacks.
- A balance needs to be struck though, a complete non-contact game is not going to get any fans through the doors. At the same time, players need protection from cheap shots.
- Player protection should always be number 1. Consistency is needed in calls during the game. Some slashes are called and some are missed or ignored. What we don't understand as fans is the context on the ice. What's been said (etc.), interpretation.
- Consistency on calls will prevent people from making cheap shots. There's a 'love tap' and there's a 'lumberjack'. One is a physical play and one is reckless. This needs to be understood. Just my opinion on it. We want players healthy and competing each night, whilst keeping the physicality.
SALZBURG 1 - 2 OLIMPIJA
GREGORC, BOYCHUK AND HORAK SAVE THE DAY
DRAGONS WALK TIGHTROPE AND GET BIG REGULATION WIN
Lineup changes
Bukovec swaps with Kumanović, meaning Maks is on 3rd line and Lovro is on the 4th. Sodja returns!
Talking of swapping, the 1st and 2nd pair do a Mad Hatter's Tea Party and "change places!". Perhaps they are unimpressed with Brennan and Mašič's recent performances, so Halbert and Kirichenko get the promotion for now?
Polei is out again, as is Ćosić. Ćosić has a hand injury and Polei - not sure.
Stars of the game:
I think Bukovec correctly identified the three players that deserve praise in his post-game locker room speech (see bottom of the article), but I will order them differently to him...
* Lukaš Horák - as I put in one of my Insta stories (@olimpijahockeyblog), I feel like this was the kind of game where Hory deserved double whatever money he is getting. We didn't prevent shots or control possession very well for most of the game and although there were some blocks, it was pretty much Horak vs the world. Luckily, we know he is talented enough to carry us through those kinds of games, as evidenced again here!
** Zach Boychuk - appropriately for Halloween, Boychuk did his best Batman impression, answering our bat-signal late in the game to put us 2-1 up in emphatic style.
*** Blaž Gregorc - he once more had to step up to play more minutes, as Halbert apparently went off injured, but he also scored our opening goal. A captain's performance!
Goals
P1:
OLL - Gregorc wisely takes the extra space offered to him by the RBS defence and very cooly squeaks a shot over the goalie's shoulder. He has tried this move a few times in recent memory, but in a huge game it comes off!
P3:
RBS SHG - RBS do very well on a short-handed rush, with their captain T. Raffl scoring, but what a killer after continual PP efforts in vain. Meyer's initial shot is blocked and Brennan cannot get in front of the storming RBS forwards. This leaves Mašič in a 2 on 1; he cannot prevent the brilliant pass across to Raffl, who formidably puts it backhand-high over Horak's glove. Great work from RBS but we can't be letting that happen.
OLL - Boychuk picks up a turnover at our blue line and scores with a rush chance blast! I'll let the man himself explain: (slightly edited version) "I didn't think I had a clearcut breakaway...so I wanted to get it off my stick sooner rather than later... I usually go 5 hole, so my teammates were probably expecting that, but I went high and I was pleased with it".
Overall thoughts
The roundtable boys were prophetic on Monday (article coming tomorrow!), saying that Boychuk makes an impact when we really need one. Well, he did it again! The main focus should be on Lukas Horak, though, as he weathered a storm of shots, right up to the very end.
Is it crazy to say that I don't think we actually played that well tonight? RBS dominated possession and shot differential (42-25). It's one of those games that RBS would win 8 or 9 times out of 10, but we had Horak in net plus quite a few lucky bounces. One of the RBS players said after the game that "sometimes you play a great game of hockey and lose", which I think is fair. We did have some good, isolated chances, though, so I don't want to pretend it was a completely 'lucky bounce' kind of game.
I also think what he said about "in hockey there will be breakdowns and you have to try to minimise them" can apply to how we think about our performance. I absolutely despise giving up SHGs, it just brings so many bad memories from old Olimpija performances. However, we've managed to concede two in the space of one week, both against top-tier opponents in KAC and RBS; neither time have we let it kill our momentum, which is a pretty powerful statement about the belief that Coach Cooper et al. have instilled in this group of players.
Obviously, I would prefer we win without conceding an SHG, but the fact we win despite that is very encouraging for what we all hope will be a long and successful playoff run. This game had, as Nico Meyer said mid-game, a full-on playoff atmosphere. We passed the test, but there are points to improve on.
It makes sense that RBS played their system better than us, though. As Boychuk said post-game, "we play a similar system to them, with Coops (Coach Cooper) coming from Salzburg...The gameplan is always the same, trying to be very aggressive pinching on the boards (presumably to keep the puck in the OZ for as long as possible) and get as many shots as we can...Sometimes you've got to win ugly ones". Well said, Zach!
Special teams does deserve further consideration, though. Our PK has continued to be absolutely outstanding, but I do wonder if our league-leading PP is starting to become a legitimate issue. Another mad thing to be saying, as we are just top in PP%, ahead of HCB, but we are trending down. In the last three games, we have gone 2/11 for 18% (we are at 30% average on the season so far). That's a small sample size but it does show that we are firing at almost half our previous rate of 33% before this week of games. What's more, we have conceded SHGs twice in those 11 PPs, essentially meaning that we have gone 0/11 on using them to give us an advantage in the games. Now, it is natural that putting your offensive wizards out on the ice can lead to a lack of defence, but it's something else that we need to shore up ASAP over the upcoming break.
One final note - the commentators were enormous RBS homers. I understand they are the RBS broadcast team, but I think they would do well to tone it down a bit to try to have some appearance of balance. ŠP and I agreed that while it adds a frisson to the experience if there's a little bit of rivalry incorporated into the broadcast, there must be some professionalism. Neither of us thought there was enough of that tonight and both of us found that frustrating.
Post-game locker room speech reaction
I really enjoy that the club are uploading these to their Instagram account. See below for transcripts and further thoughts.
Cooper post-game locker room speech (slightly abridged) -
"Horak came in here and said 'finally, some shots for me'! In all seriousness, talk about some team defence - gritty, gutsy effort - lots of shot blocking, PK was amazing, Simšič and Quince were animals out there. All the D stepping up for Halby (was he injured?), but just an overall gritty team effort, a well-earned 3 points and we sweep the series."
Gregorc given MVP by Bukovec (after mentioning Horak and Boychuk) -
"Great job, team effort - that's how we win games".
My reaction -
Again, I feel like I might be ungrateful / slightly insane to be suggesting this, but surely we should be aiming to control the game and not get too happy with a knife-edge, lucky win? Obviously, it's wonderful that we beat the quadra-champs in their building and in regulation, but as I said above, letting another team do that to us will not lead to consistent success. I'm sure the coaching staff will work on that, but I would have liked to see some tempering to all the back-slapping with a brief mention of that need to keep working on controlling/regaining possession in those types of games. Maybe my Britishness is just not letting me enjoy this win sufficiently, though ^^.
Finally, I think Maks is a great guy, as you know from my Insta stories on the Cewapi encounter, but I do feel a bit sorry for Horak getting the "oh yeah, Hory, you played well, but I'm giving it to..." every time we see the locker room videos 😂 As OHB readers, you know that I don't hesitate to give Horak MVP every time he deserves it, at least!
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