On today’s SHORT SHIFTS episode, Toph wants to break down the 1-3-1 power play. How to be successful if you’re playing it - how to stop it if you’re killing against it.
TEN MINUTES ON THE CLOCK STARTING NOW!
We appreciate every listen, download, comment, rating and share on your social sites!
(upbeat music) Here we go with another short shift. 10 minutes are on the clock. Jeffrey J. Hulovecchio has no idea what the topic is gonna be. Should he choose to accept? We are gonna talk for 10 minutes on something really, really fun. Vex, are you ready to go? Give me it. Let's talk about the 1-3-1 power play. Ooh, okay. 1-3-1 power play. Yeah. Tell me in your estimation, first of all, did you play it a lot? And, you know, when you were playing, what were some of the things that you saw that made it successful, maybe not as successful? Talk to me a little bit about the 1-3-1 power play. I played the, well, I didn't play the power play in the AHL, so can't even touch that subject there. Yeah, would you settle the kill against it? I did probably kill against it. Yes, absolutely good call. Perspective. Zoom out, Jeff. Force through the trees. Force through the trees. You know what we're talking about? If you know what we're talking about, and if you don't, you don't. That just makes sense. Gives you zero idea of what, yeah. It gives you zero idea of what we're talking about. What we're talking about. Then you know what we're talking about. If you don't know what we're talking about, then you don't know. That sounds like a Kamala Harris speech. Anyways, so, so it does. So 1-3-1, I played it a lot in Europe. I did get my opinion on it. I loved it as a shooter, being the guy in the middle when the guys could find me. As a guy who- Did you play the Pumper position? Yeah, but like we would, when I played it in Norway, are 1-3-1, the two, I would be in the middle, the two guys on the flank, they would like also like, kind of, it wasn't just like standing still 1-3-1. They'd be moving around, they'd hit the guy down low, like kind of like D up top, over to the wall, down low, the guy in the middle is the bumpers, trying to move to get open for a one-timer. That's how we played it, so I really liked that. Sometimes like, you'd have two guys slide to the front of the net. So it wasn't like a true 1-3-1 where you just stand in there. But the biggest thing that I thought about when we're playing the 1-3-1 is having your bumper guy, like actually know where to be. You got to know where the soft areas of the ice are. You've got to be an out. Anytime somebody's getting in trouble, you got to be a really good one-touch passer, like especially if a penalty kill is aggressive on you. You got to get over to be an out and then know that there's a guy probably right behind you in the slot defending you. So if you can give like a quick one-touch pass, either up top to the blue line or down low, you're going to stretch teams out and then as they're stretching and they get lost in their coverage, that's when you can find a lane for the Sadeen Twins tip or for it picking down low over to you for a one-timer or something like that. But for me, it's just like you have to move the puck really well if you're playing a 1-3-1. 'Cause you got guys that are kind of stranded on an I-win sometimes. The two ones, and then the guys on the wall, even if you get stretched out. So as a killer, I loved killing 1-3-1s. I think killing a 1-3-1 is pretty easy. If you're the middle guy, you keep the bumper guy above you. You don't let him get his stick in the lane for a tip. If you're the top guy, keep it on the side. Don't let them go back up top. You make them make the hard seam pass across the ice and trust that your guys are going to be able to move from there but don't give them the easy play. Make them make the hard play, which is going to be a cross-ice sauce through a seam. Make them make the first move, Conway. - Better. - See, I think as the 1-3-1, you can absolutely torch that penalty kill all day and every day with your bumper positioning. So this is one, the biggest thing for me on a 1-3-1 is your three guys in the three cannot be in a straight line. So your bumper can't be in the straight line with the two guys on the flanks on the outside. I call it staggered. So that year at NAR and I watched all the power play videos and charted it and all that kind of stuff. That was a thing that I saw so much in all the goals and you just keep seeing it recurring, recurring, recurring, recurring is that when that bumper was not in a line, it opens up the seam pass with the way that so many of the teams would have to flood down and then the middle guy's kind of in charge of the bumper. So you can seam that all day every day. I think it's really important that you have one player that can bomb a puck too. One player on the flanks of the three that can really bomb a one-timer. I think that's really, really important because then that opens everything up because now the power or the penalty kill has to cheat towards that person. And when you cheat towards one person, that makes somebody else a little bit more open. So you think about like Ovechkin, like because you have to cheat on Ovechkin on that side, that opens up Oshe in that bumper position and Oshe has lived in that position for a long time in that capital's power play. And so that's another one that I think is really important too. - And you've got such a skilled guy in backstrom able to thread the needle through seams no matter what. - And you talked about the bumper. So the bumper in my opinion probably has to be, I don't wanna say the smartest person on the power play, but the bumper has to have a lot of hockey sense. And you know who's the best bumper that I think I've ever seen in studying a lot of power plays? Your boy in Boston, Patrice Bergeron. - Oh yeah, he's the smartest hockey player ever. - Dude, like he's absolutely so good in that area. It's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. - Yeah, he's good. (laughing) - Another thing that I think is really important when you do the one through one, I think for any power play, but particularly for the one through one, like quick puck movement is really important. Quick puck movement is really important because without quick puck movement people can just, or the penalty kill can just kind of stand there and take away passing lanes and spots. So you have to move the puck quick, you have to be moving because when it's in, if you're like legit one, the three people are the same and then the one, like that's so easy to kill against. - That's what I was saying. If they're three in a row across the tops of circles or the dots whatever it is, as killers, that's pretty easy. Like as soon as toes said staggered, that makes it very hard because now you're not in the way to at least like get in their head like, oh, I'm gonna have to seam this sucker all the way across ice. Well now that there's a massive seam because you guys staggered yourselves which makes the killers not be able to kind of cover their seams with their stick or their body. - Yeah, yeah. And the other thing too, I think you have to have a really, I mean, everybody's gotta have hockey sense but the guy that's in front of the net has to understand the pressure points of other people on the penalty kill and how to be of support for those people. When do I step off the net? How fast or like how far do I step off the net? Maybe the way that your power play is maybe that person is really, really good and tight. And I know a lot of teams where just the way the teams kill and on the pre-scout like they'll get it down to that guy down by the net. And it's just like, I'm gonna try to hit that goalie's pads. And now I got the bumper coming down and I got the offside guy coming down for any type of rebound. Because as you know, 'cause you've, I'm assuming you've played in front of the net on the power play a few times in your day too. - Yeah, only place I really played. - And you see it with the way teams kill like you're probably not gonna score in that area because how a lot of teams kill is hey, we're gonna take away the other options. The goalie has the guy at the goal line. And the goalie kinda likes it that way 'cause the goalie would rather face that shot than a backdoor shot any day of the week. And so like as that guy, if you're really good at getting it, taking a step and kind of like forcing a rebound, putting it off their pads or causing some chaos, then when there's chaos, everything goes out of whack. And now the bumper or the offside guy potentially can get that second chance opportunity. - I mean, I think it doesn't matter what spot you are on the power play. If your tops of circles are down, you have to like, you have to stop watching. If there's a shot, if there's a rebound, if there's an errant pass, if there's a battle, you cannot watch. First thing has to be take a step towards the puck. Like the sooner you can get there to retrieve pucks, like your power play will score way, way, way, way more goals if you can always get somebody to the puck immediately and then have like out, you know, we would call them like outs. Like, where am I outs? I'm the first guy to the puck, where am I outs? And quickly, like usually, you know, it might be like a rim back up top. If it's a hard rim, if you get the puck to the back door or a behind the net quickly, always to the that guy's forehand. So there's always kind of a simple plan to get over to the boards and then reestablish and then re, you know, regroup the power play, get it going back on whatever your guys play is, but it's so massively important to have good guys track in the puck and getting to it right away. - Yeah, and you'll see it at the older levels too. I know we only got like 30 seconds left now, but like what a lot of teams are doing, 3-1. And then they're going to take that bumper and they're going to move them somewhere else, particularly maybe on the other side of the net as the net front guy. And so now penalty kills are like, all right, we've got to cover the bumper, we've got to wait. Where'd he go? Oh crap. They have to adjust into a completely different penalty kill. And it's causing a lot of PK guys some stress. So if you could find a way to like morph it from a 1-3-1 into something else, like that could be, that could be good too. - Love it. - At the older levels anyway. Anyway, time's up. - Cheers. - Share that show. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
On today’s SHORT SHIFTS episode, Toph wants to break down the 1-3-1 power play. How to be successful if you’re playing it - how to stop it if you’re killing against it.
TEN MINUTES ON THE CLOCK STARTING NOW!
We appreciate every listen, download, comment, rating and share on your social sites!
