Hurricanes at Bolts: How a poorly played aggressive forecheck will kill you

Friday night the Bolts played one of the few teams trailing them in the standings. If they want to make any kind of push to the playoffs, these are must win games.  The Hurricanes are an aggressive forechecking team.  Sending in 3 forwards to the same corner and keeping their D at the offensive zone blue line.  However, the whole game they were unable to establish any kind of forecheck.  The Bolts did a great job with a quick transition game, but the Hurricanes were also pretty horrible at executing their forecheck.  If you forecheck aggressively, and you make mistakes or you don't hustle, you will get killed.  Case in point....the Lightning's first goal of the night.

The play starts with Carolina doing a good job of getting the puck deep and forcing the D to turn their back to chase the puck.  Now it is up for the Carolina forecheckers (circled in blue) to haul ass and either cause a turn over, or at least make it tough for the D to cleanly break out.  Urm...these two guys circled pretty much coast the whole play.  If i'm a Carolina fan, I'm pissed at the serious lack of effort  here.

If forechecker circled in blue would have actually hustled, he'd be 1 or 2 ft away from Gervais when he plays this puck instead of the 6 ft away he is currently.  Gervais is going to play the puck up the boards (red arrow) and then it's forechecker circled in green to attack.  Forechecker in green coasts...the...whole...way...there.... 

So instead of reaching for the puck like he is here, 59 on the 'Canes should be all over Downie.  Instead Downie has plenty of time to play this puck up the boards.  To make matters worse, the player circled in green here is a D man who stepped up and the guy circled in blue is the forward "covering" for the D man.  Leaving defender circled in yellow the only man back.  Downie will flip this up the boards and Marty and Stamkos take off (red arrows) and start up the 2 on 1.  And when you give Marty and Stammer a 2 on 1, you usually give up a goal.

Here's the whole thing for you to watch.  Keep an eye on the 2 forecheckers and see how they totally coast, making their aggressive forecheck, not only ineffective, but also a huge liability.

Hockey is often a game about details.  Here's a small mistake here that leads to Stamkos' 2nd goal.  It starts with the Hurricanes getting the puck in deep (successfully) and being first on the puck (successfully), except the Hurricane forward will lose the one on one battle to MA Bergeron of all defensemen.

Here the Hurricanes are in a good position to start a cycle and get some offensive zone pressure.  Except...

MA Bergeron wins the one on one battle, moves the puck up to Downie (red arrow).  Almost similar to the goal we looked at above, the defender and third forward high will move to Downie and will drop the puck down to Marty (yellow arrow).  Stamkos and Marty are off to the races as soon as the Bolts get control of the puck (green arrow).  The play will unfold and quite honestly, even tho it's Stamkos it is very embarassing to see him walk through 2 defenders to get the shot off on Ward, but kudos to Stammer for pulling it off.  (and kudus to Purcell for his goal too, tho those 2 defensmen he walked through should have received an ear full from the Canes' coach)

So while an aggressive forecheck might be fun to watch, if you don't hustle the whole time and if you aren't smart about when you pinch you will get burned.  The Lightning usually don't play with an aggressive forecheck.  However, even when they are aggressive on the forecheck, Boucher does a good job of reminding the players to go hard and to not over commit to let an easy rush go the other way.

Hurricanes Scouting Report

Here is an unedited version of my scouting report on the Hurricanes.  I got a little sick this weekend, so I didn't get a chance to take these notes and turn it into a blog post proper, but since I took the time to write these notes down, I suppose I might as well post it.  The first Hurricanes PP goal came off of a good screen from a fwd who got behind the Lightning D.  And I tweeted that the Hurricanes played a crap game.  A large part of their identity is a strong forecheck and they totally failed at it.

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They are very good at getting good position in front of the net.  They will force themselves behind the D to be in a good position for a rebound.  Important not to leave the D zone too quickly, because they will have one forward stay in front of the net and if their D holds the puck up at their offensive blue line that forward will be wide open if our D starts flying out of the zone prematurely.  The fwds actually float in the slot if the puck is down low to try to set up a shot to a forward in the slot.  However, if the puck moves back to the point, the forwards will then quickly try to get behind the defense for a rebound.

Hard forechecking team, will send all 3 forwards to the boards in one corner to dig the puck out.  Extremely fast transition team.  If the Bolts turn the puck over they will rush up the ice very quickly.