It was around 2017 when I first began truly diving into the coaching side of the game. Whether it was hockey or football, I had always had an interest in tactics. I remember in middle school; a teacher took away a bunch of papers I was scribbling on trying to figure out how to beat Tampa’s 1-3-1 neutral zone forecheck that took the league by storm under Guy Boucher. Now, I think it has ended up being the part of the game I am most aligned with by people in the hockey sphere.
My biggest mentor when I entered the hockey analytics sphere was Ryan Stimson. I’ve mentioned him on this blog quite a bit already and for good reason. The work that he put out led a lot of the “tactalytics” growth in the game throughout the late 2010’s. His study on low-to-high offense and its lack of productivity seemed particularly influential on teams who were paying attention.
In 2017, Stimson explored some analysis looking at results based on breakout schemes. He found that over plays, where the first player back passes the puck to their support that is to the left or right of them, was the most effective scheme of breaking the puck out. That was followed by similar east-west schemes wheel and reverse.
I also looked into this a couple of times using the Maple Leafs and the Bruins as my data sources. In the Babcock part of the Leafs 2019-20 season, I found similar findings to Stimson. However, in some matchups between the Bruins and Maple Leafs in 2018-19, I found that the Bruins were more successful using the basic up, which is a north-south strategy.
Based on my experience, I do not think that there is such thing as a superior breakout scheme across the league or sport. However, I do find the idea of slashing up breakout data by schemes to try to gain insights on what is happening. Plus, if you have the breakout splits, you are in a better position to make changes if you see necessary.
One thing that I think the Bruins have been trying to work on since the Christmas break has been becoming a faster team. I suppose you could try to make your skaters faster, but ultimately, that’s not going to get you anywhere. Looking at the NHL Edge data, the Bruins are one of the slowest teams in the NHL.
I don’t think that this data has been sifted through enough to draw many conclusions from, but I do think it matches what many already feel intuitively. When it comes to playing fast, to me, that all has to do with the ability to move the puck with control to the areas you want it to be, not how quickly you can skate with or without the puck. When you are in your own zone, you want to get it to the neutral zone as quickly as possible. One way to measure that is to look at breakout schemes.
Reaching back to my old roots, this past week, I decided to add a tag for the breakout scheme for every exit attempt. Those schemes were:
Up
Counter
Over
Rim
Wheel
Reverse
Goalie
For those who are unfamiliar, you can find most of them here. Counter is sort of a north-south plug that I tried to have in order to split simply skating the puck forward, or lobbing he puck out of the zone, from up. Looking back, I’m not sure if that was all that necessary. Goalie was simply just breakouts that started with the goaltender. Luckily, these were rare.
Here is how the data looked game-by-game:
For something that can vary so much, the basic pattern of north-south usage being highest and east-west plays having high failure rates seemed to persist. Personally, that helps me be a bit more comfortable moving forward and looking at the aggregate data.
North-south breakout plays were used significantly more frequently, had a higher rate of control exiting the zone, and a significantly lower rate of failure. The last part is extremely important as, while we want to prioritize controlled exits and will be willing to yield more failures as a tradeoff, that tradeoff is not as large as the gap we see in this sample.
Plus, not every uncontrolled exit is the same. Take Trent Frederic’s glass-and-out with 6:38 left in the third period against the Hurricanes.
Not facing any immediate pressure, Frederic (BOS11) could have skated forward and tried to prioritize control on exit. However, there were three Canes caught low in the zone, and Frederic had two forward teammates dashing across the zone with speed. Furthermore, I don’t think he’d get very far with the Carolina forecheck able to cover ground quickly.
Instead, he temporarily gave up control of the puck to create a one-on-one battle in the neutral zone that would favor the Bruins fowards coming with speed against flat-footed Hurricanes. Oskar Steen (BOS62) won the battle and drew a penalty in the process.
In defense of east-west exit schemes, at times, I think they are doomed from the start. For example, I feel that there has been an increase in hard rims on dump-ins where the puck switches sides. Perhaps goaltenders are playing the puck less, or perhaps I am completely wrong, but this is what happened to Kevin Shattenkirk in the second period against the Canes.
Shattenkirk (BOS12) has to field the puck on his backhand with a forechecker bearing down on him. His ability to move the puck up the wall to the winger is limited. I do not know if he misread the ice. When Shattenkirk shoulder checked prior to touching the puck, it likely appeared to him that Brett Pesce (CAR22) was a third forechecker. Regardless, even though the kick to the center support (BOS18) appears to be open, the comfortable play is to kick the puck back over to his partner’s support (BOS48) behind the net. Unfortunately, the support was slow getting there and it results in a turnover.
Personally, I think the Bruins play their best hockey when they play a north-south game. When they start using the boards and moving the puck sideways, they are far too slow to break down the layers of the sophisticated forechecks they are playing. And while I don’t believe the sample is big enough, this past week’s games rang that true.