How the Bruins Penalty Killing Forecheck Works
An overview of the age-old structure that the Bruins execute in
The Bruins have now clinched the President’s Trophy with their win over Columbus on Thursday night. Their chase for the record wins in a season is still on, although we’ll see how big of an attempt they make to grab it sitting only 3 wins away now. Heading into the postseason, the main on-ice story around the Bruins is their poor powerplay performance - although the pressures have eased over the weekend. And while that’s tempting to write about, I choose to abstain for a few reasons.
For one, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that powerplays are an incredibly individualistic mechanism of the game. It is the part most tailored to the players’ preferred styles, as well as the coaching staff’s circle of expertise. The Bruins powerplay is unique in that it is largely stationary - taking what the opposing penalty kill gives them. That does not match my personal vision for the optimal powerplay, but if that is the way in which the players feel they can most comfortably succeed, there is a value in keeping it that way. Furthermore, measuring the success of a powerplay is difficult to quantify. Particularly, with diagnosing where the powerplay is drawing success or falling behind. My hunch is that the greatest degree of difficulty for the Bruins powerplay right now revolves around entry success, which then bleeds into a lack of success in the offensive zone, but without that data, I do not feel comfortable analyzing that. If I have free time this summer, perhaps I will head through and track the data.
For today’s newsletter, I wanted to keep things on a positive note. One of the most influential people in my life is Matthew McConaughey. In a 2015 speech to the University of Houston graduating class, he delivered the 13 Truths. The seventh truth is dissect your successes. McConaughey says, “We come intoxicated with [our failures] to the point of disillusion.” The type of disillusionment that would cause you to call for sitting David Pastrnak on the powerplay.
McConaughey goes on to say:
We can dissect ourselves into self loathing if we’re not careful — and I find that most of the times our obsession with what is wrong just breeds more wrong and more failure.
I’ve eventually come to live by this. Given the cyclical nature of the world, whether success and failure, happiness and sadness, or good luck and bad luck, a focus on the removal of the negative side of the situation leads to a sense of dissatisfaction and an inability to appreciate the present.
A clear area of success for the Bruins all season long, which I haven’t address on here yet, is their penalty kill. Currently, the Bruins lead the league in PK% (86.9%), allow the fewest expected goals at a rate of 60 minutes (5.97), allow the second fewest unblocked shot attempts at a rate of 60 minutes (61.02), and have the fourth highest save percentage at 4-on-5 (88.9%).
There are two major areas on penalty killing. The first is in-zone defense. This is what people first think about when someone says penalty killing. This is where the penalty killers are trying to get into passing and shooting lanes to reduce the damage of the man disadvantage. The other area is entry defense, otherwise known as the neutral zone forecheck. This part of the game often gets overlooked, but as the Bruins struggle with their entries on the powerplay, it shines a light on how important this part of the game is.
There are three major formations for the penalty killing forecheck. The 1-3 is the most popular around the league. One of the forwards and both of the defensemen sit in a line on the blue line while one forechecker tries to control the direction for the entry. The 2-2, otherwise known as the retreating box, features two passive forecheckers with the defensemen in the back. Again, the goal is to force the puck wide, but it’s a bit more difficult to create good gaps at the blue line than the 1-3. This is why most teams have transitioned to a 1-3 if they choose to have a more passive forecheck.
The Bruins run the remaining forecheck, the 1-1-2 most frequently. I say most frequently as all teams will make slight adjustments to their structure depending on what the other team is giving them. The 1-1-2 forecheck reflects a 1-2-2 forecheck that you see at 5-on-5, but with the second layer consisting now of only a singular forward.
Similar to the other forechecking strategies, the goal of the 1-1-2 forecheck is to funnel the puck to the outside, where the forechecker and defensemen can work together to break up the entry. The unique point of this strategy is how far up the ice the forechecking pressure begins. F1 will begin pressuring the puck carrier far into the offensive zone, disrupting the opponent’s breakout strategy.
For example, on Tuesday night, you will see Tomas Nosek pushing Tyson Barrie towards the boards and forcing the drop pass considerably farther away from where Barrie wants to execute the pass.
But what happens when this falls apart? On Thursday night, the Bruins broke up an entry following a breakdown. The play begins with Zacha pushing the opposing player deep in the zone.
Unfortunately, it is hard to tell, but the Bruins are in their designated formation. Full credit to the Blue Jackets puck carrier, by moving deeper into his own defensive zone, he creates too large of a gap between Zacha and Hathaway. This allows them to run a swing play.
Pardon my imperfect drawing, but the Blue Jackets will be able to escape the first layer, and put Hathaway in the second layer in a rough position. The first thing Hathaway does is make a turn, conceding control of the opponent for the moment.
By regaining depth, Hathway was back in a position to force the puck carrier to move the puck to one side, as well as be in position to assist his defenseman on the entry.
These forechecks require communication between the defensemen and forecheckers. Here, Carlo hands off the new puck carrier to Hathaway who forces the turnover with great angling.
The Bruins follow core neutral zone defensive principals that translate to 5-on-5 and they execute them well. As every team does, they will have their nights where they will have trouble retrieving and clearing pucks, but if they can count on their forecheck to make it difficult to set up, they put themselves in a better position to have a consistently good penalty kill. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.