Dallas Brought Desperation And Tactical Adjustments To Game 4, VGK’s Turn To Counter

The Golden Knights have the Stars on the brink. With their backs against the wall, Vegas knew they’d get everything Dallas had left in the tank in Game 4. That of course comes with the cliches of desperation, higher levels of intensity, and in this particular series, trying to keep the season alive long enough to get Jamie Benn back from suspension.

Desperation was the highest it’s been. At home, you know what’s on the line, what the stakes are. Everyone came to play and we’re going to need that same desperation through these next three games. -Jason Robertson

What Game 4 also came with was a few new players in the Dallas lineup, a brand new set of lines through the bottom-nine, and a couple of tactical tweaks.

We felt they were forechecking the puck side very heavily and trying to outnumber us on that side. So that took away a little but of our ability to break out on the strong side. When we did we were good, and we did on the first goal by Karlsson. They were on us quicker after that. So we tried to change sides with some rims and we tried to balance our breakouts but that’s one area I noticed for sure they were more content to forecheck us and it worked for them. -Cassidy

As Cassidy mentioned, one of the first times the Stars tried to aggressively attack the strong side of Vegas’ breakout, the Golden Knights beat it and ended up scoring a goal. Watch.

As you can see, all five Stars players are on one side of the ice. Reilly Smith makes an excellent play along the boards to eliminate the pinching Ryan Suter and the Golden Knights are off to the races.

Of course, there’s a lot more to do on this play to end up putting it into the back of the net (including getting a lot of help from Suter’s peculiar route back into his own zone), but it all started with a clean breakout against a numbers disadvantage along the wall.

That adjustment would pay off for the Stars though. Here’s the very next time they got the puck in deep.

The play is almost identical, except this time Miro Heiskanen makes the pinch along the wall and beats Brett Howden where on the last one Smith beat Suter. There’s a quick little D-to-D pass along the boards and then it’s sent up the wall. In both instances, there are more Stars in the area than Golden Knights. If Dallas wins with the numbers advantage, they keep the play alive, if they don’t, Vegas is out with a rush chance.

Their defense was pinching a little bit and giving us some chances for 2-on-1’s and 3-on-2’s. Sometimes with that, you get caught going the wrong way, and they got some opportunities. We didn’t do a good enough job making it difficult on them. We get another opportunity in two days, but we can learn from this. -Smith

Cassidy noticed one other adjustment rolled out by Pete DeBoer as well.

In the neutral zone they want to get the puck wide when they can and then into speed either by changing sides or getting it into the middle if they can. I think it was just us in between our checking. They kind of play that way anyway but they just played better at it than we defended it. -Cassidy

On a neutral zone draw win, William Carrier and Keegan Kolesar are caught in between forechecking and dropping into the standard 1-2-2 neutral zone defense. A simple D-to-D pass followed by an unchallenged diagonal pass through the neutral zone eliminates both Carrier and Kolesar. This forces the defensemen and center, Teddy Blueger, to bail at the blue line and allow the controlled entry.

Unlike the overly aggressive strong side forecheck which will force the Golden Knights to break the puck out differently, this adjustment can be countered by better execution.

As the series heads back to T-Mobile Arena for Game 5, Cassidy will have his players even better prepared to adapt to what DeBoer and Co. are throwing at them. Vegas remain in dominant position in the series, and while the Stars aren’t going to go down easy, the Golden Knights have the answers to pass the test, they just have to go out and do it one more time in the next three games.