How The Golden Knights Neutralized Minnesota’s Net Front Game In Series Opener

When the Minnesota Wild are at their best, they play a fairly simple game offensively. It involves lots of low-to-high puck movement followed by creating chaos in front of the opposing goal.

Before the series, head coach John Hynes praised the Golden Knights’ big defense corps and directed his team to consistently deliver pucks to the net to break it down. In Game 1, they did just that, racking up 70 shot attempts but were only able to muster two goals.

That’s because of Vegas’ commitment to stopping that plan of attack at every pass.

This started with VGK’s focus on limiting time and space when the puck got into shooting positions on the outside. Vegas’ wingers did an excellent job of speeding up Minnesota’s defensemen, leading to a bunch of rushed attempts before the Wild forwards could establish proper position.

Next came an increased focus on blocking shots. The Golden Knights blocked 20 or more shots in just 15 of the 82 regular season games. On Sunday, they stepped in front of 25, and 14 of VGK’s 18 skaters recorded at least one block. Brayden McNabb led the way with six.

You want to try and box out early, but at times that can be hard. So you want to be on their sticks and in the lanes if you can, and you just want to make life easy on Hill. If you are in the shot lane, you have to make sure you block it and then get a clear in front. -McNabb

Rushed shots and blocked shots are why of Minnesota’s 70 shot attempts, just 20 made it on goal to Adin Hill. But that’s all part of the Wild’s plan, though, which is why the final piece of the puzzle was the most important in Game 1 and will continue to be moving forward: boxing out and tying up sticks.

As weird as it sounds, the Wild are okay with firing shots into traffic, knowing full well they are unlikely to hit the back of the net. A perfect example is their second goal. Kirill Kaprizov had the puck at the top of the circle with three Golden Knights between him and the goal. However, Wild center Ryan Hartman had positioned himself underneath the VGK defense, creating a potential tip opportunity. As Kaprizov delivered the puck, Reilly Smith attempted to tie up Hartman’s stick while Noah Hanifin looked to block the shot. The shot was indeed blocked, but it bounced out to an uncovered Matt Boldy. Because of Hartman’s positioning, Boldy was able to take the puck around the back of the goal and stuff it in without being challenged.

That goal was an outlier though. For the majority of the game, the Golden Knights were excellent at defending every layer of the Wild’s high shot volume tactics. Here are a few examples.

As you’ll see through the clips, the wingers are constantly closing to the shooter by either taking away space or stepping into shooting lanes. Then, VGK’s defensemen do a great job of boxing out the Wild attackers, keeping them from the front of the goal. And finally, when a player does get loose, every Wild stick is tied up.

Aside from Kaprizov, the Wild do not have a ton of high-end skill to break down Vegas’ staunch zone defense. So, they’re going to keep relying on what we saw in Game 1.

The Golden Knights passed the test in the opener.