The Red Wings surrendered 42 shots and 89 shot attempts over the course of Saturday night’s 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators.
That’s not a sustainable number of shot attempts to be allowing your opponents to wind up and unleash upon you, even when the Red Wings blocked 31 of those shot attempts, and Cam Talbot stopped 42 more of them.
For one night, however–or every once in a while–hockey can be a game of survival, and the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood asked defenseman Justin Holl and coach Derek Lalonde about the Wings‘ in-the-moment perspectives on the shot-blocking job that the team undertook on Saturday:
“It’s kind of funny when you’re out there because you’re so focused on trying to make the playing and blocking the shot that even if it hurts, it still feels good mentally. “Like, ‘OK I did my job,’ ” said defenseman Justin Holl, who blocked four shots Saturday in his season debut. “But obviously you’ll have some bumps and bruises.”
These blocks came from a variety of sources. Eleven out of 18 skaters recorded at least one. Defenseman Moritz Seider led with seven. Defensemen Ben Chiarot and Simon Edvinsson blocked four and three, respectively. Among forwards, Joe Veleno‘s three blocks paced the group. Even scoring winger Alex DeBrincat, not known as a particularly strong defender, made two blocks. All of these players paid up to help out Talbot.
This all begs the question: How sustainable is a 31-block night? As much as the Red Wings’ defense can be happy to have pitched a shutout, having to block 31 shots in a game requires them to go through a lot of pain and potential injury risk. Right now, both are necessary when Detroit sees 87 shot attempts, as the Predators took Saturday night. But the next step is for the Red Wings to whittle down those shot attempts so they don’t have to block so many.
Even if the Red Wings limited the amount of attempts that reached Cam Talbot, who pitched a shutout for his seventh NHL team Saturday, they still would rather deny attempts in general. By denying shooting lanes, possessing the puck and staying on top of opposing skaters, Detroit can limit the attempts it faces. In other words, improved defensive play can take away the need to lay out in front of a shot to begin with.
Puck possession definitely limits shot attempts against, and strong defensive play, where you’re playing close to your opponent and preventing their sticks from accessing time and space in which to shoot pucks at the goal via stick-checking and generally good body position, all add up. Moreover, if you’re playing with the puck in the other team’s zone, you’re threatening to shoot on the other team instead.
Coach Lalonde acknowledged as much:
“I can compliment our team on how many Grade-A looks we didn’t give up, but the shot volume — you take that any time as an opposing team,” Lalonde said after Sunday’s practice, an optional one with just 10 participants. “They were in the high 80s on shot attempts; they almost doubled us. A lot of that is they spent half a period, almost 10 full minutes, either on a goalie pull or power play, a man up, and they were chasing a game. It’s that balance all the time — you appreciate the willingness to block shots. It really helped us last night. But if you give up volume like that, you need to block shots like that, so you’d like to cut down on that volume and that zone time.”
Over time, the Wings’ defense is going to have to improve through a team-wide commitment to puck possession and denying opponents shot attempts to begin with, because you can’t face nearly 90 shot attempts every night in a game where 40-50 shot attempts are an acceptable amount, and 60-70 are “a lot.”
In the moment, however, you do what’s necessary to keep pucks out of your net, and that’s what the Wings did on Saturday night.
