Hockey: CSU and Oakland Recaps

The Ducks first weekend of the season saw them play the Colorado State Rams In Fort Collins. The Ducks dropped both games by respective scores of 3-1 and 4-1. The underlying stats I track indicate that those scores are reflective of how the games transpired over the total of 120 minutes of play. Let’s start with game 1

Total High Danger Chances:

Coach Hyman went with Thomas Cafarelli in net for his first career start in a Duck uniform and I was quite impressed with what I saw. Based on the quality and volume of chances that the Rams generated I think he did well to only allow 3. Average to below average goaltending would have seen the Ducks give up 4 or 5 goalies easily.

Outside of the crease the Ducks spent the majority of the game defending instead of attacking. Hockey is a bit of a unique game in that, if you are dominating and controlling play you are under no obligation to give the other team the Puck.

Despite that a lot of the Ducks defensemen really did stand out to me as they were making great plays to break up Ram passes, win the puck back in their own zone and make clean exit passes to at least give their forwards a chance at creating some offence. I specifically wanted to single out graduate senior Hunter Voyles and freshmen Austin Kluksdahl. As those two names are all over my notepad for positive plays that would never end up in a box score.

For the forwards I was really encouraged by the all-freshmen line of Zach Orwig, Inde Abresch, and Jackson Ebbott. That line generated the majority of the Ducks’ chances and flashed a lot of offensive potential in their first career game at this level. Hyman’s top line of Dylan Chapman, Jackson Henningsgard, and Noah Easterson was not bad in this game. In fact, they did combine for the only Duck Goal when a shot from the point was blocked, and Dylan Chapman fired a shot from the high slot into the net.

But at the same time this line wasn’t as dominant as they would need to be to justify Hyman loading up the 3 players together which is why I think for the 2^nd game Hyman broke apart that line to spread the wealth a little more.

Total High Danger Chances:

In the second game Hyman went with a different set of forwards line and pairings to see if a different combination of players could generate some more offence. The stats would indicate that it didn’t work as Colorado State was even in more control of Game 2 then Game 1.

The highlights of game 2 were almost the exact same as Game 1 with 1 exception

Speaking of Henningsgard. I thought a big reason that his line with Chapman and Easterson didn’t dominate in game 1 was because of a tough game for Jackson. It seemed like he was just fighting the puck and making a lot of mental mistakes. But in the second game I thought he had a better overall game in all 3 zones and it was nice to see him rewarded with an assist.

Sadly this weekends series against Oakland was not streamed on YouTube so I could not watch the games. Which is really too bad because Friday night Oregon picked up their first win of the season when they dismantled Oakland 10-2 and then followed that up with an 8-1 win on Saturday.