The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.
In this edition, Craig Johnson, a former assistant with the Anaheim Ducks and Ontario of the American Hockey League and development coach with the Los Angeles Kings, looks ahead to Game 3 of the Western Conference Second Round between the Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Saturday (9 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX). Edmonton leads 2-0 in the best-of-7 series after winning the first two games in Las Vegas.
If you’re the Vegas Golden Knights, you probably like a lot of what you did in their 5-4 overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 2 on Thursday other than the result.
I thought the Golden Knights played better in Game 2 than Game 1. They did a really good job with their forecheck and creating opportunities off it and did a better job of creating a little bit of a ground game with their ability to handle pucks down low. They had good offensive zone structure and were able to hit the pocket, the area in the face-off circle, multiple times.
That’s the one area Edmonton had trouble covering was that pocket, so Vegas found that area and created opportunities.
The Golden Knights’ power play was outstanding (2-for-4) and the adjustments they made paid off. On one of the goals, they went low and backdoor to Victor Olofsson. On the other, the Oilers basically took away down low, but Mark Stone slipped around to the back post and Jack Eichel ended up hitting Olofsson through the low seam. Vegas moved the bumper (William Karlsson) a little bit higher to open that low seam.
So, the Oilers will have to adjust on their penalty kill. Their low guy on the kill, the guy in front of the net, has been challenged. Understanding that, can they get help from the other penalty killers to share coverage on the bumper, which will allow the net-front defenseman to play the 2-on-1? The goalie also needs to help with those passes that go through the crease.
The Golden Knights didn’t score on all of them, but they need to keep doing what they’re doing as far as going at goalie Calvin Pickard. Vegas bumped Pickard quite a bit and made him uncomfortable.
Both teams have done a good job of creating traffic in front, so the goalies are having trouble seeing a lot of the shots that are getting through from the point. So, I think that’s something the Golden Knights can build on in Game 3 -- continuing to get traffic and trying to get second-effort rebounds. The Oilers are getting a lot of traffic in front, but it’s not necessarily leading to goals, so they’ve got to continue to hunt those rebounds, find sticks and tips. The Golden Knights were really good at clearing rebounds in Game 2.
An area where the Oilers have excelled is on breakouts. In Game 1, a lot of their breakouts led to chances, and in Game 2, their breakouts led to two goals.
On Leon Draisaitl’s winning goal, Corey Perry makes the wall play, he hits it up to Connor McDavid, and McDavid does the rest on a nice 2-on-1. Vegas did a good job of neutralizing McDavid and Draisaitl in Game 2, but then all the sudden they get a little bit of room.
The other goal that came off the breakout was Vasily Podkolzin’s that gave Edmonton a 2-1 lead in the second period. That started with a wall play by Viktor Arvidsson in the defensive zone.
Another thing the Oilers did well was they changed the point of attack quite a bit, whether it be with a pass behind the net or them skating it behind the net or a rim-out from the goal line all the way to the blue line. They created a lot of offense and zone time from that.
