Avalanche strong play away from puck vital against Lightning in Cup Final

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2021-22 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who will turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. Rocky Thompson and Dave Barr will take turns providing insight.
In this edition, Thompson, who was an assistant with the Edmonton Oilers in 2014-15 and an associate coach with the San Jose Sharks in 2020-21, looks at what the Colorado Avalanche did so well in their sweep of the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final and what challenges they're going to present to the Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Final.

The Colorado Avalanche's ability to play without the puck really shone for me in the Western Conference Final against the Edmonton Oilers.
The Avalanche won the best-of-7 series in four games and will face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Final. Game 1 is at Ball Arena on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN+, ABC, CBC, SN, TVAS).
The Colorado-Edmonton series began with two dominant lines against each other, Edmonton's line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl against Nathan MacKinnon's line for Colorado. But then Edmonton went another way by splitting McDavid and Draisaitl for Game 2.
However they played it, though, the Oilers were never really able to get anything sustained going at 5-on-5 in the series. One of the biggest reasons was something I looked at in the last Coaches Room before the series began, that Colorado defensemen Cale Makar and Devon Toews had the legs to potentially contain the Oilers' big horses.
Those two were really effective in defending McDavid off the rush and in D-zone coverage. I noticed that they had a lot of help from their forwards, who did a good job tracking and deflecting McDavid and his line. Colorado's top line of MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin has speed and it was an outstanding five-man connection through the mid-zone, something Edmonton didn't see so much in the second round against the Calgary Flames.
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Colorado's gaps were better and the forwards helped the defensemen with those gaps. The Avalanche have defensemen who skate better, too, and that was a big asset.
Here, I want to mention something about Bowen Byram. When the Avalanche lost Samuel Girard with a fractured sternum in the second round, I was concerned about how it would affect their defense. Byrum stepped in to fill this void and I felt he did a tremendous job. With his ability to move the puck and fuel possession, this softened the loss of Girard.
Byrum was forced on occasion to play against McDavid and Draisaitl, which initially I thought could be detrimental. But as I witnessed, it wasn't detrimental at all. He did a great job containing the top line when tasked to do so. Byrum was composed. He never overpursued. He was always tight to either McDavid or Draisaitl, helping prevent them from generating scoring chances when he was on the ice.
McDavid had more challenges at 5-on-5 than he did in the Calgary series. There was less time and space through the middle and offensive zones against Colorado and the credit has to be shared between Colorado's forwards and defensemen.
Their forwards tracked with speed and angled well to deflect and prevent McDavid from consistently building speed. McDavid obviously got opportunities during the series, but Makar and Toews especially were able to stay with him and mirror the speed. It's a huge advantage in defending.
Having spoken a great deal about Colorado's play without the puck, let me pose this question. Although good, was that play without the puck more a derivative of their play with the puck?
Let me explain. Who had the puck first when they got on the ice? Colorado. Possession was slanted one way. When you have possession early in a shift, you're really taking a leg out for your opponents.
It's another thing I wrote about the Avalanche when they faced the Blues. It was like an insurance policy, having the puck so much early in the shift, and it affected the Oilers, too. Quite often, I saw McDavid and his teammates get the puck during their shift, but they had been defending for 20 or more seconds and had to work to get it back from Colorado's strong possession play. That's not easy, and it certainly takes some sting out of what offense may come back after regaining possession.
Edmonton had a lot of stalled offense in the series because of that. It was an important factor in the outcome. Possession is so valuable. It doesn't mean you're going to win every game. But when you combine it with the horses and the discipline, you've made it hard for another team to beat you. I see it as a factor ahead.
Here's another domino from the way Colorado plays, the way they possess the puck and the way they're able to defend. I saw Edmonton getting really frustrated. They took some penalties that became costly. Draisaitl appeared to be very frustrated. I'm sure it was partly because he was fighting so hard through that ankle injury but it sure looked like it was spilling out onto the ice at times, that he was upset.
I also saw Evander Kane take a few penalties that he hadn't taken in a while and in the end, it did hurt them when he took that major penalty for hitting Nazem Kadri at the start of Game 3, resulting in his suspension for Game 4, and they really missed him then.
Colorado was pretty disciplined in this series but when they did take penalties, they were able to neutralize a strong Edmonton power play and held them to 2-for-11. And here, the Avalanche surprised me. They didn't do what I thought they should have, which was get aggressive against Edmonton's power play and force them into mistakes.
Instead, the Avalanche showed an impressive ability to adapt and they were as passive as I've ever seen. They chose to put the focus on position, especially body position with their strong-side defenseman, probably because Edmonton had been so good with Zach Hyman scoring goals on that back-door play.
Colorado effectively took away Edmonton's seams with how collapsed they were and they said to the Oilers, "you can have all the high-ice plays you want." They didn't worry about the shot from high and their own shot-blockers like J.T. Compher and Andrew Cogliano and Nichushkin, they were eating shots when it came to that. And the shot from the top was not Edmonton's power-play lifeblood.
Without seams, Edmonton had to use the top D to get it over to the other side and that gave Colorado's defenders time to shift. They just couldn't penetrate Colorado's defenders very much, no matter what they did. This allowed Pavel Francouz to move less and face tough but savable shots.
Edmonton tried to create some motion to combat all of that. McDavid can be particularly good at that but Colorado was all over it. Their forward closest to that motion just went with him and that's when you saw Colorado get aggressive and they were able to limit his space, keep him to the outside and limiting him from creating scoring chances.
And having executed all those things so well, Colorado's reward was time to rest and reset. They'll get plenty of preparation as an advantage, even altitude to start the series, right? They're used to the physiology of playing at home at Ball Arena; their sea-level opponents in the Final will not be.
It does not concern me much that the Avalanche have more than a week between series. They've done that already with their first-round sweep of Nashville, plus the Lightning will also have had four days or so to get ready for the Final. So, no real disadvantage there.
I'm so excited to watch the Final. Being a hockey junkie, what more could I ask for with these high-powered offensive teams coming together to fight for the Stanley Cup? They say defense wins championships and I agree. But who doesn't love to see two heavyweights get into a punching contest? I can't wait.