You know how NHLers sometimes appear to have eyes in the backs of their heads? Well, they don’t, but they can often make educated guesses without looking behind them that one of their linemates will be there if they make a drop pass at the top of the slot or fling a blind backhander across the blue line. 

It’s not a perfect science, but it is all by design. Hockey looks chaotic at times, but on every inch of the ice, teams have a plan. Players are supposed to be heading to specific places, skating in specific directions and routes, and covering specific areas to make themselves “predictable” to their teammates. 

“If you know where your teammate’s going to be based on structure, it’s so much easier to play, and that’s where the skill will take over later on,” Seattle Kraken forward Tomas Tatar said. “But if you don’t have the basics in the structure, then you’re kind of playing without knowing where the other players will be, so that just makes it harder.” 

Systems are complicated, and the game is so fluid that it’s sometimes hard to decipher which one a team is deploying. For example, if the Kraken have the puck in the offensive zone, all five players have specific jobs they’re supposed to be doing. But those jobs can change in a flash, depending on where the puck is and what the defense is doing. Maybe the center goes to the slot and waits for a pass while the wing pulls it off the wall, like we saw when Shane Wright scored his second goal of the game against the Ducks last Saturday. 

But if the puck is contested along the kick plate in the corner, perhaps all three forwards should be cycling to create confusion for the defense. And once the puck gets turned over, now suddenly the Kraken shift to their offensive-zone forecheck, looking to win the puck back. Fail to do that? Now they’re backchecking, and those switches from system to system all happen instantaneously.

We were curious about how much of what we see at the NHL level is pre-planned and how much is improvised, so we chatted with several Kraken players to find out. 

Why systems exist

Systems exist in hockey for several important reasons. 

1. They help players know where their teammates will be in those moments when they have to make split-second decisions. And while it’s still not advised to truly make a blind pass, players can look like wizards by evading pressure with passes into areas where they expect their teammates to be, even if they don’t physically see them there.
2. When a team has the puck, the offensive systems are all designed to overlap with one another with the goal of creating chances. On the flip side, defensive systems in all three zones are designed to minimize dangerous chances against and win back control of the puck, but they also create redundancies. If one player misses an assignment or gets out of position, there should often be somebody there as a backup. 
3. By operating within the confines of these systems, a player with the puck should typically have multiple options that will allow them to work around what the opposing team is doing defensively. 
4. They take the thinking out of the game for players, because, as Jaden Schwartz said, “Hockey happens so fast, you don’t really have time to think.”

Schwartz succinctly explained the systematic approach to the game from a Kraken perspective. “We do have systems as far as breakouts and going through the neutral zone and guys knowing their roles, not only for them to get the puck, but for them to maybe take a defender with them, and maybe it leaves another guy open. So there’s definitely some parts that we try to do consistently to kind of use our speed and get going offensively.”

The pace of play in the NHL makes structure even more crucial than at lower levels, where players typically have more time to look up, find a target, and make a pass. When an NHL player doesn’t have enough time to do that, they can often rely on the team’s structure and their muscle memory to make a quick play and (hopefully) keep the puck heading in the right direction. 

Reading and reacting

Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and that’s why NHL players also need elite skill to go with their understanding of their team’s structure. Rarely can a player simply follow a route as it’s drawn up on the whiteboard, make a pass to a linemate that is exactly where the coach told them to be, and watch them go in and score. It just doesn’t work that way. 

“It’s usually just a read-and-react, instincts kind of thing because we have gameplans, but it depends on where [the opponents] are and what they’re doing a little bit,” Schwartz said. “Usually you’re just kind of playing off instincts and reading and reacting and kind of taking what they give you. But that kind of affects what you’re going to do with the puck and where the guys are going to go.” 

So, within the systems, players have the freedom to make their own reads and try to create, based on what is happening in front of them. When you see a forward line that has “good chemistry,” it means that even when they aren’t following to a T what the team structure tells them to do, they’re still able to make an effective play by inherently knowing where their teammate is going.

“I think a lot of it for me is reading the play, understanding where the space is, and then obviously repetition of when you’re with guys and you’ve played with them for a while, that chemistry,” Jordan Eberle said. “[You learn] tendencies and things they like to do, and that kind of helps you make your thought process a little bit quicker and makes things predictable, which, for me, is how you play fast.”

It’s almost like the structure and the game plans give the players a loose roadmap to the ice, but then there are a million different paths they can take to get to the same destination, depending on what obstacles they face. 

3-on-2 (or 4-on-2?) rushes

In these last couple Kraken games, a good example that you can look for to see players making reads in real time is when they get a 3-on-2 rush that starts in the neutral zone. When this happens, the puck carrier makes a decision, and the other two attackers try to do something that will increase the team’s chances to score.

There are a few options for the puck carrier on a 3-on-2 rush. For one, they can stay along the boards and buy time for the other attackers to go hard to the net, looking for a pass and a tap-in. The puck carrier can also cut hard to the middle, which can lead to a cross-and-drop, or another angle for a netmouth tap-in. Or, they could simply funnel the puck to the net, meaning the puck carrier stays wide and shoots from distance, hoping for a rebound to one of the other two attackers who are straight-lining it to the top of the crease.

As the puck carrier is making this decision, the other attackers need to be recognizing what the carrier is doing and moving in a way that either makes them an option for a pass or gives them body position to win a rebound. So, there’s a lot happening in a play that lasts under five seconds. It’s a good example, though, of how teams have general guidelines for what they’re supposed to do, but the players still need to make their own real-time decisions on the ice.

A 3-on-2 rush can often lead to chances, but a 4-on-2 rush tends to create even more dangerous opportunities. But there are only three forwards on the ice at any given time, so who is the fourth player in that scenario? Well, it’s a defenseman of, course. Activating a defenseman on the rush is something Seattle does regularly, but it can be risky. If the Kraken turn the puck over or even get a big rebound off the goalie’s pads, it can lead to an odd-man rush in the other direction.

“We like getting our D involved and keeping plays alive,” Jamie Oleksiak said. “It confuses coverage when there’s a lot of movement and guys kind of coming up and down, and depending on how the team is playing, it could create some confusion and some opportunities to create offense. I think it’s kind of a systematic thing, just in terms of where guys are coming, and a big part of it is the D-man as well as just knowing that you have that forward support coming back to back you up so you can take those chances down low.”

Indeed, if the defenseman jumps up into the play at the wrong time and doesn’t have their partner or a forward trailing that can get back and help, that defenseman can leave their goalie hung out to dry. 

“There’s so many different factors that go into it, like at what point in the game it is, what the score is,” Oleksiak said. “But I think for the most part, teams are so good defensively at getting coverage back that you kind of need that fourth or fifth guy to join in a rush and give you that option and kind of space things out a little bit. But it’s really up to [the defenseman’s] discretion. You’ve got to read the point of the game, the momentum, and if you’re up a goal or two, maybe you don’t take that chance. Maybe you play a little bit more conservatively.” 

Oleksiak added that facing a 4-on-2 rush is a “worst-case scenario” for a defenseman, who can only cover so much of the ice.

The Kraken were victimized by a defenseman jumping up in the play last week against the Sharks. Here, Seattle had even numbers back for what appeared to be a nothing play. But Kyle Burroughs jumped up and made himself available to William Eklund, and Burroughs potted the eventual winning goal.

Sharks score two goals in a row to make it 3-1.

This first one came from Burroughs as the trailer to make it 2-1. pic.twitter.com/7cBhW9F5Kj

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) April 12, 2024

Playing fast

The other thing we learned from these conversations about Seattle’s tactics was teams that execute the best within their systems are the ones that look the fastest. The margins of skill and physical speed are slim from player to player and team to team in the NHL, which is what makes execution so critical.

“I honestly think there’s not many teams left who are not fast,” Tatar said. “The league is getting faster and faster, and I feel like everybody wants to play fast. Some teams are faster than other ones, but the concept of playing fast is pretty much everywhere.

“The good teams just know, playing very structurally, and this helps the speed, and all of a sudden the team looks super fast.” 

This was the biggest difference we saw between the Kraken and some of their better opponents this season. When you saw the Dallas Stars (for example) cruise through the neutral zone with ease against Seattle in two recent matchups, they looked lightning quick. You would see a one-touch pass in the middle of the ice, in which a Stars forward would catch another one perfectly in stride, and suddenly Dallas was in perfect position in the offensive zone with Seattle on its heels.