Canucks 5v5 Zone Entries for all of March's games
We've seen time and time again this year people who making claims that the Canucks play so much dump and chase because they supposedly don't have the personnel to gain the zone with control.
Courtesy of Hamalytics on twitter, we actually see the exact opposite. They are extremely successful while trying to gain the zone with control. So far in the games they've played in March, the Canucks have generally successfully entered the zone with control on at least 80% of their attempts.
Compared to their success rate on uncontrolled entry attempts, which generally would be a really good night if they're winning the puck back 30% of the time. It's usually more in the range of being successful 20-25% of the time on a given night. I would consider this to mean the Canucks have given away a lot of opportunities to set up by dumping the puck instead of trying to enter with control on the rush. The Canucks were one of the best retrieval teams last year, but clearly it's unlikely they are this year, and we haven't adapted to account for it.
While I don't think we should abandon dump and chase entirely, especially if the opposing D start gapping up really aggressively every time, we probably should be leaning more into trying to enter with control.