Film Room Focus: Why St. Thomas Won

By: E.J. Freeman | MCLA.us

ATLANTA, GA- This is a new content idea around here.  The Film Room Focus series will take games readily available on YouTube and I will analyze the game in question.  The links below will take you directly to the referenced clip and play within the article.  I realize this game took place months ago, but if we're going to be breaking down games, why not start with the two National Championship games from last Spring.  We open the series with the DII title game between St. Thomas and Grand Valley State.

St. Thomas won their seventh national championship back in May.  The Tommies had lost the last two national championship games, so it should not have been a surprise to see them back in the title game.  They faced off against Grand Valley State for the third time that season, with each team having won one of the prior two meetings.

I’d wager that if you told Grand Valley State Head Coach Tim Murray that his Lakers would hold the Tommies scoreless for nearly thirty minutes of the national championship game ahead of time he would have gladly taken that result.  So, how did the Tommies overcome that scoring drought and still take home the trophy? 

In general for the Tommies, the name of the game is defense.  They only allowed double digit scoring three times all year (Grand Valley State, Northwest Nazarene, and Montana State). The Lakers came into the game averaging over 17 goals per game, but the Tommies managed to hold them to six in the final game of the season.

During the aforementioned scoring drought, the Tommies’ defense only allowed the Lakers to build a 4-2 lead.  A strong defense is always built on more than one thing, but upon watching the game, what stood out to me was the ability of the St. Thomas short sticks to play aggressive one-on-one defense without needing slide support.  If a defense has to slide, there will always be an opening somewhere and it becomes a race between the offense and the defense to see if the ball can find the opening before the defense can recover.  The St. Thomas short sticks were able to press out aggressively on the Lakers and often did not need slide support, so the defense was almost never compromised in rotations or bad switches.  The clip below shows some of this strong short stick defense.

Now, contrast that clip with the one below where the Tommies do show a slide and create a scramble that leads to the Lakers’ fourth goal just before halftime.

The advantage of not having to slide should be pretty clear.

The Lakers built their lead with goals resulting from a few of the times the St. Thomas defense showed and sent slides.  The prior clip being the fourth goal of the game and the following clip being the goal that first put  the Lakers ahead.  St. Thomas shows a slide ready to go off of Luke Tardich on the crease and Tardich alertly backs out to open space and crashes the back pipe.  The St. Thomas defense does not appear ready to support this slide as the defenders who could help cover Tardich are both concerned with their own man leaving Tardich open on the backside pipe to put the Lakers ahead.

Now contrast that with the following clip when Grand Valley runs almost the same play later in the game, but the Tommies do not show a slide this time.  The Lakers try to make a similar pass, but the St. Thomas defender is right there and gets a piece of the pass deflecting it out of bounds.

In addition to the strong short stick defense, St. Thomas goalie Gunner Arens made 14 saves, turning away most of the quality chances that Grand Valley was able to generate.  The clip below is just one of several high quality saves that Arens made on the day.

The Tommies were able to clear the ball well throughout the game, which helped keep their defense rested as a tired defense most certainly would have been forced to slide more and thus created more openings and chances for the opponents.  Attackman Layne Kology had one goal on the day, but was instrumental in the Tommies clearing game and also came up with several groundballs.  The clip below shows Kology working to help get the ball cleared late in the game after the Tommies had just turned away an extra man opportunity for the Lakers.

A few minutes later, with the Lakers attempting to the clear the ball and get it to their offense for a last gasp attempt to comeback with under three minutes remaining, it was Kology again making a play.  He caused the turnover, got the groundball, and moved it to his teammate allowing the Tommies to kill more time and ice the game.

Coming into the fourth quarter, the Lakers had won of 9 of 13 faceoffs, but the Tommies were able to split the fourth quarter faceoffs winning three and losing three allowing them to build some rhythm offensively.  As a result, the Tommies scored five fourth quarter goals after scoring five through the first three quarters of the game and secure the 10-6 victory.

So, how do you win the national championship game after going scoreless for nearly 30 minutes?  You play strong defense and keep the game in reach until your offense can find their footing again.