The story coming out coming out of the Tampa Bay-Philadelphia game last night was not the outcome. The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in overtime. The score is second to the major story of the game. During two instances in the game the Flyers refused to move the puck out of their defensive zone and attack Tampa’s 1-3-1 system. It was all the rage on twitter besides the Joe Paterno scandal at Penn State. For those who do not understand what a 1-3-1 is, there is one player who attacks the puck, three players in the neutral zone, and one player back in his own defensive zone. The idea is to create turnovers without attacking the puck. However, last night crossed a line for hockey fans and analysts in the United States and Canada.
Hockey in the United States has been growing coming out of the lockout in 2004-2005, but the display last night in Tampa Bay will hurt the game of hockey. Thirty seconds into the game Tampa Bay employed their system. So Flyers defensemen Braydon Coburn and Kimmo Timonen decided to circle back into their zone and collect the puck. Martin St. Louis of the Lightning was going to fore-check and have backup from his teammates. Nothing happen for thirty seconds except for one pass made by the Flyers defensemen as play was at a standstill. The Flyers did not move the puck out of their zone and Tampa did not attack the puck, a good old fashion stalemate. The referees had to blow the whistle awarding a faceoff to Tampa Bay in Flyers territory. The sequence happened again and the play was blown dead again.
This type of play could have serious ramifications on the game of hockey. Who wants to watch a game where play is stalled for 30 seconds at a time? This is not the only system the Lightning run. They will attack with a two man fore-check to throw teams off. But as former NHL coach Marc Crawford said on TSN last night, “That is not fore-checking, it is a defensive system. He went on to say, “This is typically something that could really hurt hockey. Fans don’t want to watch that type of a system where nothing is happening.” He believes the league needs to address the 1-3-1.
The debate raged onto twitter where Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul tweeted, “This game on National TV… Way to sell it boys!” Coyotes forward Paul Bissonnette tweeted, “Tampa Bay Lightning are chipping away at our escrow 1-3-1 at a time.” Some fans blamed the Flyers for making a mockery of the game by doing nothing. In the Quebec Major Junior League, the Rimouski Oceanic did the same thing to the Montreal Ramparts’ neutral zone trap. The defensive pairing of the Oceanic passed the puck 16 times in order to entice the Ramparts to fore-check.
The neutral zone trap has been around since the beginning of time. The system works as shown by the Toronto Maple Leafs of the 1940s who won five Stanley Cups with it. The New Jersey Devils defensive system for the longest time was the neutral zone trap. While it may be boring to the game of hockey, the system wins. Last checked, winning is the most important thing in the NHL, not style points. The General Managers of the NHL meet next week and the 1-3-1 system will be brought up and is there anything the league can do about it.