David Pastrnak's Hat Trick vs Ottawa: Analysis

David Pastrnak was electric last night against the Ottawa Senators, scoring his 17th hat trick of his career in a 6-2 Bruins victory against Ottawa, and marking his 44th goal of the season thus far. He already has at least 40 goals the past three seasons, and he is only one point away from 100 points, which would mark his first back-to-back minimum 100 point year. It’s impressive to see Pastrnak’s trajectory ever since being drafted late in the first round back in 2014, and he has only continued to improve with time in the NHL thus far.

Pastrnak Hat Trick

We see in the first clip here with Pastrnak starting as the initial F2, rotating off F1 in pursuit to support the puck and make sure that he can get away from the wall here. Pastrnak’s instincts right away tell him to pass as he curves his route back up the half wall, particularly because of the high point forward trying to intercept a potential bank pass off the wall. That disrupts a low-high sequence here, so Pastrnak’s field of vision has him either passing to Heinen near the top of the circle, or passing to McAvoy as the weak side defender in space here. Pastrnak tries to feed it cross-seam here, but it only gets intercepted by the defender here, but it wasn’t directly intercepted. The puck was deflected, and stayed as a 50/50 puck here, so Heinen is able to retrieve it and turn that back into a Boston possession inside the offensive zone. Eventually, we see Zacha with the puck in the corner, turning to sneak up the wall, and looking to find Pastrnak trying to open a pass lane for Zacha in order to get a one-timer off.

Here, it almost looked as if Pastrnak intentionally wanted this pass to go through as well, somewhat using that pass from Zacha as deception against the defender, thinking that he would shoot right away instead of letting the pass go back to the point. Pastrnak slashes the defender’s stick, the puck gets worked high to Matt Grzelcyk, who finds Pastrnak off what looked like a shot pass here. The puck tips off Pastrnak in the slot, who gets his first goal of the game. Great habits on the tip from Pastrnak here using two things:

1. Stick is kept flat on ice
2. He angles his blade into the tipped shot, which allows him to get direction on where he wants to tip it

Without these two habits it’s harder for Pastrnak to leverage the contact of the defenseman and avoid being tied up. His stick was firmly kept on the ice here, intentionally, in order to make it harder for the goalie through the screen here. By angling his blade into this shot here as well (Joe Pavelski is another player who does that really well), Pastrnak is able to get the direction on the tipped shot that he wants.

One of the more challenging shots to stop for a goalie is this type of scenario. There’s first a defenseman working down the flank, so the goalie has to play his angle a bit more aggressively and stand up to the play near the top of the crease. Also, the deflected shot by Pastrnak tipped from a shot that initially looked lower, into a higher shot through a screen, is extremely difficult to stop. As Korpisalo moves his glove up, the shot is already past him.

0:44 starts the next sequence with Pastrnak creating it off the 50/50 possession. He intercepts a potential weak side pass, gets moving with speed behind the puck, and takes advantage of a breakaway sequence right away off the rush. He pump fakes on the shot to initially freeze Korpisalo, then goes forehand-backhand with the puck trickling in here. Pastrnak’s 2nd of the game here.

1:20 starts the final sequence leading to Pastrnak’s third goal here. We see the start with the offensive zone possession here, with Pastrnak open as a weak side F3 in this scenario at 5v5. F1 and F2 created a 2v2 in the corner, and once the puck popped out on the strong side half wall, Pastrnak is already on the weak side faceoff dot ready for a potential one-time option. The puck instead gets worked over to the weak side defenseman, now on Pastrnak’s strong side, where Pastrnak slides and rotates down the wall and eventually behind the net. To lure the defenseman to him, he does a combination of multiple translatable things behind the net:

1. He weight shifts from his back leg to his front leg, maintaining power through his stance, eventually changing to wide posture with the puck
2. He doesn’t lose speed with the puck here
3. He cuts through the hands of the defender

The culmination of factors here allowed Pastrnak to open space for himself when handling this puck behind the net, eventually going around the net and looking towards a teammate in weak side space in order to find a potential shot. Doesn’t work. Pastrnak rotates high in the mid-slot area, which helps him add layers to Boston’s possession here and helps him intercept this play. Pastrnak then shoots off his backhand from the slot, a hard shot to execute because he is cutting across the slot and doesn’t have a ton of power built up, but he shoots and it gets through anyways.

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