ill be watching for something tonight. what ive seen since the first period of the sharks game before the olympic break has been something. what i have seen is teams no longer allow russell to flow free and skate the puck out of the zone, thus allowing him to create and carry speed down the ice. instead, teams have used a high skater to shadow russell. (think of this like a team using a safety to spy on a dual threat qb). in doing this it makes it much more difficult, not impossible, to skate through or even out of the zone. by eliminating the free run out of the zone, it has slowed russell down. pretty much every time hes been on the ice teams have done this. it doesnt make it so he cant skate the puck down the ice (and deep into the zone to be a threat) rather it makes it more difficult and substantially slows him down, making it vastly less effective.
so how do you counter this...
well first you might look to the pairing, in reality if its a guy like tyutin (or another mobile defencemen) not commodore, then russell can draw pressure then pass, the other defencemen then has the ability to skate the puck. or you could bring a forward down back through the zone in a U through the neutral zone, you could attack with a forward hanging back through the neutral zone and have russell attempt to make that pass, use a forward to dump it to, etc. the reality is many opportunities are available and none, not one, have been attempted.
simply put, its an elementary adjustment i havent seen made. and im sure management has as well...
