WOC Defense

I played a few more games last night on D. I can definitely feel a difference between high stick checking and mid/low, but it still feels very hit-or-miss even when it's high 90s. There's a disproportionate amount of times that you poke it off a guy's stick, but it just assists him in getting behind you, and then he picks it back up again and he's gone. 

It used to be that every fast break was a shoulder to shoulder rush where you desperately tried to keep the guy out of the slot so he couldn't do the backhand forehand goal. I'm a Detroit guy, I grew up watching Lidstrom. Keep the forward outside, guide him toward the boards, cut him off, never let him near the slot. It's a system, and I had pretty good success with it over the years, but it's way too easy for the forward to score from the goal line outside the post. It's now a race to the corner of the net, but the goalies can't hold a post to save their lives this year, and it makes traditional defense a slog. I don't want to abandon the goal mouth to keep a guy from shooting from the corner. 

There's also a decent amount of times that I'm at a glide, anticipating the braindead cross-crease pass, and it just goes right through me for a one-timer... or I get a stick on it but it keeps going and the guy accurately one-times it anyway. I understand that you're don't want to program an "every time" scenario, but you can rest assured that cross-crease pass is going to end up in the net every time if I don't stop it, you know?