PP Screening Question

This is a question for people that know hockey more intimately than I do (so ex-players, coaches, lifelong viewers, whatever).

So, watching power plays, it seems that we have (mostly) abandoned the "keep a huge guy just in front of the goalie to 1) screen his vision, 2) deflect shots (hopefully into the net, not around it), 3) pick up rebounds and whack them into the net. Sometimes Bitz/Sawada parks there briefly, but they almost always cycle back down to a corner, leaving no Red member in front of (or particularly close to the crease).

So, on one of the early WS pps, their # 21 (Forgie) was doing an absolutely beautiful job of arcing back and forth, skates just out of the crease, dead in front of Davenport's face. Davenport was forced to come out of his crouch and try to peer either sort of over Forgie's shoulder (not easy since Forgie is a big boy) or, by ducking and weaving his head, sort of look through the gap between Forgie's arm and body. It was the best use of "big guy as opaque wall" that I have seen in a long time.

Briefly we considered that the new rules made it hard to try to shove the screener guy out of the way, but later in the game when Sawada was briefly playing the wall role, he was getting the crap shoved out of him by WS, so that can't be it.

So, my questions are thus:

1) Is there some reason that I don't understand that CU has (mostly) abandoned the "leave a big guy right in front of the goalie" gambit during powerplays? A lot of teams have somebody right there the whole power play, our guys seem to go there, pause, skate off to the corner. (Are we having more trouble controlling the puck on the perimeter and our big guys are forced to skate to the corners to help regain control?...it doesn't really look that way, but I could be wrong).

2) Is there some reason that we have let up on the "shove the big guy out from in front of our goalie" part of a PK? Granted, one of the times that Forgie was really obviously in front of the goalie, we were 5x3, which doesn't really leave a person for shoving on the big guy full time. But, Davenport was obviously blinded by this guy and nobody seemed intent on removing him.

There are obviously other problems with both our PK and our PP, but this "big guy in front of the crease" thing seems to be an obvious difference between our play and other teams. Plus, it is something we used to do routinely (and well) but have changed up on this year.

CK

I, too, am perplexed, but don't know enough to give a good answer. It seems like in the past Cornell had used a much more physical PP and PK. I found myself scratching my head when Forgie was able to waltz back and forth in front of the goal without anyone challenging him. On our PP, it appears the down low option is no longer in the Schafer playbook. Sorry I can't help you out, but it seems like the return of this more physical play on special teams might help alleviate some of our problems.

ebilmes
I, too, am perplexed, but don't know enough to give a good answer. It seems like in the past Cornell had used a much more physical PP and PK. I found myself scratching my head when Forgie was able to waltz back and forth in front of the goal without anyone challenging him. On our PP, it appears the down low option is no longer in the Schafer playbook. Sorry I can't help you out, but it seems like the return of this more physical play on special teams might help alleviate some of our problems.

Seminoff was moving that guy out of the crease at times. Nash, Davenport and Krueger just let him camp out in front of the crease and weren't even lifting his stick off of the ice.

edit: I do remember once at the end of the game when Nash was harassing him, but it was too little too late.

CKinsland
So, my questions are thus:

1) Is there some reason that I don't understand that CU has (mostly) abandoned the "leave a big guy right in front of the goalie" gambit during powerplays? A lot of teams have somebody right there the whole power play, our guys seem to go there, pause, skate off to the corner.
CK

We did do some of this in the beginning of the season. Now it seems coach is trying to get alot of puck movement, especially getting it down low and setting up shots or rebounds from the slot or circles. Maybe it's talent derived, smaller, puck handling forwards might be a reason.