The Pass That Screws Up an Entire System

AIK faced Kalmarsund on home court in Solna last weekend, with the teams heading in polarizing directions. Kalmarsund had started with two victories, AIK with two losses. AIK had the lead for a long period of time, but Kalmarsund came roaring back in the third period to clinch the win.

For a couple of seasons in a row, AIK has been pushed to the brink of relegation several times - despite having a couple of really good and interesting players with a high top level. However, in the end they have always found a way to keep their spot in the men's SSL. And after every near-relegation season, I have been looking for a spark from them. Something new and fresh. Or maybe just a tiny bit more aggression to their typically pretty passive defense system, which I feel ends up being too passive against better teams.

What about this year? How does their defense look? And what results do they get from their defensive system? Let us do a deeper dive, using that AIK-Kalmarsund game from last weekend as an example.

When trying to get a feel for the effectiveness of a certain defense system, I like to isolate to two game phases. Zone entry defense, and zone defense. I watched every Kalmarsund possession and tracked all scoring chances when AIK was either defending entries or defending their own zone.

Meaning that Kalmarsund's chances would come from creating chances with the ball, and AIK's chances would come from counter-attacking out of their defensive system.

And this is what I came up with.

Sure, Kalmarsund is a very good team. But this does not feel very sustainable for AIK, if they want this season to end in another way than the last ones.

The actual goals while AIK was defending entries and in their own d-zone are actually not that bad. AIK scored twice on counter-attacks and they held Kalmarsund to three goals. That might not sound like positive numbers, but compare to the expected goals, and you see that it very well could have been way worse.

It sure feels like they would need to change something in how they defend, to be able to take a step up and contend for a playoff spot instead of surviving relegation. We will notice some smaller tweaks while looking at video from this game, but I think they need major surgery more than minor tweaks.

In typical xProgress fashion, let us move on to the game tape. 👇

Let us jump directly to the game tape of this game, where we will see some really good ways of creating quality looks against a 2-2-1 / M-system like AIK's. We will also experience how AIK can benefit from their system during counter-attacks, but they seldomly push the pace enough after winning the ball, and when they did in this match, they did not get the execution that is needed to score goals.

Let us start by looking at how AIK does defend so far, this season. 👇