Attacking with Four - What Are the Results of Doing So?

The men's SSL game between Nykvarn and Jönköping the other day, was a roller coaster with sports theme. Nykvarn extended their lead to 6-2 after 11:45 in the second period, but Jönköping came back to win the game 7-6 in regulation.

In my viewing of this game, there was one thing that popped out for me – the way both teams were trying to attack with four players. This is something that is a pretty popular topic in the modern floorball – we have also had several posts about it on xProgress.

I figured this was a great possibility for me to dive deeper into the results of these attacks. Can you create a lot of chances by attacking with four players? Or do you get punished by counter-attacks in such a fashion, that it does not make sense to invest that fourth player?

That is what we are going to look at today, in this post.

What are we looking closer at?

The frame work for this analysis, is that we are zooming in on how the two teams were attacking during the zone entry and zone offense phases of this game. To be considered an attack with four players, at least four players must be positioned closer to the opponent's net, than the first line of defense of the defensive team (usually the forwards).

• A plus chance would come from the attacking team creating scoring chances from attacking with four players.
• A minus chance would be the attacking team losing the ball and giving up a counter-attack chance.

👀+🔢 | Eyetest + numbers

Nykvarn attacking with four players

Nykvarn did a lot of attacking with four players, racking up ten scoring chances while attacking actively with at least four players. And from a quantity perspective, they did not give up that many (four).

But from a quality perspective, they did concede some high quality looks, when Jönköping managed to counter-attack. Two of the four chances they gave up, were high danger chances.

How did it look? 👇