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Game #28 – Hawks vs. Capitals: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels December 6, 2017 1816 0

All analytic stats at even-strength. Info courtesy of Corsica and Hockey DB.

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Let’s Have A Frank Talk About Toews

By Sam Fels December 5, 2017 4799 0

With the Hawks having collected only two of the last eight points on offer, everyone is calling for Battle Stations. It’s understandable. Patience is hard to find when you’re watching the amount of teams wedge themselves between the Hawks and the last playoff spots. It’s doubly hard when you know how hard it is to climb up the standings, especially with so many teams centering themselves in the muck.

Most eyes are focused on what was the Hawks top line, though that may have changed with a simply bonkers rearranging at practice today (we’ll get to that tomorrow). Brandon Saad, Jonathan Toews, and Richard Panik all have their goal-droughts or dry streaks, whatever you want to call them. We’ve gone over Saad’s “struggles” recently, so it’s time to look at Captain Marvel a little deeper.

And here’s the thing… Jonathan Toews is having a pretty good season.

I know how that sounds. Seven goals and 18 points over 27 games isn’t what you pictured. It projects out to 21 goals and 54 points, which is a touch short of what Toews has usually put up. Toews’s usual numbers are in the high-20s for goals and mid-60s for points, aside from last year. We almost have to throw out the season-in-a-can of 2013, as it’s the only season where Toews was a point-per-game and was projecting to have a 35-40 goals season over 82. It’s kind of an aberration.

If we flip up the hood, things are more encouraging than you think. Toews’s overall possession share is the highest it’s been since the last Cup season. And in relative to the team it’s the best since 2014. His xGF% is the best it’s been in four seasons, and relative to his team it’s the best in five seasons. Toews is averaging more attempts at even-strength than he has since that 2013 season. His individual expected goals is higher than the past four seasons, and in line with everything that came before his binging of 2012 and 2013.

Essentially, we’re in the same spot we were with Marian Hossa before last season. If you’ll recall, Hossa had seen his shooting percentage decrease for four straight years before last year, and we all thought that’s what we had to expect. And then last year he spasmed a 15% season and 26 goals in 73 games. It can come from nowhere.

Toews has a career-low shooting percentage at evens of 7.8%. That’s down from 8.3 last year, 8.5 the year before that, and 14.2 the year before that which is where Toews lived for most of his career. Now, this is where we could speculate he doesn’t quite have the fastball he used to, or his release isn’t quite what it was. Or maybe he’s not as accurate as he once was, but we can’t really measure that. By all the things we can measure, he’s actually getting better chances than he has in a couple years. Basically, everything is where it should be.

Toews hasn’t benefitted from the power play being a clusterfuck. He’s got one on the man-advantage this year, and he usually racks up six or seven per season. Would everyone feel a little better if Toews had 10 goals overall now and projecting for closer to 30? That would happen if he were getting his normal PP goals. Meanwhile, Toews has been doing this against some of the toughest competition he’s seen in his career.

I know this won’t make anyone feel better. Toews, Saad, and Panik aren’t scoring enough. And the explanation, “They’re just getting shitty luck,” isn’t satisfactory because you can’t really do anything about that until it simply corrects itself. And sometimes it doesn’t. But Toews is in the right end of the ice. He’s in the right spots to score. He’s getting the right number of chances. They’re just not going in.

It’s not much solace, but it’s all we’ve got. And playing him with Ryan Hartman and John Hayeden isn’t going to do much.

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This Is What You’ll Get

By Sam Fels December 5, 2017 2523 0

Admittedly, comparing what goes on between the lines/boards of football and hockey is hardly a perfect juxtaposition. These are different sports with different rules, different methods, and different aims. So let’s say that up top. But last night’s Steelers-Bengals game was particularly ugly, and could be a huge piece of evidence against the “FIGHTING WOULD SOLVE EVERYTHING!” crowd in hockey.

There are probably a couple more caveats here. First off, the Bengals and Steelers is probably football’s most poisonous rivalry at the moment. And there’s a long history. So this is the absolute extreme of the ugliness football can have on the field when two teams feel they have to “sort it out themselves.” You wouldn’t get this from say, Packers-Cardinals or something. But it’s not like hockey doesn’t have teams with ugly history where everyone is on high-alert from the opening whistle. It wasn’t so long ago that Hawks-Canucks felt more like WarGames than it did a hockey game. And it’s a good thing that hockey feels less and less like this, and you need look no further than last night to see why.

I’ll let Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky sum it up:

But they can’t police each other. Or rather, this—last night—is what that policing looks like. It’s enforcement. It’s punitive. It’s an escalating cycle of revenge. You take out our guy, we’ll take out your guy. And it doesn’t work. If it worked, if players feared retaliation, we wouldn’t see the dirty hits in the first place. But we still do. We always have.

Seeing as how Barry is Deadspin’s leading hockey guy, I think he knows exactly what he’s saying here, or at least has written very similar thoughts about hockey. Because this has always been the theory for those who can’t let go of the past. That if hockey players could police themselves there wouldn’t be any hits from behind or boardings or goalies run or whatever else.

And that’s always been bullshit. One, those things have always been part of hockey even when Dave Semenko or Dave Schultz were allowed to pile-drive anyone they saw fit and barely get a penalty for it. To wish for a simpler time in hockey when players respected each other and never did anything dirty to each other is to wish for a time that didn’t exist.

If hockey were to let this go, things wouldn’t end with “just a fight.” There would be vengeance for that fight, and on and on it would go until someone really got hurt. And what would be solved then, other than a few very insecure men in the crowd feeling their oats? Because nothing bad has ever happened from that, right?

Much like Barry goes on to say later in this post, discipline needs to be the league’s job.. And if it’s serious about player safety, which it only is to the point that it doesn’t end up in court, it would really start to get the hammer out. Radko Gudas should have gotten 20 games, if not more. Attempts to injure, and do not fool yourself because blindside hits and boardings are in most cases, need to have 5-10 game suspensions. The next Raffi Torres shouldn’t have to commit seven to eight utterly heinous acts before he gets a 40-game suspension.

But the NHL won’t because it still fears the backlash of a bunch of crusty, angry fans who are going to show up anyway. In truth, the fact that they yell the loudest almost certainly signals they are in the minority, because that’s how it usually works.

We make a pact with ourselves of course whenever we watch football or hockey (or MMA or boxing or pick whatever you want here). We know they’re highly dangerous, and really all we ask is that the players on display are fully aware of the risks they are taking. At this day and age, I think most are and are still more than happy to be out there. And we can live with that.

But last night crossed a line, and I can’t imagine I know anyone who watched Ryan Shazier or later the hits on Vontaze Burfict and Antonio Brown and felt good about it. And I know you can sit here and say Burfict is the dirtiest player in the league, and you’d probably be right. And maybe you think that makes what happened to him justified, but who draws that line? Do you think they feel that way on the Bengals sideline? Do they come looking for their own bounty in return? Who decides when it’s settled?

And that’s what hockey would look like if we returned to the 70’s and 80’s, except the players now are bigger, stronger, and faster. Trust me, Dave Schultz today would get his ass handed to him on a nightly basis (he was 6-1, 190. That makes him the same size as Patrick Sharp, basically.

It would become something no one would want except the truly unhinged. Sadly, hockey has always bowed to its unhinged quality, fearing that it cannot live without them.

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Game #27 – Kings vs. Hawks: Spotlight – It’s Like Looking In a Mirror…Only… Not

By Sam Fels December 3, 2017 2034 0

Ever since the Kings first Cup, and totally ramped up by the Kings-Hawks Double of ’13 and ’14, Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Toews have been handcuffed together. They’ve been essentially the same player every since they came into the league a year apart. Toews was the slightly better goal-scorer, Kopitar the slightly better playmaker. They were clearly the heartbeat of multiple Cup winners. Toews was a dominant force in ’13, and Kopitar dribbled Toews’s head like a basketball in ’14.

And being a year older, Kopitar seemed to hit a wall a year before Toews did. In ’14-’15, Kopitar dropped to just 16 goals and 64 points, both the lowest since his rookie year. Toews was racking up another ring. And then Toews followed Kopitar into the dungeon of age, failing to register 60 points for the first time since his rookie year.

Neither of them improved last year, and both faced serious discussion if they’re dominant days were over. And it was more than just an individual question, because both meant so much to their teams that if they were done being premier #1 centers in the league, it almost certainly meant their teams’ time as true contenders were over as well.

The hope for Hawks fans is that with Kopitar always being a year ahead of Toews, his renaissance so far this year is a harbinger of what Toews can do on the donkey end of the age of 30.

Kopitar comes into tonight’s game at over a point-per-game, and some of his underlying numbers are the best they’ve been since the Kings’ last run. His relative-Corsi again over +3.00, a hallmark of his days as the Hart candidate no one bothered to stay up and watch (including his simply other worldly 61% mark in 2014). His expected-goals relative to his team are up as well from the last two years, but where the numbers jump out is his individual ones.

Kopitar is averaging three more attempts at even-strength this year than he has in the past three seasons, and in line with his 2012-2014 heyday. His individual expected-goals is up to 0.77, which again is way higher than he’d put up the past three years.

Has there been some luck? Oh, sure. He’s shooting 21% at evens and 19% overall. That’s not going to continue. And Kopitar is still tasked with facing the toughest competition the Kings see. Even at just 30 to ask someone to combat top lines and score like a top line seems an awfully big ask.

Clearly, Kopitar has benefitted from the presence of rookie Alex Iafallo. While Iafallo’s numbers aren’t impressive, his game that has real dash and creativity has allowed Kopitar to not have to create and score his own chances. Last year, Kopitar spent most of the season with clinically dead Marian Gaborik and clinically dumb Dustin Brown. The year before that Kopitar was dragging around Brown and Milan Lucic, and you’d be hard pressed to find bigger dummards to have as wingers. Combined with Darryl Sutter’s system, Kopitar was basically forced to try and bulldoze everything. Even Brown is scoring now, getting to just stand around while Kopitar and Iafallo exploit openings. They can be more expressive.

The coaching change has also been a boon, as Kopitar is now allowed to carry the puck through the neutral zone and even try to enter through the middle, something Sutter would have sentenced Kopitar to shit-shoveling duty at the Sutter Farm for in the past. Kopitar has more freedom ever, and drawing defenses to him gives more space to Iafallo, who can actually do something with it unlike Lucic or Gaborik checking his investment portfolio.

Cleary, a coaching change isn’t going to help Toews anytime soon. But realizing a center with that many miles can no longer do everything, giving him a dynamic winger to take some of the creation pressure off seems to have been the trick for Kopitar. Would DeBrincat be that for Toews? Sadly, we may never find out.

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Game #27 – Kings vs. Hawks: Q&A With Arkham Escapee

By Sam Fels December 3, 2017 2785 0

Once again we had to dig up one of our favorite lunatics on Twitter to find out about the Kings. Follow Aaron @atf13atf.

The Kings sit atop the Pacific. They have a +19 goal difference. Anze Kopitar is a point-per-game again. Certainly much better than last year. What’s been the change? Is it simply the one behind the bench?

It probably is just the personnel behind the bench, both a combination of new voices (Offensive Coordinator Pierre Turgeon) coming in and old voices going out (such as Sutter, and Davis Payne who is now in charge of the Sabres’ 30th ranked power play). Stevens has been an assistant since the Terry Murray years in 2010, but finally gets his shot to run things. In a league where every team tries to win every game 2-1, Darryl Sutter’s attempts to win every game 1-0 had grown stale.

Dustin Brown – 21 points. What kind of god allowed this?

When the team went through eastern Canada a month into the season, every article about Brown (and Kopitar) concluded that they each looked like a piano was removed from their back. Alec Iafallo, definitely someone I’d known about before training camp ended, has been a revelation with a bunch of scouts saying they missed him. I’m sure Brown’s 13% shooting (and especially Kopitar’s 19%) to come down a bit, but at least their contracts look somewhat above water again.

Who is Adrian Kempe?

Called up last season to try and get some scoring going, which was ultimately useless when Sutter played him about 90 seconds a night. Not to be confused with his brother Mario Kempe, Darcy Kuemper, or Matt Kemp. Looking good so far this year with Toffoli and Pearson.

The Kings have gotten yeoman’s work out of Jonathan Quick. Certainly full health is a part of it, did the rest of barely playing last year also contribute? Have you noticed him doing anything differently?

A ~~wise~~ man named Cieslak once said, “Book is out on your goaltender. He’s only gonna stop between 90 and 95 percent of shots faced. The league knows all about it.” Quick, who’s been much closer to the 90% than anyone expects for oh, half his career now, is sitting at his same .929 from 2011-12. I guess having an intact groin helps these guys.

So is this start for real or are the Kings riding a top line and their goaltending brilliance and will crash down?

Their shooting percentage is above average, ish, even with Jeff Carter out for still another couple of weeks. The goaltending has definitely carried them a bit, but the games don’t look over if they go down 1-0 in the second period. They’re certainly watchable again, a marked improvement over even the Cup years.

Prediction: J-F Berube shuts out his old organization. I redeem my giveaway Chick-Fil-A coupon this week after the Kings take the required five penalties.

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Game #27 – Kings vs. Hawks: Douchebag Du Jour – You Were Supposed To Stay Dead, Dustin

By Sam Fels December 3, 2017 1874 0

There was a time when Dustin Brown was one of our favorite players. He was a true bowling ball of a forward who could give you 25 goals. When rumors popped up of the Kings looking to deal him and the Hawks at least kicking the tires, our glee rose to a near dangerous level.

It didn’t happen, and then Brown’s feet fell off, and he was basically nothing more than a construction horse with elbows. He couldn’t get there, and all he could do was cross-check, elbow, and high-stick his way into anything of note. The only memorable thing he’d done in years was nearly ruin Tomas Hertl’s career before it had a chance to really take off with a wandering knee.

And that’s how it’s supposed to happen. A power forward only has a short window of usefulness, before the miles and bruises combine to reduce them to an angry traffic cone. You’re supposed to look like Milan Lucic now. Or Corey Perry now. Or Scott Hartnell now.

So what the fuck is this? Brown has 21 points already. He hasn’t had more than 36 in a season since ’11-’12. He has 10 goals already. He hasn’t had more than 18 since that same season. This is not how it’s supposed to go. Players like Brown are supposed to get old and decrepit so we can laugh at them and make up for the years of longing and jealousy we had. Brown is depriving us of that this year. They’re supposed to get bought out and wash up in Arizona or Florida or Vancouver and fill out their days being a step behind the play and scoring the one goal in a 5-1 loss in January.

The one thing we can hold onto is that Brown still has four years left after this one on his ridiculous $5.8 million per year contract, and is still a buyout candidate down the line. Brown should be taking notes from Marian Gaborik, who’s been nothing more than a reverse-ATM for a few years now. This is bullshit.

Follow the script, Dustin.

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Game #27 – Kings vs. Hawks: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

By Sam Fels December 3, 2017 1569 0

All stats adjusted for score and venue. Courtesy of Corsica.hockey.

Key: CF/60 – shot attempts for per 60 minutes

CA/60 – shot attempts against per 60

CF% – ratio of shot attempts for and against

G/60, GA/60, GF% – goals scored, allowed, and ratio of per 60 minutes

xGF/60, xGA/60, xGF% – “expected goals” i.e. goals team “should” have scored and allowed based on amount and types of chances and attempts created and allowed given neutral goaltending.

PDO – shooting percentage plus save percentage, used to measure luck. 100 is average.

Time On Ice Percentage – amount of even-strength time player skates

Off. Zone Start Ratio – percentage of shifts started in offensive zone

TOI% of Competition: percentage of even-strength time opponent takes of his team player skates against

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Game #27 – Kings vs. Hawks: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels December 3, 2017 1585 0

All analytic stats at even-strength. Info courtesy of Corsica and Hockey DB.

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