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You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: San Jose Sharks

By Sam Fels September 27, 2019 1582 0

It’s not often a team loses its captain and its leading goal-scorer and is still considered among the conference favorites. But such is life in the West where no one has really jumped forward aside from the Colorado Avalanche. The San Jose Sharks return Erik Karlsson, which if he can remain upright for even 60 games and more importantly the playoffs, is about half the battle in itself. While Joe Pavelski may be gone, they still return a host of nifty forwards who can fill the net on at least three lines. Brent Burns might be overrated by a factor of 12, and losing Justin Braun may turn out to be nearly as big as Pavelski. Still, this team never felt like it clicked for very long last year and ended up with 101 points and in the conference final (WHERE THEY FAILED US ALL MISERABLY AND SHALL NEVER BE FORGIVEN). Can they do it again?

2018-2019

46-27-9 101 points (2nd in Pacific, lost in conference final)

3.52 GF/G (2nd) 3.15 GA/G (21st) +31 GD

54.9 CF% (1st) 54.3 xGF% (4th)

23.6 PP% (6th) 80.8 PK% (15th)

Goalies: The only reason the Sharks didn’t end up with 110 or more points last season was their goaltending. Martin Jones was simply awful, Aaron Dell wasn’t any better, and the Sharks had to overcome it most nights. And most nights they did. Doug Wilson has bet that Martin Jones simply can’t be that bad again. And with good reason.

In the three seasons as Sharks starter before that, Jones never had a SV% below .912. That’s the thing with the Sharks, they don’t need Carey Price back there. They don’t need a Vezina finalist. They just need league average. Jones couldn’t even manage that in the playoffs and they still got to the conference final. Jone will turn 30 during the season, so it’s hard to imagine last season was the begin of age-related decline. It feels like a very weird and ugly outlier, and the Sharks need to hope so. Dell isn’t going to ride in like Mighty Mouse if Jones is coughing up his esophagus again, which would mean Wilson would either have to look for answer at the deadline or close his eyes, clinch a towel between his teeth, and hope his team can plow ahead dragging Jones along.

The Sharks always have the puck as well, giving up the least amount of attempts last season and in the top half in expected goals against. The job is just about as easy as it can be for a goalie. And they merely need to pass on a pass/fail course. Do that, and the Sharks can take this division.

Defense: That doesn’t mean they’re without questions. The first is will Erik Karlsson ever finish a season healthy? His groin having all the gremlins doomed them in the playoffs (NEVER FORGIVEN), and he missed large chunks of the season. He hasn’t managed a full slate of games in four seasons. They’re nowhere without him, so expect him to get a regular slate of games off to try and preserve him for April and May. When he’s on the ice he still dominates, as his metrics were seven or eight points ahead of the Sharks as a whole, who again, were one of the best possession teams in the league. He’s still otherworldly when on song.

After that though…Mar-Edouard Vlasic loses his main defensive running buddy in Braun and there isn’t an obvious candidate to take the hard shifts with him or to cover for whichever of Burns or Karlsson Pickels doesn’t. Brendon Dillon is a post. Tim Heed and Dalton Prout are seat-fillers at best. Jacob Middleton is a kid that will get a look, but coach Peter DeBoer famously hates any young d-man. One outside candidate is rookie Mario Ferraro, but he’ll also have DeBoer to overcome.

Burns was completely exposed as a runway in the playoffs last year, and there’s no reason that won’t be true this year. He’ll pile up a ton of points again, which will be close to empty calories. This unit could use some buffeting at the deadline too, because Burns can’t really be trusted with anything than a third-pairing yahoo deep in the playoffs.

Forwards: Losing Pavelski is a ballsy call. This is still a team that features Logan Couture, Timo Meier, Tomas Hertl, and Evander Kane. It shouldn’t hurt for goals, it just might not have a wealth of them as it did before. Kevin Lebanc stepping up into a top-six role would help the cause, and maybe they think he’s ready for that. Joe Thornton is back for another go-around, and while he can still make a play here and there his days of being a genuine top-two center on a team are gone. Luckily, Couture and Hertl don’t require him to do that. There are enough foot soldiers to fill out the bottom six without standing out. But the Sharks always seemingly round out their bottom six with pieces from their system.

Prediction: It doesn’t feel like the doomsday machine they could have been last year but fell short of. The loss of Pavelski and Braun will be somewhat canceled out if Martin Jones can escape from whatever pod person took over his body last year, but not entirely. They look short a top four d-man and maybe one forward.

But there’s more than enough here to win the division and conference. The Flames haven’t gotten away from them, and whether the Knights want to admit it or not they have the same questions in net and on their blue line. Another 105-110 points seem on offer if Karlsson can manage 60-65 games or more. The bet is that Couture and Hertl at center can take some wingers with them even if they’re not Pavelski. Perhaps. But nothing the Sharks do will be judged until they get into April again. They could be in any kind of shape by then.

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19-’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Andrew Shaw

By Adam Hess September 27, 2019 1785 0

I was not a huge fan of the Blackhawks moves over the offseason, but just about all of them were understandable. They brought in some defensemen, even if not great ones, because they clearly needed blue line help. They traded Artem Anisimov for Zach Smith because they both suck, but Smith was ever-so-slightly cheaper. They signed Robin Lehner to shore up the crease, which has seen a lot of instability lately, and provide insurance for an aging Crawford.

But trading for Andrew Shaw was a move that I cannot understand in any sense other than “this is a guy we are familiar with.” Shaw is still everything he was when the Hawks got rid of him three years ago, which is: not as good as he gets credit for, frustrating as shit with his penalties, and expensive relative to his skill level and production. Let’s just get this over with.

2018-19 Stats (with Canadiens)

63 GP – 19 G – 28 A – 47 P

52.43 CF% (-2.39 CF% Rel) – 50.29 oZS%

53.79 xGF% (-0.29xGF% Rel)

Avg. TOI: 15:55

A Brief History: The common line being used in defense of the trade when it happened was that Shaw was coming off a career year in Montreal. And that is correct. Shaw’s overall contribution of 47 points was by far a career high, marking the first time in that he exceeded the 40-point mark. He also did that despite missing 19 games, putting him on a ~62 point pace had he appeared in all 82 (which he has never done in his career, by the way). That seems good! “So, Adam, why do you hate this trade so much?” you may be asking. Well, dear reader, because all of that production will be as fleeting as a fart in the wind.

Shaw’s shooting percentage of 14.1 last year was the second highest of his career, and tied for the highest-mark he’s ever posted in a “full” season, with only his 16.2% conversion rate in 37 games in rookie campaign being better. Moreover, Shaw had shot right around the 10% mark in the each of the four years prior, going 10.2%, 9.2%, 9.4%, and 10.6% from 2014-15 to 2017-18. Now sure, that was after doing a 14.1 and 13.4 percent in his first two full years, including a 20 goal season in 2013-14, but since then he had been consistently mediocre and had never topped 15 goals until last season.

I would love to be wrong about Shaw here, but I feel like trading future 2nd and 3rd round picks for a guy like Shaw, who projects to regress hard and will still cost you almost $4-million against the salary cap for two more years is going to end up looking like a hugely stupid move in the future. The Hawks are essentially banking on last year not being a fluke, and if we know anything about hockey, it’s that you should always be speculative about a guy having a career year at 27 years old. It was smart to get rid of him when they did back in 2016, and they even ended up with Alex DeBrincat as a result. It would’ve been smarter to adopt a no returns policy on this one.

It Was The Best of Times: Shaw proves that I am a huge fucking idiot with no clue what he is talking about, and goes out there shooting and playing at a similar level to last season, showing that it was not a fluke. He plays in all 82 games, getting some run on multiple lines but ending up a surprising first line right wing with Jonathan Toews and Brandon Saad, and scores 20 goals for the second time in his career. By virtue of keeping up his ’18-’19 scoring pace and playing all 82, he tops 50 points for the first time in his career and gets close to 60, and he has a mutually beneficial relationship as a lineman with 19 and 20, helping to power the Hawks to the playoffs.

It Was the BLURST of Times: The luck pendulum swings to the other side on Shaw, and he ends up a $4-million fourth liner as he shoots 6% and can’t even top 10 goals, the first time in his career failing to meet that mark. Frustrated by his lack of scoring and overall suckage, he starts taking Tom Wilson-esque runs at opponents, and ends up with a career high PIM total, putting the Hawks shit ass PK on the ice way more often than it should be. As a result, the Hawks lose a number of games with opposing PPG’s as the difference, and it costs the Hawks a playoff spot in the end.

Prediction: Shaw ends up returning to what he really is – a somewhat versatile forward with a propensity for stupid plays, who shoots 10% and adds 12-15 goals for you and 30-35 points. I’ll go ahead and call it 14 goals and 18 assists for 32 points. That will all be well and fine on the third line, but it’s not much better than you could’ve gotten from the guys you already had here, and I’m damn near positive it’s not worth the draft capital the Hawks gave up to get him here.

Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: Los Angeles Kings

By Sam Fels September 26, 2019 1921 0

While it’s fun to mock the Kings, in the end you’re really only mocking yourself (done played yo’ self, fool). It’s another team that sat on top of the hockey world for a few years, but now has too many entrenched contracts to have a full teardown and restart. And those big contracts make it also near impossible to slot in players who can move them down the lineup to lesser roles. Which is why the Hawks getting Kirby Dach is hopefully a coup as he moves Toews down for cheap in the coming years. Perhaps Alex Turcotte will be that down the road, shoving Anze Kopitar to a #2 center role. It won’t be this year though, and this year looks like it might be pretty damn ugly for the silver and black. Again.

2018-2019

31-42-9 71 points (dead ass last in the Pacific and West)

2.43 GF/G (30th) 3.16 GA/G (22nd) -60 GD

48.2 CF% (22nd) 47.0 xGF% (21st)

15.8 PP% (27th) 76.5 PK% (29th)

Goalies: Like death, taxes, and my inability to love, it’s Jonathan Quick in the Los Angeles net. But perhaps this is the time when he has to let go of the rope, even if his contract says otherwise. Quick was a big back of suck last year, posting a .888 over the full season. That kind of came out of nowhere, as the debate about whether he was overrated or underrated raged on without noticing he’d been pretty solid for the three years before (.919 SV%). At least when he was healthy. It’s highly doubtful Quick is now a sub-.900 goalie, unless there’s something chronically wrong with him physically. At 33 he shouldn’t be complete toast, but last year was awfully discouraging.

He might want to pick it up, because if he doesn’t Todd McLellan might have a real headache on his hands. Well, a headache other than watching this team getting turned into tapenade most nights. Jack Campbell massively outplayed Quick last year, to the tune of a .928 SV%. While the world has been waiting for Campbell for what seems like decades, this was his first regular turn in an NHL net. Now, maybe that was the anomaly, but if Campbell continues in anything like that fashion and Quick continues to look like be belongs in the fields of Elysium, there’s going to be a call to get Campbell more and more starts. It’s highly unlikely that Quick is going to be in net when the Kings matter again, whenever that might be, and a whole bunch of fans and some within the organization might want to start that process along.

Defense: Hope Doughnuts likes cashing that fat, $11M check because he’s going to have to do everything here. Except he can’t really anymore, and his metrics went into the red for the first time last year. When Alec Martinez is your #2 d-man, people should attend your games with gas masks. I could list the rest of the Kings defensive crew, but you would be sure I was making them up and trying to get away with something. The good thing, I guess, for the Kings is that every d-man after Doughty is only signed for this season, so they can completely start over next year if they so choose. And they probably have to. Otherwise, when you’re cold and alone at night, remember there are people out there choosing to watch Derek Forbort and Ben Hutton multiple times a week. You are not alone in your desperation and waywardness. You are not alone. You are not alone.

Forwards: Two years ago, Anze Kopitar flashed for a whole season in a big “I’m Not Dead!” sign. That gave us hope for Jonathan Toews. Well, Kopitar went back to needing a forensic team to figure out if he could fog a mirror last season, which doesn’t give us much hope. But hey, he was the only Kings forward to top 60 points. Which is…well it’s not anything and it means this team has all the dash and dynamism at forward as the rat carcass in the alley. Kovalchuk and Jeff “Wooderson” Carter are still around to cash a check, at least the latter is until yet another body part of his gets up and takes a walk for a couple months. They can’t seem to kill Dustin Brown, so he’ll take a top six role because that’s just what has to be. Look for Tyler Toffoli to have a better season as he heads into free agency and the possibility of getting the hell out of there. They’ll try and convince you that any or all of Adrian Kempe, or Alex Iaffalo, or Austin Wagner are things that definitely have to be paid attention to. They definitely intake oxygen but not much else. This team won’t score much and you can see why. When Trevor Lewis and Kyle Clifford still easily claim spots, you know your team blows.

Prediction: Don’t know why Todd McLellan took this job other than sheer desperation. At least with the Oilers he could watch Connor McDavid every night. Here he’s going to watch Kopitar wheeze and hear the fat on Doughty increasing on a nightly basis. If Quick isn’t terrible they probably won’t be a front to nature, and maybe even pass Anaheim on the standings. Maybe. But all of their kids that will form the next Kings team aren’t here yet, and what is is pretty gruesome. Another sub-80 point season seems on the cards.

Previous Team Previews

Carolina

Columbus

New Jersey

New York Islanders

Hockey

Off To Europe, Without Boqvist In The Carry-On, And Not Much Else In

By Sam Fels September 26, 2019 1732 0

As we all expected but hoped would be different, Adam Boqvist was punted to the Piggies last night. We could sit here and rant about how he was sort of sandbagged by being paired with Slater Koekkoek, whom I’m going to call “Fetch” all season until he is mercifully put on waivers where I’m sure he won’t be claimed. But the Hawks are going to take a cue from baseball executives and keep Boqvist in the minors to “work on his defense,” even though his offense plays at a top level right now. They’ll soon see how badly they need him.

I don’t know how much stock to put in any preseason game, and my inclination is to put next to nothing on them. Last night wasn’t pretty, but I don’t know that we learned anything new. If Crawford or Lehner have a bad game, the Hawks are probably going to give up close to if not a touchdown every time. They simply can’t limit chances that well, so the goalies have to keep them out.

And yet…if you get real fancy about last night, at least at even-strength, the Hawks were pretty even with with Caps. By xG, they actually did a little better (1.51-1.37) and when adjusted for score it’s only 1.29 to 1.55. When you let in five even-strength goals off of that, you have to put that squarely on the goalie. So it goes.

Except I feel like this team, which could outscore the chances it creates given the finishing talent it has in its top six, is also going to probably let in more goals than the chances suggest, simply because. We’ll see.

I do think it’s a tad worrying that you already have your captain claiming the team needs a wake-up call when they haven’t even played a real game yet. It’s one thing for an established team to go through the motions in the preseason. A team that’s accomplished more than dick in the past few seasons. You would think this team, the one that hasn’t come anywhere near the playoffs for two straight seasons and hasn’t won a playoff series in the last four, would have a sense of urgency right from the bell. You’d think they’d be practicing, much less playing, with something to prove.

Only a handful of them have nothing at stake here, and you know their names. But Top Cat, Gustafsson and Strome have contracts to get. Maatta has a career to revive. Others are trying to prove they actually belong here. Seems askew that the Hawks have spent the entire preseason basically getting their ass kicked. Especially the past few days.

Still, when you give Erik Gustafsson anything more than third-pairing responsibility, this is what you’ll get. When you trust Seabrook and Maatta to do much more than stand and stare, this is what you get. And none of it counts yet. The problems are obvious, which is why, perhaps in a panic, I think we’ll be seeing Boqvist before the holidays.

What I wish I saw was some proof of Jeremy Colliton’s system being a change of anything, and we haven’t. The Hawks don’t look like they’re applying more pressure in their zone, mostly because they can’t due to the speed of their defense (i.e. none). But there also isn’t any tweaking of that system to help them with the speed they lack (see if you can see the reference in there). With this defense the Hawks really should be sagging off players on the outside and toward the middle of the ice more, instead of just being in the trail-technique all over the zone. We don’t see that yet.

It’s also not a feather in Colliton’s cap that his captain is saying his team needs to wake up in preseason. After all, both Colliton and Stan Bowman and others have never missed an opportunity to point out he didn’t have a training camp last year, and that was every reason everything that didn’t work didn’t work–the defensive system, Seabrook’s immobility, Keith’s inability to care, the record, the goaltending, the city’s budget crunch, that pothole on your street that hasn’t been fixed, that smell on the bus.

Well here we are at the training camp for Colliton that the whole organization bullhorn’d from the hills…or that one hill we have…would solve everything. And Toews is telling the assembled media they’re sleepwalking after they’ve gotten domed by the Caps and the Providence Bruins. If this was truly the answer, that having a training camp was all it would take, wouldn’t their be a burst of energy at the anticipation of real change? A sense that they were on to something? An excitement at simply something new?

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19-20 Blackhawks Player Previews: Zack Smith

By Rose Rankin September 26, 2019 1495 0

I’m as tired of writing about 4^th-line glorified quadruple-A guys as you are of reading about them. Let’s just get through it:

2018-19 Stats (with Senators)

70 GP – 9 G – 19 A – 28 Pts.

44.6 CF% (-0.8 CF% Rel) – 41.3 oZS%

45.2 xGF% (-2.24xGF% Rel)

Avg. TOI: 16:21

A Brief History: You may remember a guy by the name of Artem Anisimov, who was really not good at anything over the last couple seasons. He was no longer Annette Frontpresence—overrated as she always was anyway—he was slow, which is really saying something on this team, his puck handling was laughable, it goes on. He was a 4C making over $4 million a year, which was downright stupid as well as unsustainable. So StanBo finally got rid of him and his contract, but because we were giving away trash, we could only get trash in return.

Enter Zack Smith, lifelong member of the Ottawa Senators, and not only that, a guy that this joke of a team put on waivers before last season and had to take back when there was no better offer. I imagine Smith kinda like George Costanza after he quits—quietly slipping back in and trying to pretend like nothing happened, like it was a joke. Although this is the Senators we’re talking about, so do not take this humiliation to be entirely Smith’s fault—they were also just being douchebags. His paltry production made him a scapegoat, but he was a scapegoat nonetheless for a team with so many, many other problems.

Anyway, at $3.25 million a year he’s still a grossly overpaid 4^th, or at best 3^rd, line-guy, but thanks to Anisimov’s signing bonus and other financial chicanery that goes into professional sports contracts, both teams end up saving money on this deal, which is really the only thing that matters to these obscenely wealthy shithead dinosaurs in the end.

It Was the Best of Times: The best-case scenario is that Smith isn’t a trainwreck. He fills up time and space so that better players can get a breather, while he and his fellow fourth-liners take dungeon shifts and maybe flip the ice. Or, perhaps Smith can be packaged up with a better layer as part of a trade later in the season, as the plethora of cheaper fourth-liners makes him truly unnecessary. Just do no harm and that would be sufficient.

It Was the BLURST of Times: I’d like to say the worst situation would be for Smith to see serious playing time, because that means the Hawks have no one better than a washed-up former Senator. And while it’s true that such an outcome would be bad, the real worst-case scenario would be if Smith is totally useless. They’re spending over $3 million, which means they probably won’t be able to unload his shitty contract. I know, there’s lots of morons out there, but we just pulled one on Ottawa to get the mild cap-situation improvement we’re now discussing, plus we dumped Manning on the Oilers, so the truly abject morons who would be willing to take this guy might be onto us at this point. At the very least, pawning him off is not something we can count on. And apparently he’s got a back injury right now, which is never a non-issue even if it’s technically something minor. That shit just gets worse. Maybe I’m overly frugal, but wasting that money entirely and not even getting 10 minutes a night from this oaf would be the most lamentable outcome.

Prediction: Zack Smith will manage to both suck and blow, yet the Hawks won’t be able to get rid of him nor will they be willing to eat the shit sandwich that their prior decisions left them with and play a younger prospect in his place. Neither success now nor helping the next generation is what we’ll get, unless he’s hurt for a significant portion of time, in which case we at least won’t have to watch him. We can just watch that cap space go up in flames instead.

Stats from Hockey Reference and Natural Stat Trick

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Preseason Game #5 – Plugged in and Ready to Fall – Caps 6, Hawks 0

By John Pullega September 25, 2019 1460 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Whatever.

– I’m a bit worried that the Hawks are struggling to adapt to the Jeremy Colliton Route Tree in the defensive zone. On the Caps’s second goal, Toews managed to win a faceoff at the far circle in his own zone, which Seabrook correctly swung over to the near boards. Nylander was closest to the puck, but instead of chasing and clearing it, he stuck himself onto Ovi, giving Wolfenstein NPC Jonas Siegenthaler all the time in the world to retrieve the puck and keep the pressure on. In this case, I hope this was Nylander simply not having any idea how to play hockey when he doesn’t have the puck. But it sure looked like Nylander gave it some thought when he played literal man-to-man defense on Ovi.

Then, early in the third, Koekkoek ended up at his own blue line to defend . . . something? This led to a mad and unnecessary scramble for Crawford, as Erik Gustafsson was the only defender in the area.

If this is what Colliton’s full training camp is going to spit out, then Marc Crawford might need to squeeze his ass into his David Lee Roth pants sooner than we thought.

– It’s going to be really great when Alex Nylander finally arrives and starts playing hockey for the Chicago Blackhawks. I hear he’s an offensive dynamo. Can’t wait to see him.

– Dominik Kubalik on a line with Saad and Kampf doesn’t make sense. Neither of them is a playmaker. Kubalik has a booming shot. You see the problem. He still looked good tonight, but where he’s at really hampers him. What’s worse is that this is a result of Colliton shoehorning Nylander on the top line despite the fact that he has done nothing to earn that. Whatever.

– Adam Boqvist had an unfortunate blowout that led to the Caps’s first goal. He was a bit more noticeable in the third, a period in which the Hawks had exactly two shots on goal, so again, whatever. That Colliton didn’t use him once on any of the Hawks’s four power plays (opting for Keith and Seabrook instead because fuck you) is maddening, especially when he whipped out his throbbing galaxy brain by putting Boqvist on the PK in the third. Yeah, it’s only preseason, but that’s really something.

– Top Cat looked like shit all around. Nothing to worry about, but it happened.

– If Erik Gustafsson doesn’t score 60 points this year, he’s useless. He looked like a mummy having his wrappings pulled apart by two clowns on tricycles for the Caps’s fourth goal.

– The PP1 only works if 12–56–88 are constantly cycling. They did none of that tonight, and the PP looked like horseshit.

One more preseason game in Boston, then on to the old country.

Onward.

Booze du Jour: Eagle Rare

Line of the Night: “I’m a mess.” –Pat Foley

Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: Edmonton Oilers

By Sam Fels September 25, 2019 1572 0

And now this disaster. I was thinking earlier this morning that there really isn’t a parallel to the Oilers wasting one of the best players of all-time for years, but of course there is. It’s the Anaheim Angels. Mike Trout appeared in the playoffs once, and his team has been weighed down by incredibly bad contracts and journeymen and kids who were never up to it. And the same goes for Connor McDavid. Other than Leon Draisaitl, they’ve been surrounded be either old trash or kids that just haven’t popped the way it was thought (looking at you directly, Darnell Nurse). And this season doesn’t look to be any different. We can only hope this is the one where McDavid snaps and demands a trade midseason or in the summer, to give us some proper drama.

Let’s get through it together:

2018-2019

35-38-9 79 points (6th in Pacific)

2.79 GF/G (20th) 3.30 GA/G (25th) -42 GD

47.9 CF% (25th) 46.6 xGF% (26th)

21.2 PP% (9th) 74.8 PK% (30th)

Goalies: Sweet Jesus God. As we said with the Flames preview yesterday, the two Alberta teams pulled an indirect goalie switch, with Mike Smith, his .900 SV%, and his cantankerous nature landing behind an even worse defense than the one he had in Calgary that had him throwing whatever he could fit under the bus. Won’t his go well? Smith had a promising playoff performance while under constant carpet-bombing from the Avalanche, but that won’t be a worry here. Though the carpet-bombing might be. Smith is also 37, and I guess the hope here is that being reunited with coach Dave Tippett will help them rekindle the sporadic and greatly overblown success they had in Arizona. Good luck.

Backing him up is Mikko Koskinen, who earned a three-year extension from Peter Chiarelli, which must have been the last straw as Chiarelli was fired the very next day. Which might lead one to ask how you’re letting a GM you want to shitcan sign anyone to an extension, but keep in mind EdMo is where logic freezes and then is pissed on for sport. Koskinen’s .906 last year really inspired the masses, and as he’s 31 now there’s little reason to think it’s going to get much better. Sure, Tippett can batten down the hatches and try and create trench after trench in front of him. But with this outfit, what would that matter. Fun fun fun!

Defense: The “definition of insanity” quote isn’t actually real. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results just makes you the Oilers. So once again, these clowns are going to roll out Oscar Klefbom, Darnell Nurse, Kris Russell, Adam Larsson, Matthew Benning, and even Brandon Manning, and then be truly perplexed why McDavid is bringing a machete to the dressing room that he keeps sharpening and whispering something about the time of purification being at hand.

Nurse just has never blossomed into the atom-smashing, puck-moving loudmouth he promised as a junior, and is basically just kinda there. Klefbom, while allowing for a bunch of Tom Jones jokes, is just an ok possession-driver. Larsson is great at putting all his equipment on. The rest you know. They must hope Evan Bouchard can stick this time, though he seems to be a bit of a plodder and will need to quicken up to be effective at this level. Ethan Bear is going to keep Bouchard in the AHL for now, along with something called Joel Persson, because you always want to trust 25-year-olds making their NHL debut to really impact your roster. The hope must be for Bouchard to bludgeon the AHL for half of a season and then be up.

Forwards: Zack Kassian is going to be on McDavid’s line. I don’t know what more I have to say.

Once again, the Oilers will keep having the debate of whether Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins should play center or be moved to McJesus’s wing to give him any talent to play with, and once again there really won’t be a right answer. They’ve reassembled the bad parts of the 2015 Wings with Riley Sheehan and Tomas Jurco here, and remember that Wings team sucked. James Neal escaped his hell in Calgary to stand still and fire here with whatever passes McDavid or Draisaitl can get him. Which should actually work for 20-25 goals or so.

Sam Gagner has come home again, even though you were pretty sure he was dead. Tippett will find a way to keep Kailer Yamamoto off this roster, even though it could use all the dash it can find.

Prediction: This is where I’m supposed to say that Tippett will tighten things up and at least lower their goals against to keep them competitive for a while. But Ken Hitchcock couldn’t do it, and that’s all he does. And Todd McLellan is no idiot and he couldn’t either. Even if you trusted the goalies, which you shouldn’t, the defense has no top pairing player anywhere. Maybe if Tippet is finally the one to unlock Nurse, things could improve. But how many coaches is it going to take?

Tippett surely isn’t known for getting max scoring out of a team, and this team was short on scoring even with McClavicle, RNH, and Leon The Ladies Man. They still think Kassian can do anything. Neal might pop for a few goals, but not enough. They’re simply miles behind Calgary, Vegas, and San Jose, and you can’t see them running with any wildcard contender either. It’s another lost season up in EdMo, barring some miracle.

Save yourself, Connor. No one else here will.

Hockey

Before The Dress Rehearsal

By Sam Fels September 25, 2019 1695 0

We’ve been setting you up bit by bit for the season, but we haven’t gotten a chance to muse much. And musing is what we do best. So before the Hawks have their dress rehearsal tonight, thought we’d go through some things (that weren’t covered on the podcast, which was most things, which you can find here).

-I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a while, and it’s Stan Bowman’s take on Kirby Dach. Now, everything that follows is obviously moot if Dach can’t ever actually suit up due to concussion, and it doesn’t sound like that’s going to be tonight. On the ground, he’s going to Europe but probably isn’t going to play in the exhibition game in Berlin or in the season opener. Which is fine, as this weird schedule opener will actually give the Hawks an additional 3-4 practices before the home opener against the Sharks on the 10th. So there’s plenty of time to acclimate Dach for whatever audition he’s going to get.

And the gist of this piece is that he’s going to get it. Stan even hints at keeping him longer than the nine games even if he proves to need more time in the WHL, though that would be kind of silly. The beauty of the schedule here is that after this Euro opener, the Hawks next seven are at home. Which means seven games that Coach Cool Youth Pastor, if he even realizes he can do such a thing, can put Dach in the right spots and keep him away from tricky matchups. Obviously, you can’t go through a season doing that, but it would certainly give us an idea of what Dach can do and what he can’t when set up for success.

Whether Dach sticks or not will be an indication of what exactly the Hawks want out of this season. We’ve been debating this for two years without any answer, because whenever they deign to actually answer a question about what the goals are here it’s always some mealy-mouthed argle bargle trying to halve the line of competitiveness and development. We still honestly have no idea if the Hawks think the playoffs are a must this year, or if their eyes are really on next year and the one after when Dach, Boqvist, and Ian Mitchell are for sure on board. And we won’t, because transparency isn’t something they can spell over at 1901 West.

It would seem to me a third straight playoff-less season would mean everyone is fired, but we’ve though that before. And considering how much it feels like they’ve eaten through their season ticket base, that would be the factor applying the most pressure. They didn’t really have this last year as they remained competitive, but if they’re out of it in March I wonder how many patches of red seats we’ll be seeing in the stands (or won’t be seeing thanks to NBCSN Chicago’s spelunking-like filters).

So if the goal has to be playoffs, then Dach is here. Plain and simple. You’re not as worried about development, and he could walk in right now and be a better third center option than Anton Wedin or David Kampf. Put him between some two-way conscious wingers, and you might have something. If the Hawks send him down, then you have a pretty good idea this season isn’t the priority (and it might not have to be). That is unless he looks completely lost, which I heavily doubt he will.

Dach is a little awkwardly fit because even at home, Dylan Strome also needs sheltering. Ideally, you could trust Strome to not have to be coddled with hammock shifts every time, but we’re not there yet. If he could be, you could start Dach exclusively in the offensive zone and you’d probably have something.

I wonder if some of this Bowman thinking isn’t really hoping that Dach comes up, absolutely kills it, and makes the Strome negotiations in the summer easier. If Dach looks like he’s going to be a #2 or even #1 center by the end of the season, and Strome is knocked down the depth chart, well you’re not so eager to just hand him $6M or $7M are you? It’s definitely a factor.

Either way, Bowman sounds a little more aggressive with this prospect than he has about ones in the past. Part of that is he has a coach who won’t have his own agenda this time around, but I think he knows he’s got something here and he’s not going to get in Dach’s way.

-And when I say putting Dach between two two-way conscious wingers, I’m looking straight at this Saad-Kubalik combination. The Hawks seem intent on making Alex “Fetch” Nylander happen, so he’s with Toews tonight and Kane is going to have ya-ha time with The Hounds Of Justice (well, “The Shield” line was Perlini with DeBrincat and Strome but we’re keeping it). Putting David Kampf between the two of them makes for an effective checking line, and saw Saad control play from a third line spot last year, but there’s more they could be doing.

I am kind of happy Colliton has already decided to see Andrew Shaw in a 4th line role, though it’s probably already knowing what he can do in the top six and give someone else a look. Still, if this is any indication that Beto O’Colliton is a little more infatuated with what Drake Caggiula can do than Shaw, man won’t this be a fun season? This was one of our complaints about the Shaw trade, is that if Caggiula is healthy and fully blown out he kind of does the same things, though maybe not with the hands. Watch this space.

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Brandon Saad

By John Pullega September 25, 2019 1563 0

Few people hold Brandon Saad’s jock like I do. Today, I’m going to try something different. Rather than going all in on how THIS WILL BE THE YEAR THE REAL BRANDON SAAD APPEARS, I’m going to try to figure out where the latent angst about Saad exists, despite all the good he does on paper.

2018–19 Stats

80 GP – 23 G, 24 A, 47 P

52.69 CF% (5.1 CF% Rel), 49.9 oZS%

47.06 GF% (-2.97 Rel GF%), 47.27 xGF% (2.61 Rel xGF%)

Avg. TOI 17:41

Last Year’s Saad Review

A Brief History: Let’s start with the easy shit. Saad’s 23 goals and 47 points are right about in line with what he’s shown he can do in his career. His 24 assists were down a hair relative to his career numbers. His shooting percentage jumped back toward his norm (11.8% last year; 11.1% career). Those are excellent numbers for a third liner, which is how Colliton used Saad primarily last year. But when you trade a guy like Artemi Panarin, you expect more than a third liner in return.

The topline numbers place Saad in second-liner territory. It’s those pesky underlying numbers that make Saad a flashpoint of frustration. Of Blackhawks who played at least 41 games, Saad had the best CF% (52.69) and CF% Rel (5.1). (If you include Sikura [33 games] and Jokiharju [38 games], he’s third overall in both.)

Here’s how he affects the Hawks in terms of the shots the Hawks take when he is and isn’t on the ice.

All Charts by Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath)

The heat map looks even better in when you put Saad in isolation.

Simply, the Blackhawks are a much bigger offensive threat with Saad on the ice.

On the defensive side, the numbers aren’t quite as friendly, but the Hawks are still a better defensive team with Saad on the ice than without.

Saad does a good job of keeping shot rates on his side (LW) lower than average when he’s on the ice. When he’s off, that left side opens up, as do the shot rates within higher-danger areas. While Saad clearly couldn’t fix the woeful defense by himself, in isolation, he looks really, really good.

Having Saad on the ice was preferable to not having him on the ice—both on offense and defense—in terms of shot rates at 5v5 last year.

Saad also made almost all of his teammates better when he’s out there at 5v5.

The only players who were marginally worse with Saad than without were Toews and maybe Kampf, and even that’s a stretch. Without Saad, Toews ended up with slightly more shots for than against, but it’s a really thin margin. Without Saad, Kampf saw more shots for, but also more shots against. Everyone else was noticeably better (i.e., took more shots than they faced) with him out there.

Saad’s positive contributions were evident on the penalty kill last year, too. Yes, the Hawks were a potted plant watered with piss on the PK last year, but not because of anything Saad did wrong.

On the PK, the overall threat percentage is better (lower is better on defense) and the area that Saad plays in produces fewer unblocked shots when Saad is on the ice.

This is all the good Saad does. Now, I will gently place Saad’s jock to the side and talk about two things that caught my eye about him in a bad way last year.

First, his performance on the PP, in light of the fact that Colliton’s PP2 does not include Brandon Saad as of now (Keith–Seabrook–Kubalik–Nylander–Shaw).

The Hawks were indeed much, much worse on the PP when Saad was out there. This matches the eye test. Saad is generally a straight-line skater who doesn’t normally go to the front of the net. (He’ll occasionally trapeze along the goal line and put his shoulder down, but it’s relatively rare.) He doesn’t have a booming shot, and he’s not usually one to set up for a one timer. All of these things combined, these heat maps make sense. Saad isn’t much of a threat on the PP. That’s frustrating for sure.

Second, and more interesting to me, are his GF% (47.06) and xGF% (47.27). Saad is on the ice for almost exactly the share of goals expected of him. By themselves, those numbers don’t look good. But in terms of xGF%, only three Blackhawks had a positive share on the year: Dennis Gilbert (1 game played), Slater Koekkoek (22 games played), and Dylan Sikura (33 games played). So, Saad’s expected goals-for share isn’t as bad as it seems, relative to the rest of the team. (For comparison, Kane’s xGF% was 44.93. DeBrincat’s was 46.47.) Still, it’s not something to hang your hat on.

It’s the GF% that’s bothersome. Compare the xGF% and GF% among some of the Hawks’s top-scoring forwards.

Player	xGF% (5v5)	GF% (5v5)
Kane	44.93	55.63
Toews	47.05	51.67
DeBrincat	46.47	53.66
Strome	43.08	52.43
Saad	47.27	47.06

Of the Hawks’s top-scoring forwards, only Saad’s GF% is lower than his xGF%. When compared to the other top-scoring forwards on the Hawks, Saad’s rates look downright miserable. Every other forward overperformed their expectations last year, whereas Saad did just about what was expected of him by the numbers. And when the expectation isn’t good to start with, meeting that expectation isn’t really great, either.

Even worse, of the 13 non-goalie teammates that Saad played with for more than 100 minutes last year, only three of them (Keith, Seabrook, Jokiharju) had a higher GF% with Saad than without.

I think this is the heart of the angst. Saad never really outperforms what he’s supposed to do in terms of goals. When given the chance to play with guys who do outperform, the stats show that the outperformers do worse with Saad. Though this is only one aspect of his game, it’s a really fucking important one, and comparatively, Saad is lacking.

Saad did many things right last year, but when it comes to the goals-for share, it’s not up to the snuff of other offensive threats. I think that these stats are what manifest the madness about Saad most. What I don’t know is why that is. Is it play style? Motivation? Attitude? It’s hard for me to chalk up his relatively lacking GF% to motivation or attitude, given all the other things he does well. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

It Was the Best of Times: Saad finds a spot on the first line and makes it work with Toews and Kubalik offensively. Saad’s responsible defensive and possession abilities take pressure off Toews, who serves as more of a playmaker for Kubalik’s booming shot. The threat of Toews to Kubalik opens up more ice for Saad (especially if Gustafsson skates with them primarily), and he pots 25 goals and 60 points.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Saad withers away offensively on the third line because David Kampf has never been anything close to a playmaker. The third line gets stuck babysitting Maatta and Seabrook, and because Seabrook, Maatta, and Kampf can do no wrong in Colliton’s eyes, Saad gets crucified for not being everything on both offense and defense. He takes several healthy scratches in favor of Alex Nylander, requests a trade to the Blues, and proceeds to dome the Blackhawks ad infinitum.

Prediction: Saad is going to get crucified by Jeremy Colliton, Pat Foley and Eddie O, and the Brain Trust for being everything but an overperforming goal scorer. We’ll all keep listening to the notes he’s not playing and wishing that possession and shot shares, rather than goals, were what wins games.

Stats from HockeyViz.com, hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, and Corsica.hockey

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You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: Calgary Flames

By Sam Fels September 24, 2019 1735 0

Did you forget that the Flames finished with the best record in the West last year? You probably did, because if you cut a loud fart and winced you missed their playoff appearance. They were done in five games against the Avs, as they watched Nathan MacKinnon do a full Cirque de Fuck You and were helpless to stop him. They even got a good playoff performance from Mike Smith, which didn’t matter because Mac K was taking 40 shots per game just by himself. Will it get better this season? Let’s find out…

2018-2019

50-25-7 107 points (1st in Pacific, lost in 1st round)

3.52 GF/G (3rd) 2.72 GA/G (9th) +66 GD

53.9 CF% (5th) 53.2 xGF% (7th)

19,3 PP% (18th) 79.7 PK% (21st)

Goalies: After a season where the fans were clamoring for “Big Save” Dave Rittich to take over for Mike Smith, he eventually did and wasn’t really all that impressive. That left the door open for Smith to take the playoff starts, which went well for him but not the team. This time around, the Flames will give the job to Rittich full-time and hope his career .909 in 66 career games are just a starting point and not an indication of what he is. At 27, one wonders how much room there is for growth, and if this is his prime, it might not be enough to take Blasty through multiple rounds in the spring. Given the way Bill Peters teams play though, it can probably get them through the regular season.

The interesting card here is Cam Talbot, who will start as the backup. Talbot simply died of exhaustion in Edmonton, getting 73 and 67 starts in successive seasons before coughing out most of his organs the past two seasons. But it was only two seasons ago that Talbot was putting up .919s and .924s with the Oilers, and possibly with spot starts at the beginning of the season he can rediscover some type of that form. He could be just cooked, but he’s worth the risk as a backup and safety net.

If neither work out, the Flames will definitely be in the market for a goalie at the trade deadline, or pray to God that Tyler Parsons lights up the AHL and can be rushed up to Alberta. But that would be the height of desperation, and even their ability to get anyone at the deadline is going to be complicated with their cap situation.

Defense: This seemed like the strength of the Flames all season…and then MacKinnon burst through the walls and declared he was here to fuck shit up before flipping over the whole buffet and draining the keg himself. And now the Flames appear to just be running it back.

They have to do that, because the plan was to introduce Juuso Valimaki into the lineup, but his knee when blooey while training in Finland in August and now the Flames are fucked without the customary enjoyment. The only hope for change is continued growth from Rasmus Andersson and Oliver Kylington, which they actually should get. If one or both can start to take on second pairing responsibility, the Flames should be ok.

Maybe. Because even though Mark Giordano put up a Norris campaign, he was nowhere near the Avs top line in that first round immolation. It looked exactly like when Joakim Noah won Defensive Player Of The Year with the Bulls and then spent the playoffs getting his neck stepped on by Nene (now let’s all picture MacKinnon with Nene’s dreads). Gio is 35 now and if the spring was some kind of signal of a tumbledown the hill, the Flames could be in serious trouble. And it can happen fast. Ask Duncan Keith. Gio has already proven he’s dragged around TJ Brodie to any kind of competence, and if he can’t do that anymore then this unit could be in serious trouble.

Forwards: The big question is when, and possibly if, Matthew Tkachuk is going to rejoin the fray, as he’s still unsigned. More and more RFAs seem to be coming into the fold, but it’s now crunch time to get him in before the season.

Without him, this outfit is even more top-heavy than it already was. There’s Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan at the top, and Mikael Backlund and Michael Frolik on that unique checking/scoring line, but that’s about it. Elias Lindholm can join either, and put up 78 points at 23. They’ll need Dillon Dube to show a lot more than he did in his first toe-dipping at the top level. We’re talking about a team that took Milan Lucic on, so you know there are major holes in the bottom six. Which only get larger if someone has to rise up to replace Tkachuk. And if he’s anything like his dad–and he’s everything like his dad–he’s going to go into the tank as soon as the ink is dry on the new paper (or more accurately, demand his bathtub of chicken wings in the dressing room).

They’re short up top, but in Gaudreau and Monahan and a hopefully not-blob-like Tkachuk can mostly outscore it.

Prediction: Lucky for the Flames, the division still blows. San Jose and Vegas will be good, but they can harvest on Vancouver, EdMo, LA, Anaheim, and Arizona enough to comfortably remain in the top three. You could squint and see where if Giordano is stumbling through a quick decline, and Rittich isn’t up for it, and Tkachuk never matches last year, it could be a disaster. All of that is possible, but I wouldn’t bet on likely. 107 points again seems a bit beyond them, but a comfortable 98-100 is probably still on the table, given that Peters always has his teams getting more chances than they give up. And in Calgary, unlike his Carolina days, he has the horses to finish them. But this team needs or needed one more half-step to truly become a power. Maybe it was Valimaki. Maybe it’s another goalie. Maybe it’s a player from nowhere. It doesn’t feel like they got it.

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