A Brief History: There’s been talk about how Carpenter is a Kampf clone, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing, given the defensive rigmarole we’re going to be drinking off this entire year. It might be even better than that though, as Carpenter has shown a bit more offensive skill than our David.
Carpenter’s 18 points last year were a career best, as were his CF% and oZS%. He’s pretty good at limiting high-danger shots in his own end in the limited time he’s on the ice. And he’s good on faceoffs, which we think is sort of the appendix of hockey skill but sure won’t turn it down if he’s got it. He can play center or wing, so he’s got some versatility in the most literal sense of the word.
His value shines brightest as a dungeon master on 5v5. Last year saw him mitigate high-danger threats in his own zone and turn the ice with regularity. But then again, he started in his own zone at just a 43.4% clip. Still, he’s always been sort of a defensive plug throughout his short career.
There’s some talk about how Carpenter can play on the PK, but I’m not so sure I buy it yet. Although Vegas was in the top half of the league for killing penalties last year (12th overall), Carpenter was sort of a ninth guy on the PK unit (or 10th if you’re pedantic and count the goalie). But given how awful the Hawks were last year, that might still be an improvement, especially if it’s minimizing high-stress defensive time that Jonathan Toews has to take.
It Was the Best of Times: Carpenter ends up as a fourth line RW/C who wins more than half of his faceoffs. Though he doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the offensive zone as he did last year, he builds off last year’s career high in points, potting 20 on the year. He takes some time away from Toews on the PK.
It Was the BLURST of Times: Shaw gets hurt and Colliton gets a case of galaxy brain and puts Carpenter on the first line.
Prediction: Carpenter is 28 and has a three-year, $1 million per contract, and that’s about the player we’ll get. He’s an older David Kampf with slightly more offensive skill. He’ll score some kind of fluky, greasy goal in the first 10 games and replace John Hayden as Eddie O’s adopted son, number and all. More importantly, he’ll do a decent job battening down the PK2 unit.
That’s about all you can ask from a guy like Carpenter.
Schadenfeude: noun, 1. Pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. 2. When your rival team is even worse than your team. See: 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings.
2018-2019
32-40-10 74 Pts. (7th in Atlantic Division)
2.73 GF/G (21st) – 3.32 GA/G (27th)
47.1 CF% (28th) – 44.5 xGF% (31st)
18.1 PP% (19th) – 77.1 PK% (28th)
Goalies: In my mind Jimmy Howard is at least 65 years old, but turns out he’s only 34. Only. It’s safe to say his best years are behind him, and while he wasn’t a trainwreck or anything last year, his .907 SV%/3.07GAA at evens isn’t exactly going to save this shitshow of a team. Jonathan Bernier isn’t going to do it either. He’s certainly a serviceable back-up, and let’s be honest neither of these goalies are going to be what sinks the Red Wings’ season, but neither of them are good enough to bail out this team either.
Defense: Why is Mike Green still playing? I guess plenty of Wings fans could yell that right back at me but with the words “Brent Seabrook” in the middle of that sentence. But that doesn’t change the fact that if Mike Green is on your top pairing, you’ve got issues. Last season the Wings were 28th in the league in terms of shots against per game, placing them in the esteemed company of the Rangers, Hawks, and Senators. Only one defenseman (Filip Hronek) was above water in possession last year, and just barely—he had a 50.3 CF%. We know a few things about shitty defenses around here, and that’s what the Red Wings have.
Forwards: A lot of teams are stuck with one top line and nothing else, but the Red Wings are really taking this situation to a new level. Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha is a decent top line—really, Dylan Larkin is probably the only good thing on this team. But all three are young and could be good pieces to build around. Or maybe they can gtfo to better teams, I don’t know.
Now, they have young guys like Filip Zadina, Taro Hirose, and Michael Rasmussen, who may develop into something, but that’s by no means certain and they weren’t lighting up the scorer’s sheet in the playing time they had last year. This team was dead-ass last in expected goals for. And so it goes with a rebuild—it’s going to be a lot of trial and error.
Prediction: Yes, Steve Yzerman is back and people will try to find the upsides, but let’s not kid ourselves—the Red Wings are going to suck this year. It’s entirely possible they’re at the bottom of the division, and I couldn’t be happier about it. If they’re not, it’s simply because the Senators are proving yet again why relegation is a viable strategy the NHL should adopt. The Wings will end up with somewhere between 75-80 points, and Larkin will be like a poor man’s Connor McDavid—not, he’s not anywhere near as good as McDavid so please do not misunderstand me, but he’s young, talented, and wasting it on a terrible team. But too bad. Fuck this team.
Alright, let’s take this death march to the forwards, where the story is kind of the same—just as the defense is mostly a collection of 6th or even 7th guys, the offense is a potpourri of bottom-sixers. Case in point: the very guy we’re kicking this off with, Drake Caggiula.
A Brief History: The very best day of Caggiula’s career with the Hawks came before he even dressed. That day was the day they acquired him in a trade with the hilariously stupid Edmonton Oilers that relieved us of everyone’s, particularly John Pullega’s, most-hated player, Brandon Manning. Caggiula could literally have been a beer league player of a bag of pucks and he would have been welcomed with open arms in exchange for Manning. And even once that rapturous feeling wore off, Caligula was not terrible on the top line with Toews and Kane. Granted, it’s hard to be terrible on a line with them but he did no harm.
Except to himself, that is. Because despite sustaining a concussion and missing about a month, this dumbshit promptly ran head first into getting domed by Dustin Byfuglien, which didn’t result in another (acknowledged) head injury, but it did show that he is a complete and utter oaf. And fortunately, everyone realized he’s really just a bottom-six guy with a bunch of missing teeth, so his position on the top line wasn’t exactly the linchpin of the offense.
It Was the Best of Times: Given the collection of flotsam the Hawks have acquired, Caggiula’s best-case situation is to settle in on the third line with David Kampf and maybe Brendan Perlini. Or Brandon Saad, if he gets marooned there. Or Andrew Shaw. That’s right—Andrew Shaw belongs at best on a third line, he’s not an elite scorer, and he’s a dumb piece of shit. I know, you don’t believe me, but you’ll see.
Anyway, this preview is about Caggiula, and while his mediocre possession numbers, despite very sheltered zone starts, don’t scream third line, ideally he’ll improve the defensive aspects of his game, and this is where he’d make the most sense in terms of the depth chart. Essentially, if you have to have Drake Caggiula in your top six, you’re fucked.
It Was the BLURST of Times: And that brings us to the worst-case scenario. Let’s say Saad has a slump, Kubalik doesn’t pan out, Nylander remains useless, and no one earns or deserves a spot on the top line with Daydream Nation so it falls to Caggiula. He likely wouldn’t do too much harm, aside from probably taking some stupid-ass penalties and getting brown brain a couple times, but he also wouldn’t provide the scoring ability the Hawks need. And it would exemplify how their bloated forward corps is really just a bunch of guys. A bunch of guys who don’t make the playoffs.
Prediction: Caggiula will most likely meander among the bottom six, possibly spending some brief stints on the top line as Coach Cool Youth Pastor figures out who’s awful and who’s useful. For his part, Caggiula will finish with around 20 points as a half-decent albeit very block-headed third- or fourth-liner, best remembered for being anyone other Brandon fucking Manning.
They have lots of young talent! They just need time to develop! They’re going to finally make the postseason again! Management is getting its shit together, for real! You’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re talking about the White Sox, but lo, it is the Buffalo Sabres who seemingly every year are on the verge of great things only to see it go down in flames. After a truly ugly spectacle last year in the second half, they’ve brought in new coach Ralph Krueger who, despite having a name that makes him sound like an insurance salesman from Toledo, is actually NOT part of the clique of crusty old white men from which NHL GMs and coaches are typically drawn. So they say it’s really going to be different this time, but I think we’ve heard this song before…
2018-2019
33-39-10 76 pts (6th in Atlantic Division)
2.70 GF/G (23rd) – 3.27 GA/G (24th)
49.9 CF% (14th) – 47.82 xGF% (22nd)
19.5 PP (16th) – 80.9 PK (12th)
Goalies: This remains a huge weak spot for Buffalo, and in a goalie league, that’s a problem. By the total numbers Carter Hutton isn’t horrible, and at 5v5 he managed a .913 SV%/2.80 GAA on the season. But what that masks is a second half that was hot garbage, with an .895/3.56 after January 1st. Backup Linus Ullmark isn’t much better. He had a .918/2.69 at 5v5 for the year with a decent .910 after 1/1, but an .856 SV% on the PK (Hutton wasn’t spectacular either with an .883 on the PK).
All of this is to say that both of these guys are middling goalies, which won’t kill you every night if the young, snazzy defense can play well in front of them, but it means they also can’t be relied upon to win it for you if the defense shits the bed at times, nor can they be counted on to steal a few games. The Sabres have prospect Ukko-Pekka Luukonen—easily in the running for best name in the league—but he’s out with a hip injury so by the time they bring him up, if in fact he can play at the NHL level, it may be too late.
Defense: On the other hand, the defense should be a relative strength for Buffalo. The top pairing is, for now, the Rasmuses (Rasmusi?), Dahlin and Ristolainen. However, Ristolainen wants out and could be a valuable trade piece for greater forward depth (more on that later). If he’s moved out, Brandon Montour could move to the first pairing. Dahlin should continue building on a solid year (was 4th on the team in points, and the only guys beating him in possession numbers all played fewer than 35 games). Either Ristolainen or Montour, who himself should have a strong year now that he’s fully out of the Anaheim shitstorm, would make a decent partner.
Otherwise, Montour may pair with Jack McCabe. Or, Colin Miller may jump to the first pairing and then it’s Montour and McCabe on the second. None of which is terrible. And, we’ll probably see our almost-special-boy Henri Jokiharju somewhere, likely on the 3rd pairing. Yes, I’m just assuming Harju makes the lineup over Marco Scandella, although Casey Nelson could figure in as well, depending on if they want to play him and/or Harju on their off side.
Forwards: As is the style of the time, the Sabres have a top line and little else. However, it is an enviable top line, don’t get me wrong, of Jeff Skinner, Jack Eichel, and Sam Reinhart. Like their other prodigy Dahlin, Eichel should just have more good days ahead. Last year was a career year for him with 82 points (which led the team), with Skinner and Reinhart right behind him.
Beyond that it gets a little dicey. Casey Mittelstadt needs to learn how not to suck, and if he can’t there’s an outside chance he’ll lose the 2C spot to recently drafted Dylan Cozens. However, that assumes Cozens makes huge strides really quickly, and that his thumb injury isn’t an issue (but at that age would a damn thumb really not heal? Come on). Conor Sheary and Marcus Johansson could finish out that second line, but after that, as is so often the case, there’s no depth. Do Evan Rodrigues and Jimmy Vesey do anything for you? How about Johan Larsson or Kyle Okposo? I didn’t think so. Their fourth line of Zemgus Girgensons (who is not a character from Lord of the Rings?), Larsson and Okposo might be the fourth-liniest line ever. Prospect Arttu Ruostalainen may be able to help with the depth issue, but again, that’s assuming a young guy in Europe can make the jump to the top club right away. Or maybe they can get something for the aforementioned Ristolainen—you’d have to think forward depth would be their asking price. But, it’s a lot of ifs.
Prediction: The Sabres likely won’t be the trainwreck we saw at the end of last year, but it’s doubtful they’ll be a playoff team either. If everything, literally everything, goes right, they finish with about 85-90 points—closer to 80 if not everything goes right. Maybe just maybe they take 4th in the Atlantic? It seems unlikely unless Montreal regresses and Florida fails to make a leap forward. But, spoken like a true Sox fan, even if they don’t make the postseason, they should still see a lot of improvement and maybe a faint light at the end of that tunnel.
A Brief History: There are so many ways to measure what a negative effect Seabrook had when he was on the ice last year. Let’s start at the most obvious, which is his defense.
On the left is WITH Seabrook. On the right is WITHOUT. Both are bad. But it’s somehow and exceedingly worse when he’s out there. The analysis here is simple: Seabrook gets mauled when he’s forced to play in his own end.
The only Blackhawk D-man whose threat percentage while on the ice was higher than Seabrook’s (higher is worse on defense) was Gustav Forsling, and he won’t ever see the ice inside PNC Arena, barring a glut of Hurricanes injuries. Defensively, Seabrook is slightly better than Gustav Forsling. Ringing endorsement.
Worse than being bad by yourself is making your teammates worse. Seabrook excels at this aspect of the game.
This chart shows score-adjusted shots per 60 minutes, both against (inverted y-axis) and for (x-axis). That red diagonal line is the 50% point for shots for and shots against (i.e., the breakeven point). The blob of blue in the middle is Seabrook on his own, which leans toward bad. The black squares are a given player WITH Seabrook. The red squares are the given player WITHOUT Seabrook.
Aside from reiterating how bad this team is at defense as a whole, this shows that when Seabrook is on the ice, opponents take more shots than give up. When you take Seabrook off the ice, literally every single Blackhawk ends up facing fewer shots.
In short, Seabrook is a black hole for defensive performance, and there’s nowhere to hide him. He sucks so much that he has his own fucking event horizon. That’s fucking something.
You bet your sweet crimson ass there is. Perhaps the worst part of Seabrook’s game is his penalty killing.
Jesus Christ, just look at how bad the PK is when Seabrook is on the ice (left). He played just 21 seconds fewer than the Hawks’s leading PK time getter, Duncan Keith, on by far the worst PK in the league. This is an utter dereliction of duty on Colliton’s part. There might not be a worse regular-time-getting penalty killer in the league than Brent Seabrook, and yet there he is, almost leading the team in playing time out there.
Maybe you’re sitting there buying the myth that he’s still useful on offense. But guess what?
That’s not really true. In terms of shots at 5v5, Seabrook is entirely replaceable. The offensive threat (higher is better on offense) is the same whether he’s on the ice or not. Combine this with his GF%, and it’s even worse. Of Hawks who played at least 41 games, only Gustav Forsling (there’s that name again) had a worse GF% among Hawks D-men.
“Well, he’s still got a booming shot and can be useful on the power play,” you might say.
Pretty much any power play with Seabrook on it dies on this “still useful, booming” shot of his. This shot directly produced AT BEST 10 power play goals if you want to include the possibility of tips (two goals, three first assists, five second assists). That’s not nearly useful enough to make up for everything else he makes bad.
The only positive thing that happened with him last year is that he played under 20 minutes per game on average. That’s a start, but he really should be playing about 20 games per year.
It Was the Best of Times: Boqvist breaks camp and takes Seabrook’s spot. Seabrook plays 20 games all year as a 7th D-man, along with Dahlstrom.
It Was the BLURST of Times: Seabrook plays more than 20 games.
Prediction: Seabrook’s gonna get second-pairing minutes and look terrible doing it. Everyone’s gonna keep going back to the undefinable “leadership” he brings, saying, “You just can’t understand it unless you’re in the locker room.” Everyone will make excuse after excuse for his performance. It will be agony because none of this is really Seabrook’s fault.
This is just what he is now: a bad all-around hockey player. As much as I want to hem and haw about how a real leader would take himself off the ice, that’s not fair. It’s stupid, in fact. Instead, that’s a decision his coach—a man who likely has the same sort of respectability in Seabrook’s eyes as a soiled diaper—needs the stones to make. But Colliton probably doesn’t have the stones to do what anyone with even a cursory understanding of hockey would do: scratch Seabrook more often than not.
The only thing that Colliton, Bowman, and every other decision maker should be afraid of regarding Seabrook is how much damage he does to the Hawks as a direct result of playing ice hockey. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. Brent Seabrook is not a good hockey player anymore. He’s a sunk cost. You get nothing for continuing to ice him, except a below-replacement-level performance.
They’ll retire his number one day because he deserves it. We’ll revere him as a cornerstone of the Hawks revival, because he is, was, and always will be. The first time he comes back after his retirement, he will get the raucous standing ovation he’s owed. That’s what makes watching him be quite possibly the worst regularly playing defenseman in the NHL today as agonizing as it is.
We’re just as tired of this as you are. And it really doesn’t have to be this way.
Perhaps it was always too big of an a request to be rescued by the Bruins again, first in 2011 from a revolting Canucks team, no one from whom has gone on to have his name etched in silver, and this past summer from quite possibly the most underwhelming assemblage of players to ever end up having hoisted the Cup in the moldering St. Louis Blues. It was a true exhibition in monkey paw wish fulfillment, or at the very least a real life tale of punishing Irish Catholic irony worthy of Sean O’Casey, that Brad Marchand would finally be exposed as the absolute fraud of a player that he is only to give the Blues their first ever Cup. There are sins going on here both big and small that will never, ever be forgiven.
Goalies: Last year was a bit of a resurgence for longtime B’s netminder Tuukka Rask, mostly due to the fact that the rest of the league seemed to drop down to the rate Tuukka had been playing at for the past couple of years, at least in the regular season. His .912 overall is about league average, but the underlying numbers suggest that at evens he was as solid as could be expected with a .925 against. The problems came during special teams, where Bruce Cassidy’s more uptempo, more loosely structured system came with its own risks and rewards. The Bruins had a top flight power play, but with only a single high defenseman, and that defenseman being either Tory Krug or Charlie McAvoy, that left Tuukka on an island, and the B’s allowed a league worst 15 shorties against. Similarly, their PK wasn’t as tightly structured behind the obvious top manned unit of Patrice Bergeron, and their kill was decidedly middle of the road, a serious dropoff from the Julien era. All of this is a longwinded way of saying that Tuukka may not be an absolute brick wall anymore, but he’s still in the upper echelon of goalies, as he proved by turning in a Smythe worthy performance with a .934 overall in the post season. He’ll once again be spelled by Jaro Halak, who always seems to fare better as a 1B or a backup, and was more than acceptable with a .922 overall and .934 at evens last year in 37 starts. He’s more than capable of providing Rask with a break to preserve him for the post-season or even stepping up in the event of injury. Overall, the Bruins have one of the better goaltending situations in both the conference and the league.
Defense: One of the big, and stupid misconceptions about the Cup final matchup was that both of these teams were huge, lumbering, rough and tumble heavyweight teams, based solely on reputation and the fact that Regis “Pierre” McGuire is a moronic pecker who never shuts up. The fact of the matter is that while Zdeno Chara is still lurching around Fangorn Forest at 42 years old (43 in March), this blue line is built to get up and go, and is somewhat undersized, Charlie McAvoy’s absolutely huge face notwithstanding. Chara played center field for McAvoy for the majority of the year, but they weren’t taking the toughest assignments or zone starts. McAvoy is still unsigned and was on pace for 40+ points at age 21-22, so it’s likely the B’s opt for longer term instead of a bridge deal because the offensive upside is clearly there, but he’s still a dervish in his own end. Brandon Carlo also remains unsigned, and was tasked with some of the tougher assignments in the post season, as he certainly has the 6’5″, 220lb frame to take that on. John Moore is here for another three years much to the delight of all the Devils fans who hate him, and Tory Krug still needs to be kept as far away from the offensive zone as possible. There’s not a lot in the Bruins’ system on the blue line that they’re waiting with baited breath for, so assuming that McAvoy and Carlo eventually get signed, as both are restricted and have no leverage, they’re basically running back the same unit as last year.
Forwards: This is well worn territory yet again, but it always bears repeating. The Bruins boast arguably the best line in the game with Patrice Bergeron centering David Pastrnak and the detestable Brad Marchand. Bergeron is an absolute legend, and is doing things at both ends of the still when his contemporaries in Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Toews have basically had to choose offense or defense at this point and just stick to one of them. Bergeron is a possession dynamo, one of the smartest players in the game, and will take an absolute pounding night in and night out, he is an instantaneous hall of famer. David Pastrnak is young, dynamic, and has an elite set of hands even if his skating stride isn’t necessarily the prettiest. He has a top flight release on his shot, but isn’t afraid of the corners. Brad Marchand is a slightly more talented Andrew Shaw who has failed miserably every time Patrice Bergeron has been injured or seriously limited by injuries on the ice, and has built his whole career on Bergeron’s back. He showed his ass in the above highlight by doing his best Roger Dorn OLE at the blue line, and still ended up going for a change as the Blues entered the zone. Mites are taught to never change on a back check, let alone after allowing free zone entry while flatfooted. He is an unrepentant dickhead who intends to injure opponents, and if the NHLPA were an actual union invested in the well being of its labor force instead of a loose conglomeration of millionaire 7th-grade-educated hillrods with CTE and coke hangovers, they’d railroad Marchand’s ass right out for endangering the rest of the union’s ability to earn. The day he inevitable wraps his sports car around a tree in Dorchester at 4AM (as is hockey player tradition) cannot come soon enough.
Elsewhere, David Backes getting double-owned by losing a Game 7 Cup final, and to his former team the Blues would be pretty hilarious, again, if it hadn’t been the Blues winning. Charlie Coyle came home in a curious trade and somehow turned into a playoff dynamo, but it remains to be seen if he can provide consistent second-tier scoring behind the top line for a full 82. David Krejci remains under appreciated, but at 33 his production has begun to slip. Danton Heinen, Jake DeBrusk, and Sean Kuraly will all be expected to take the next step in their respective developments, with DeBrusk’s ceiling being the highest. It’s not a bad group to try throw out there again, but the B’s are far from capped out and have always been top heavy with this group, so it’s curious why they haven’t tried to augment their scoring a little bit on the margins. But it’s doubtful any of the 29 other fanbases are going to be heartbroken if throwing this same group out there again just isn’t quite good enough to win in June.
Outlook: The Atlantic is a far tougher draw than whatever the Metro is right now, and that’s even with the Leafs still thumb-blasting themselves in the Mitch Marner situation and having a bad blue line. What happened to Tampa was a fluke, and they’re certainly not going anywhere and could have a sizeable chip on their shoulder. The Panthers may finally get it together, but that’s a big if, and the rest of the division is willfully shitty. It’s basically a given that the Bruins will have one of the three guaranteed spots, it’s just a matter of seeding, and in which round they inevitably beat the Leafs, and then in which subsequent round they implode.
Since that fateful day when Stan Bowman pulled Quenneville’s heart of out his ass and made him sniff it with the Hjalmarsson trade, Connor Murphy’s performance has been a consistent curiosity. He’s often looked like the best Hawks D-man on the ice when he’s healthy. But when you pan out for a longer view of the defense, it’s always felt like being the best of this bunch is like beating a two-legged dog at a digging contest. This year, Murphy will likely need to shoulder the burden of being the only passable defensive defenseman on the Hawks, at least until de Haan gets back.
A Brief History: We’ve always liked Connor Murphy around here, and we all thought we were getting a younger, cheaper Hjalmarsson in him. In some ways, that’s been true. Over the last two years, each has missed extended time due to injury (Murphy last year, Hjalmarsson in 18). They’ve been fairly comparable in those two years, though Hjalmarsson has had an overall edge in defensive play.
But last year wasn’t particularly kind to our Large Irish Son. He missed 30 games due to a back injury, which is never good for a 6’4” skater. We saw him skating up at the blue line at times as Colliton’s man defense went through what we can only pray is growing pains. His possession metrics, both vanilla (48.63%) and high-danger varieties (39.34%), were underwater on the year, though you might expect that given his zone starts.
And yet, Murphy was relatively fine next to Carl Dahlstrom. They were the “shutdown pair” for a time, and compared to everyone else on the Hawks’s blue line, the ice was least dangerous when Murphy was out there. Maybe the most interesting stat about Murphy last year is that despite starting in his own zone about 62% of the time, his GF% was second among Hawks D-men who played at least 41 games, second only to Duncan Keith (58 oZS%).
It Was the Best of Times: Murphy stays healthy and jumps into the top-pairing role with Gustafsson. Hell, you can play them both on their off sides and see what happens. Gus scored 60 on his off side, and Murphy never looked too out of place on his, so whatever. Fuck it. Putting Murphy and Gus together hedges Gus’s awfulness in his own zone. Might as well try it, since the only other true shutdown guy on this team, Calvin de Haan, won’t be around for a month or so.
It Was the BLURST of Times: Murphy’s back keeps him off the ice for 40% of the year. For all the bitching we’ve done about Murphy’s use since his arrival, Colliton has upped the time we see Murphy on the ice consistently. It’s unlikely we’ll see him with any less than second-pairing minutes. So, aside from injury—which is still a distinct possibility for a man of his significant vertical carriage—the worst scenario is that Murphy can’t adapt to whatever it is that Colliton’s defensive scheme wants him to do, which, based on last year, seems to ask defensemen to skate around the blue line in their own zone.
Prediction: Murphy continues to toil in the dungeon shifts. When de Haan comes back healthy, he finally gets to play with a worthwhile partner, and the Hawks have a true shutdown pairing. He and de Haan also round out the PK1 unit, which is a vast improvement over Keith–Seabrook. The PK still finishes toward the top of the bottom half of the league (say, 18th), but not because of anything Murphy does. Murphy continues to go underappreciated for the cardinal sin of not being Niklas Hjalmarsson.
Murphy’s never going to give you sexy numbers, unless, like, a 69 dZS% tickles you. He’s about as representative a defenseman as you’ll find. But with the offensive threats the Hawks have, that’s really all they need.
The old standby. The last four seasons, no matter what happens, there the Caps are, finishing first in the Metro. There’s always a portion of the season where it feels like it’s gone on them, that this is finally where they’ve gotten too old and too predictable and too comfortable, and yet the season ends and here we are. Coaching change doesn’t seem to matter much. Whatever player turnover doesn’t seem to matter much. There seems to be things you can always count on. Alex Ovechkin will lead the league in goals, he’ll score from his post-up spot, and the Caps will finish first.
Will it be true again? There are a couple challengers, but maybe we’ve gotten to the point where we just take the Caps as a given until they say they’re not.
2018-2019
48-26-8 102 points (1st in Metro, lost in 1st round)
3.34 GF/G (5th) 3.02 GA/G (17th)
49.1 CF% (18th) 47.1 xGF% (25th)
20.8 PP% (12th) 79.9 PK% (24th)
Goalies: You think of Braden Holtby as another given for the Caps, along with Ovie and Backstrom. Still, the past two seasons he’s only been ok, and you’ll recall the Caps’ Cup run started with Philip Grubauer in net in the playoffs before he gave way to Holtby. Holts put up a .911 last year, which was only a touch above league average. He hasn’t been near his Vezina form for two seasons now, but this is his final one before hitting free agency. Tends to motivate some players. He’ll be 30 when the season starts, which means whatever comes after this is probably the last big contract he’ll sign, wherever that might be. There’s no reason to think the .908s and .911s of the past two seasons are now the norm. If the Caps get another .920+ out of Holtby, then they’ll almost certainly be near the top of the standings again.
He’ll be backed up by Pheonix Copley and his misspelled first name, who was your run of the mill backup last year. The Caps can’t afford an injury to Holtby, that’s for sure. Then again, do the Caps want Holtby to prove he’s worth $8M or $9M for the next few years?
Defense: The Caps mostly return the same outfit on the blue line, except they’ve swapped out Matt Niskanen for Radko Gudas. At first that sounds like a major downgrade. It’s still something of one, but Gudas is actually effective when none of the bullshit is on display. Sadly, there’s always some bullshit on display, so the Caps will be killing off some dumbass penalties. John Carlson, Dmitry Orlov, and Michal Kempny (sigh) will be doing the heavy lifting here, They’ll hope for development from both Christian Djoos and Jonas Siegenthaler, and both were good in sheltered roles last year. If they get that, they can reduce what they need out of Gudas, which should always be the idea. They may get minutes from prospect Lucas Johansen as well, but they shouldn’t need it.
Forwards: Along with Holtby, Nicklas Backstrom is going into his free agent year at 31. Just like the goalie, this is probably his last big contract, and it’s a question if he’ll get it from the Caps with Evgeny Kuznetsov pretty much taking the #1 center role, or poised to. Backstrom is a lock for 70 or more points every year, and that should get him a deal nearing eight figures next summer, even at 32. Kuznetsov and him down the middle is just about as good as it gets. Lars Eller does the dirty work, and you know what Ovechkin is going to do no matter how old he is. He’ll be scoring 45 when he is 45. Beyond that there’s TJ Oshie, who if healthy he’s probably good f0r 30 goals again. Big if, though.
Beyond that, the Caps might be a touch short on scoring forwards. If they get a step forward from Jakub Vrana and his 24 goals last year, they’ll be ok. Carl Hagelin is around for a full season this time, and though he’s getting up there he still that brain and those feet. If the top six do top six things, the Caps are fine as they have plenty of foot soldiers in the bottom six to carry through. They always do, don’t they?
Prediction: You know what the floor is with the Caps. It’s incredibly hard to envision them slipping out of the playoffs unless Holtby goes full poltergeist in net or getting hurt. Ovie will score. So will Kuznetsov and Backstrom and Oshie. They’ll get contributions from elsewhere. The defense is solid if not spectacular, though it could start to approach that if the two kids become things. They have the Penguins and Hurricanes to outlast, but they always seem to. Maybe they’ll fall all the way to second. It’s hard to see anything worse.
For going on damn near three years now, it’s been obvious to anyone with a brain that the Blackhawks have had lacked a lot on the blue line. We knew that good ol’ Duncan Keith would never be able to keep up his cowboy ways at the elite level he had played at before, and there seemed to be little to-no-help on the way. Last year the Hawks desperately lacked an effective puck mover on the backend who could also defend well. Going into the offseason, they needed to find someone who could shut down the opponent in the defensive zone. Who could, ideally, take away half the ice the way Keith used to, even if not quite as well. They needed someone who could do all that while also being able to get the puck out of the zone once he had it, either by skating or passing. And if they could get all of that in one guy, that’d be ideal.
So they traded for Olli Maatta, who can do none of that.
A Brief History: At one point Maatta was considered one of the better prospects in the NHL, but due to a series of injuries both on and off the ice, including an unfortunate battle with cancer, he never fully delivered on all the promise. Once considered someone with high offensive upside, especially after having 9 goals and 29 points in 78 games during his rookie season, Maatta has struggled to produce since and has never topped either of those numbers, though he did have 29 points again in 2017-18 when he played all 82 games for the only time in his career. Last year he failed to match that scoring pace and ended up going on IR with yet another injury in March, this one an upper-body injury after taking an uncomfortable hit. He missed all but 5 games from that point on.
Maatta has settled somewhat nicely into your typically “defensive defenseman” role, as despite missing 22 games last year, he finished third on the Penguins in blocked shots and hits. If that sentence sounded positive, it was not meant to. Basically what that means is that despite being a quarter of the season, Maatta spent so much fucking time in his own defensive zone that he had no choice but to throw his dumb body in front of pucks, likely because he was tired of skating around, because that isn’t exactly a strength of his. Blocking a lot of shots is good when you’re Niklas Hjalmarsson, who is good at both preventing shots and getting in front of them, but when you’re getting face-fucked by the opponents at a near-54% clip and 4% below your own team rate, blocking those shots is less impressive skill and more necessary duty.
It Was the Best of Times: Just staying healthy for the full 82 would be a best-case scenario for Maatta as an individual, because again, he’s only done that once. As a player and contributor to the Hawks, it would be ideal if he can return to his scoring pace from ’17-’18 and could end up somewhere in that 23-29 point range. Expecting more than that is foolhardy, but it’s not unrealistic to think he could do that. Moreover, it’d be nice if he cleans up his shit in the defensive zone and is able to fight above the 50% mark on shot attempts. If he can do all of that and be a steady presence on the back end, this could end up being a not-terrible acquisition. On the other hand….
It Was the BLURST of Times: If Maatta plays like he did last year – getting brained by the other team and playing well below team rate on shot attempts, and getting by-and-large lucky on the overall goal differential, while also providing little to nothing of note from a production standpoint, Maatta runs the risk of compounding the issues that ailed the Hawks’ blue line last year rather than offering himself as a solution. If that does end up being the case, him getting injured – which he probably will – would not be such a bad outcome, as bad is that is to say and as harsh as that sounds.
Prediction: Maatta deals with some minor injury stuff but nothing too major, and plays more than 65 but less than 75 games for the Hawks. He makes a modest improvement in the CF% but still finishes below team rate and probably leads the team in blocked shots, which will earn him praise even though it probably shouldn’t. He won’t get back to 2017-18 production but will score 5 goals and 15 points, which will be fine but not make much of a difference.
The other dynasty. And one that might be heading the way of the Hawks more than they’d like to admit. It was something of a nothing season in The Burgh, if a 100-point season can be described that way. Maybe it can after the Pittsburgh Penguins turned out to be not much more than cannon fodder for the Islanders in the first round, and promptly rolled over for a team that rolled over to the next one to a team that rolled over for the next one. There doesn’t seem to be much forward momentum with this bunch, and it seems to be about hanging on to what they have. We know how that goes. Will it go that way for the Pens this term?
2018-2019
44-26-12 100 points (3rd in Metro, lost in 1st round to NYI)
3.30 GF/G (6th) 2.90 GA/G (14th)
49.6 CF% (15th) 51.5 xGF% (11th)
24.6 PP% (5th) 79.7 PK% (19th)
Goalies: As it has been, as it will be, the Penguins will trust Matt Murray with the crease. He’s been just about everything in just four seasons, barely, at the top level. He’s been a playoff hero, nothing more than tissue paper, hurt, and then revitalized and he’s barely had time to learn the street (they’re difficult there). He ended last season with a .919, which is more than acceptable, but he went the roundabout way in that he was woeful in October and November last year, then brilliant in December (.950), before evening out in the season’s second half. At 25 and his fourth full season in the NHL, this should be when he enters his prime, and if he does a lot of the other questions about the Penguins seem less daunting. Still, he’s got a clunky month or two in his locker, and this Penguins outfit probably can’t as easily survive those as past ones.
Defense: And here is where things get sticky. The Pens will still count on Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin for their top pairing, but Letang has managed a full season of work in one season out of the last eight. He’s 32 now, which is just about the time things turn for a d-man whose game was built on mobility. When he did play last year, he was nearly a point-per-game, and his metrics were glittering again, so it’s unlikely he’s going to fall off a cliff here. But the end does come quickly, as we know around these parts.
Beyond that pairing, they seem serious about running it back with Jack Johnson and Erik Gudbranson, quite pleased with themselves they got away with using the latter after the trade deadline last season without sending the entire city into the combination of rivers. That won’t work a second time. The kid who could start to take more and more responsibility–and helped pave the way for Olli Maatta‘s immobile ass out of town–Marcus Pettersson, remains unsigned. The Zach Werenski contract should help with that, but the Penguins need him because they can’t seriously give the two monoliths in front of him second pairing minutes.
Justin Schultz is still here, or at least is when everything is attached to him, which isn’t often. He only played 29 games last year, and 63 the year before that. He’s a power play weapon when actually dressed, and provides more swiftness to cover for Johnson or Gudbranson.
If Pettersson and Schultz are healthy, there is a chance for some real spice to this blue line. If they aren’t or Pettersson takes a step back, then Guddy and JJ are going to play far too often and there are going to be guys in Hazmat suits patrolling the Penguins’ defensive zone, no matter how well Murray plays.
Forwards: Interesting group here. It’s always a boon to start with two Hall of Famers in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but the latter threw up a….well, he just threw up last year. 72 points in 68 games, which is still really good but below what you associate with him. Just 21 goals. the lowest per game mark since the Season In A Can. His metrics also took a hit, and there were a lot of nights where he was either petulant, or too lazy to even be that. He’s 33 now, and while that’s starting to age it shouldn’t be the mark where he turns into something a raccoon gets drunk off of.
The top line will still be Crosby and Jake Guentzel, with other forward to be determined. Phil Kessel and his continual mush of sadness has been shipped off to Arizona, with Alex Galchenyuk coming in return. Neither Montreal or Arizona were able to unlock what seems to be within the American with the Russian name who used to play for the Canadiens, and now it’s a question if it’s there at all (or serious questions about what is).
Another question mark is getting a full season of Nick Bjugstad. All the tools are there to be a dominant power forward, either at center or wing, and yet it’s never happened. Jared McCann seemed to fair a little better in Pittsburgh from Florida, but they’re going to need both of these guys to be more than they’ve been. Dominik Kahun could play himself into top line minutes at times, but is certainly more than enough on a bottom six. Brandon Tanev arrived in the summer to shore up that part of the roster as well. With just a couple pops from guys who haven’t popped before, this could be the usual deep crop of Penguins forwards who never stop that you’re accustomed to. But if guys like Bjugstad and McCann don’t make a move forward and Galchenyuk can’t get his face out of a mirror, then suddenly they look awfully top-heavy again.
Prediction: With Murray, Letang, Dumoulin, Crosby, and Malkin, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the Penguins being bad. And if they get some luck in the health department with Schultz, Letang, and get Pettersson in the fold, you could see where they could be really good again. They need guys to do things they’ve never done before up front, but that has happened before in Pittsburgh. Then again, Derick Brassard also happened there, as did others. This is a team that seemingly could be anything. It could win the division, it could slide down into a wildcard fight with a couple injuries and stall-outs in development. They’re Cup-winning days just might be over, but they still might get a say in who does.
