Faxes from Uncle Dale

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Game #51 – Hawks vs. Canucks Q&A: PetBugs from CanucksArmy.com. Yes, PetBugs

By Sam Fels February 1, 2018 1843 0

We sent out the clarion call for Canucks experts. We found @PetBugs13. He also goes by Graphic Comments on CanucksArmy.com.

Ok, this should be fun. Why won’t the Canucks trade Gudbranson and/or Vanek at the deadline even though they’re not going anywhere?

Um, do you guys remember when Dale Tallon couldn’t figure out how to work a fax machine? Well, Jim Benning is like that, but with an NHL roster.

That’s the short answer. The long answer is they think they need Gudbranson to provide the grit they lost in Derek Dorsett, as if fourth line tough guys aren’t a dime a dozen in the NHL. And although the plan all along was to trade Vanek at the deadline, now they think they need to keep him around for next year if the Sedins decide to retire.

Wow, that’s even more depressing when I see it written out like that.

Is Troy Stecher anything worth getting excited about? The Canucks don’t have a Boeser on the blue line so they have to start somewhere, right?

I don’t know about getting excited, but the kid has potential. What he lacks in size he makes up for in hockey smarts. He’s probably been the Canucks’ best defenseman the last two years. Sure, that isn’t exactly saying much on a blueline that has featured Luca Sbisa, Erik Gudbranson, and Michael Del Zotto, but he’s probably been better than Chris Tanev overall. Mind you, Tanev has had to carry a lot of that aforementioned dead weight most of that time, so he’s had some bad stretches. But yeah, Stecher has been a pretty solid defenseman, for a 23-year-old that probably doesn’t crack six feet even with his skates on. He doesn’t so much battle for the puck in the corners as use positioning and his stick to come away with it, and he has the skating ability to carry the puck out of the zone probably better than anyone else on this defense. So no, he’s not exciting, but he’s dependable. And on this team, I’ll take it.

Jake Virtanen is only 21 somehow. Are they ever going to be able to turn him into anything to join Horvat and Boeser in the next wave or is he this and that’s it?

Let’s put it this way, the hope is that he’s another Bertuzzi. The fear is that he’s another Neely. The reality is probably that he’s another Kyle Beach.

But seriously, what Virtanen has in size and speed, he lacks in hockey smarts. He had a great Junior career because he used that size and speed advantage to manhandle the kids he was playing against. But those advantages disappear when you get to the NHL, and I’m not sure he has the hockey sense and skills to fall back on. Even his hitting, which was a huge part of his game in Junior, has disappeared. Not sure if that’s because he hurt his shoulder and has never recovered, or if he’s just gun shy after getting hit with a two game suspension in his rookie season. This is a guy that could really have used a couple years in the AHL to round out the rest of his game and learn what it takes to be a professional hockey player. But the owners and management desperately wanted him in the NHL, so here we are.

What will the Sedins do this summer? They’re old and won’t play anywhere else and obviously the Canucks are years from a Cup. But it’s not like they’re useless either.

It has pretty much been an open secret that they want to play at least another year, and if you look at their performance this season, they still can still control play when they’re on the ice and they’ve found new life on the powerplay now that they have a trigger man in Brock Boeser. The big question is how much they’ll want to be paid if they come back. They’re definitely not $7 million players any more, but they’re not $3 million players either. So will the Canucks be willing to give them $5 million each to come back?

(In an alternate universe, they agree to a trade to a contender at the deadline for a chance at the Cup and then re-sign here as free agents in July.)

There seems to be a fear among Vancouver ownership that Canucks fans won’t stand for a full rebuild. But surely they’d have more patience for that than watching a barely middling team run in place, no?

Absolutely. What this fanbase rally wants is some hope for the future. Well, the smart half of the fanbase, anyway. The dumb half always has hope and thinks are going just fine, thank you very much. So yeah, a full rebuild is exactly what this market needs. As long as the trajectory is on a downward descent, the fans are going to be restless. If you can bottom out quickly and show that there’s hope for the future and the team is starting to get better, the fans will get behind it. The team has almost turned the corner, but it’s taken four years. More if you count the last couple of years under Mike Gillis, when he was prevented from tearing it down by the owners. But even that little hint of hope that has started to creep into the fans since last year’s trade deadline can be just as quickly snuffed out if they don’t stick with it and turn guys like Vanek and Gudbranson into useful assets at this year’s deadline.

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Game #51 – Hawks vs. Canucks Douchebag Du Jour: Michael Del Zotto Has Made $20 Million, You Will Not

By Sam Fels February 1, 2018 2445 0

We don’t usually complain about what any athlete makes. The job pays what it pays. No one forces teams to hand out these contracts, and either way thousands of people show up to watch said person work.

But then there’s guys like Del Zotto. Because we don’t know what it is he does (don’t worry, your Lisa Ann jokes are coming. PHRASING!) Del Zotto has been a puck-moving defenseman who can’t move the puck or play defense.

In one of his ten seasons he has had a possession rate above the team he has played for. If you’ve watched him at all, you see him constantly get horsed in his own corner, when he can even be bothered to get over there. And yet teams keep acquiring him for millions. We don’t get it.

Oh, and he asked a porn star to find women for him. You make millions, dude. You don’t have to work that hard to find gorgeous women who want to be around you. Pornstars have better things to do than be your personal pimp. So not only is this dude not good at hockey, he’s not good at being rich.

And yet here we all are on the couch. Life can beat you down sometimes.

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Game #51 – Hawks vs. Canucks: I Make A Lot Of Graphs

By Sam Fels February 1, 2018 1444 0

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

CA/60 – shot attempts against per 60

CF% – ratio of shot attempts for and against

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Game #51 – Hawks vs. Canucks: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels February 1, 2018 1607 0

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Angry At Numbers: Danger Danger….Actually, it’s Only Middling Voltage

By Sam Fels January 31, 2018 2122 0

As I was writing up Pekka Rinne’s spotlight yesterday, and noticing the spike in his high-danger save-percentage, I got to thinking. And friends, you know what happens when I get to thinking. Because as I dug around, I saw that a lot of goalies were seeing a jump in their high-danger save percentages at even-strength. Was this a league-wide trend? Turns out it is.

I charted the high-dangers SV% of all starting goalies starting in the 2009-2009 season, and averaged them for a league-wide figure. Here’s what I got:

As you can see, from last season to this, there’s been an 11-point jump. It’s the biggest jump in any season, and by something of a margin. The only other one is the 2012 to 2013 jump of eight points, and some of that could be explained by the season-in-a-can and shooters out of rhythm and such. There was a seven-point jump in the year before that as well.

The NHL will point to a spike in scoring, as each team is averaging 2.93 goals per game this year versus 2.77 goals per game last year. Though that seems to have more to do with a spike in power play goals, which has jumped to 0.63 per game for team over last year’s 0.57. Though not all, as even-strength goals per team are slightly up from last year, 1.84 from 1.81 per game.

One reason that might be is that teams are creating more high-danger chances this year, and there’s been something of a spike. Over the past four years, the average number of high-danger chances every team creates per 60 has gone from 10.1, to 10.2, to 10.3, to 10.7 this year. So while goalies are saving more chances that are considered the best, they’re also facing more.

The reasons for this could be many, but I can’t help but think of expansion and years of a flattening cap. Basically, goalies are facing teams that only have two or three prime finishers instead of four or five that teams might have had back in the day. At the same time, you have worse players on each team, making more mistakes, with more defenders who can’t stem the tide before it gets to the crease. That’s just a theory.

What we have known for a while is that goalies get better every year. Overall save-percentages have climbed basically every year of your life. So maybe high-danger chances just come along with it. This seems to be a particular spike, though. Food for thought.

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Game #50 – If it bleeds, we can kill it – Hawks 2, Preds 1

By Adam Hess January 30, 2018 2897 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Hockey Stats

With the exception of the early part of the second period, the Blackhawks not only skated with the Predators quite evenly tonight, but there were stretches of this game where they looked to have a lot more control than Nashville. This is the exact performance you needed against this Predators team coming out of the break. To the bullets:

– The early goings of this one were great for the Hawks, as they were able to control the puck and therefore the play a most of the first period. A good forechecking play from the Kampf line forced a turnover in deep that resulted in the titular character burying a quick and slick wrist shot past Jussi Saros, who had just turned the puck over. Taking a look at the Natural Stat Trick game flow the Hawks were +8 on shot attempts at 5v5 until Nashville started to take over a bit late in the frame. It was the exact start the Hawks needed in that building and getting that early goal was huge.

– The second period followed a similar flow but in the opposite direction. Nashville took control early, even notching a goal with a nice forechecking effort after a turnover by Anton Forsberg. The good news for Forsberg was that was pretty much the only bad play he made all night, and we’ll get to that. The Hawks were able to even things out and took the lead back later in the frame after Kane took a big hit to make a nice play, resulting in a rush with Schmaltz and My Cousin Vinnie. Schmaltz fed Hino with a nice pass, that Hino did not waste, one timing it through the Preds’ defenseman’s leg and then past Saros. That was the winner. The shot shares were even through the first two period, and Nashville dominated the third, but that was mostly score effects.

– More on Forsberg, because of course after I spend a whole bullet last Thursday talking about how he just isn’t reliable enough to keep this team afloat down the stretch and maybe they should look for a trade and yada yada yada, he turns in this gem of a game. 42 saves on 43 shots from a Nashville team that is no joke, only making the one aforementioned bad play, and doing everything else right. He was reading his angles well, tracking the puck well, and made a few big saves as Nashville turned up the attack in the third. He got some help from the post on one play, but nobody ever said you couldn’t be lucky AND good at the same time. I don’t know if I believe he can keep it up, but maybe writing for Sam’s site has resulted in me inheriting the powers of the Fels Motherfuck.

– Feather pointed this out on Twitter in the first intermisison, but Joel made some smart coaching adjustments in the first period to force Laviolette’s hand and minimize the last change advantage by double shifting his third and fourth lines. Lavi was keeping the Johanson line out against Toews, but Joel just left the Kampf line out there – and they were playing well, so it made sense – and forced Lavi to choose to either sit his top line or force himself into a mismatch.

– The biggest thing for the Hawks in this one was that they were so much more aggressive with their feet, which sounds kinda stupid but is just the reality. They skated hard the whole 60 minutes, which hasn’t been a theme this year for them. I’ve said for a while that the Q Hawks have a tendency to play to the level of their opponent, so they may have just elevated themselves against this Nashville squad, but it worked. They just need to figure out how to do this against every team every night if they’re going to go on the necessary run to make the playoffs.

– Popular opinion will tell you that the Predators are far and away a better team than the Hawks, and on paper it probably does look that way. And the sweep in last year’s playoffs certainly helps Nashville’s case. But these teams have split the season series now, with every game being decided by one goal. If Crawford is able to return before the playoffs, and if the Hawks make it – and both of those are rather large “if’s” – while this isn’t a matchup I’d necessarily ask for, it’s not one I’m afraid of either.

Line of the night: “Seabrook looks to clear, it’s taken away… this time – fails to clear again.” Foley’s starting to get it folks.

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Game #50 – Hawks vs. Predators Preview/Garden Party: As We Live A Life Of Ease

By Sam Fels January 30, 2018 2132 0

vs.

RECORDS: Hawks 23-19-7 Predators 29-11-7

PUCK DROP: 7pm

TV: NBCSN Nationally, NBSCN Chicago locally

MANY MORE OF THEM LIVE NEXT DOOR: On The Forecheck

When you biff what should be the easier part of your schedule, that means you have to get it done against the harder part of the schedule. But hey, why not go for degree of difficulty when you’ve got nothing else to lose? The Hawks begin a pretty tricky stretch of the campaign tonight, with their post-All Star break slate taking them to the West’s best team (yes they are, fuck off Vegas) before heading back out West which didn’t go so well last time. And if the Hawks have any designs on making something of this season, they don’t get any mulligans anymore.

And this is probably not the time to be catching the Predators, even if this comes one game early for Filip Forsberg’s return (not that he regularly torches the Hawks or anything). They’ve won seven of the last eight, and the only loss in that time was losing a game of pitch and toss to the Lightning. So yeah, they haven’t been beaten in regulation since January 2nd. They just got done thwacking the Devils in New Jersey before the break when they barely cared. If you’re looking for a silver lining, and you’ll have to dig, these wins haven’t exactly come against world beaters. The Yotes twice, the Kings, the Oilers, and the Panthers are the trophies on the wall for the month of January. Fuck, even the Hawks beat the Oilers twice.

While the Preds only sit one point back of the Jets and have three games in hand on them and are thus poised to show them a clean pair of heels right quick, there are cracks in the foundation underneath this team. While usually a staple of Peter Laviolette team, this team metrically is not very impressive. They’re exactly a dead-even possession team at 50 CF%, and they actually give up way better chances than they create with a pretty paltry 47.7 xGF% as a team. If you go by scoring chance and high-danger scoring chance percentages, they’re in the bottom third of the league in those as well.

Some of this can be attributed to Ryan Ellis only having played the last couple weeks, but that can’t explain it all. As good as Ellis is in both ends of the ice, one player is not making this up or at fault. The Preds don’t create as many chances per game as you’d assume they do given their speed and depth. Pekka Rinne has had to pull their ass out of a sling pretty often, and when he hasn’t Juuse Saros mostly has. That’s who the Hawks will get tonight as Rinne is preserved for a couple more days after the break.

The Preds lack of punch could be a matter of just pacing until the spring. It could be that Ryan Johansen has looked like the over-fed pile of earlobes that he did at times in Ohio and not the dynamo who’d eat your heart last spring. Totally not a coincidence that he signed a new contract that pays him $8 mildo until the sun swallows us all this summer, then.

The Preds have been picked up by their depth though, with Fiala, Smith, and Jarnkrok all scoring more than 10 goals off the top line. And as they do, they pour goals and points in from the back end, with PK Subban leading them in scoring and Josi and Ekholm both having more than 20 points as well. The return of Ellis only exacerbates this, and though Josi and Ellis are playing together at the moment Lavvy always has the option of splitting them up and having scoring threats on all three pairings. They’re about the only team in the league that can threaten that.

For the Hawks, there don’t appear to be any changes from last Thursday’s demolition of the Red Wings, and nor should there be. We want to see Top Cat get more chances to play with actual talent, and if anyone is going to wake up Brandon Saad it’s Patrick Kane. The third line is still something of a jumble but the 4th line is definitely more interesting as a speedy Pollock painting than whatever it was Wingels and Bouma did (though Wingels is still ahead of Sharp on the third line, which is fine). Anton Forsberg gets the start after being solid enough against Detroit.

This month is filled with games against teams either right around the Hawks or ahead of them, aside from Vancouver on Thursday and they didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory last time they were there. They see the Flames twice, Ducks, Stars, Wild, Kings and Sharks. This ain’t do disco, this ain’t no time for foolin’ around.

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Game #50 – Hawks vs. Predators Spotlight: If This Were Baseball, We’d Joke About PEDs

By Sam Fels January 30, 2018 2790 0

We got a lot of things wrong last spring. To be fair to us, which we ourselves never are, just about no one saw the Predators sweeping the Hawks, even if they thought they would be a real threat. And the biggest thing we didn’t see coming is Pekka Rinne throwing a .960 at the Hawks in four games.

He’s apparently still pissy about that.

Somehow, Rinne is playing the best hockey of his career at age 35. His .937 save-percentage at even strength is the highest of his career, and by four points over his 2011 and 2015 mark (at least that season he did lose control of his limbs against the Hawks in the playoffs. We had precedent, dammit!). His overall .927 mark would be the second highest of his career, only trailing the .930 of that same ’10-’11 season.

Look a little deeper, and Rinne’s numbers get even more impressive. The difference between his actual save-percentage at evens versus his expected save percentage, i.e. a rating of the chances he’s seeing, not just the amount, is far and away the best of his career. It’s 1.09 (.937 at evens vs a xSV% of .925). The next highest mark in that category in his career is .72, and that’s a massive difference.

You may want to suggest that he’s benefitting from the Preds superb blue line and the fact that the Preds have the puck all the time limiting the shots he sees. But A) this is actually the lowest expected save-percentage that Rinne has had since 2010, so the Preds’ firewagon style is exposing him more than he has been before. Second, the Preds are a middling possession team, the very definition of it at 50% in Corsi-percentage. They’re expected-goals percentage as a team is even worse at 47.7%. They give up a lot.

Which is why Rinne’s season is so impressive, though might be a little more perilous than Preds fans would like. His SV% on high-danger chances is .845, the highest of his career by 48 points. That could be a problem. It’s the third-highest mark in the league among starters, trailing Ben Bishop and Sergei Bobrovsky and just ahead of Lundqvist and Vasilevskiy. Maybe this isn’t a problem if you think Rinne is among that level of starters. He hasn’t been for years until this one, is he really rejoining that club at 35?

So what gives? JR Lind in our Q&A suggests it’s rest, and that could be part of it. Rinne is slated to only start about 60 games this year, the third-straight season he’ll be around that total. But he hasn’t missed any time due to injury, it’s just been a straight rotation as Juuse Saros has been able to shake off early-season blahs to be one of the league’s better backups. But can that explain it all?

There just isn’t much of a precedent for a goalie having a resurgence at 35. The first name you obviously think of is Tim Thomas, who won Vezinas at 34 and 36 along with a Conn Smythe at the latter. But Thomas wasn’t anywhere until his 30s. Rinne was a frontline starter in the league at 26. Lundqvist is having another excellent season at 35, but his form never really dropped. He’s just always been this. Like Rinne though, Lundqvist is having a miraculous season when it comes to high-danger chances, with a .844 SV% on them which betters anything he’s done in the past five years by a long way. Corey Crawford, though obviously a few years younger than both, was also having his best season on high-danger chances before he went to the land of wind and ghosts. Bobrovsky is putting up his second consecutive season of robbing people with the best chances.Ben Bishop is having his best season in that spot as well. What exactly is going on here?

Perhaps this is just a league-wide trend, as goalies get better and better. Perhaps due to expansion and flattening cap, teams just don’t have the amount of finishers that they once did to bury these chances, whereas teams can find one guy to stop them much more easily than five or six guys to score them. Whatever it is, Rinne is certainly riding the wave and the Preds hope it goes until June.

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Game #50 – Hawks vs. Predators Q&A: J.R. Lind, Post His Own Rumble Party

By Sam Fels January 30, 2018 1847 0

You’ll have to excuse JR a bit. Apparently down in Nash-Vegas, he hosts an enormous Royal Rumble party every year. When we sent this to him, he wasn’t sure who he was and definitely didn’t know how his arms worked. We thank him for playing hurt.

Even after the Turris trade, the Preds kind of loafed around a bit by their standards and expectations. But now they’ve won six of seven, are only a point behind the Jets with games in hand.Is this them finally clicking?

I think so. January was obviously an incredible month and most of that was without Forsberg and partially without Arvidsson and with Ellis getting his feet back under him. So they went on a tear while understaffed and now that they are healthy again? Watch out.

Both Johansen and Arvidsson are off last year’s scoring pace. Forsberg has missed some time which doesn’t help. Any real concern here?

I don’t think so. The Turris/Fiala/Smith line really kicked it in when they needed to and Subban and Ellis are pumping it in from the back end. Obviously come April (and beyond), they’ll need that line to get it together but that’s three guys I don’t worry much about.

Ryan Ellis is back now. How has he looked?

Better than ever? His first game was little (*scrunches up face and does that seesaw thing with his hand*) but since then, he’s been fantastic.

Pekka Rinne threw a .940 at the league in January. He’s playing perhaps the best hockey of his career. What’s been the change?

Rest, I think, and finally having an offense that he doesn’t have to go out and win 2-1 every night. After a shaky start, Juuse Saros has really been great- he had three shutouts in five games or something – which allows Laviolette some flexibility in giving Rinne time off and setting the goalies up for success.

Anything the Preds might do before the deadline or was Turris the move?

I think Poile might add a wing just to give Laviolette another option in the playoffs, but he got his guy with Turris. Of course, it’s David Poile so he probably has some one-for-one that’ll shock the world up his sleeve

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