We now move to the eastern portion of Pennsylvania, a state which answers the question “Hey, what if we had TWO St. Louises?”. An entire state arguing over which gas station has better food. A state so in love with college football that it is willing to overlook decades of systemic child abuse in the name of a statue. A state with the two most horrific English language accents imaginable. A state whose Appalachian hilljackery was the nail in the electoral coffin a year ago. And Philadelphia is its crown jewel, with the Flyers bearing no small responsibility in fueling the city’s long standing sports psychosis. And based on their current trajectory, the Flyera aren’t going ameliorate that any time soon despite there kind of being a plan.
Not that it’s going to stop us making jokes about the “Seattle Flames,” or “Quebec Flames,” but I really hope that this latest relocation drama ends up being anything resembling a line in the sand for this whole new arena/franchise relocation mishegas that really should be a crime. You hardly need me to tell you that cities building new arenas on the backs of taxpayers for the benefit of billionaires for no apparent result other than the enriching of the latter is one of many despicable aspects of modern government and society. But that list has gotten so long now I feel like it benefits from hiding behind the other ones.
A quick recap if you don’t pay attention to things in southern Alberta (or as my Vancouver-native friend referred to it, “Fucking cowshit smelling fucking hellhole): The Flames have been angling for a new building for a couple years now, trying to replace the now 34-year-old Saddledome. It hasn’t gone anywhere, as Calgary’s mayor Naheed Nenshi has basically, rightfully told them to go screw. So last week, CEO of the Flames Ken King said they would no longer seek a deal with “this administration.”
Basically, he’s trying to influence the mayoral election that comes next month. While that’s sickening enough, most of us don’t really bat an eye at a multi-million dollar corporation trying to swing elections simply for their benefit. Our entire country is now built on the fucking concept.
But what I think Nenshi might realize, or hope that he does, is that cities should really no longer fear their teams moving away.
::shuffles papers:: So, w- who is this guy? Oh, oohhh, sure…Laur-RENT Dauphin, riiiight…::glances around nervously:: I’ll be honest—until I saw his name on the Hawks roster, I’d never heard of this guy. What I took away from the Hjalmarsson trade was that we got a younger, ostensibly cheaper replacement, and a bag of pucks. Turns out, Dauphin IS that bag of pucks! What the fuck is with this guy? Who is he?
For the first time in 19 years, a team will enter this NHL season twice-defending champions. The Pittsburgh Penguins will look to be the first team to win three in a row since some team called the Islanders did it in the 80s. We’ll forgive you if you’ve never heard of them. The Penguins still have the star power at the top of the roster to be a hard out for anyone come April and May. And unlike some previous champs, like one in this area code, they haven’t had to completely erode their depth in a deal with the devil for silverware.
Pittsburgh Penguins
’16-’17 Record: 50-21-11 111 points (2nd in Metro, won it all)
Team 5v5 Stats: 50.1 CF% (16th) 51.3 SF% (6th) 52.6 SCF% (6th) 8.5 SH% (5th) .926 SV% (8th)
Special Teams: 23.1 PP% (4th) 79.8 PK% (20th)
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of watching the last decade of Hawks hockey is familiar with the salary cap shuffle the Hawks have to do every so often (and yes, it’ll be 10 years this year since Patrick Timothy Kane II took his first shift with the Hawks). Like a teary-eyed Lisa watching Mr. Bergstrom chug off into the distance, we’ve waved goodbye to a bevy of talented players either in or just approaching their primes. And so it goes this year, with the losses of defensive unicorn Marcus Kruger and a serviceable lower-line defensive forward in Dr. Rasmussen. One of the answers to the question, “How do we replace the defensive depth in our bottom half,” is former Flame Lance Bouma.
2016–17 Stats
61 GP – 3 G, 4 A, 7 P
45.9 CF%, 32.4 oZS%, 67.6 dZS%
ATOI: 11:21
A Look Back: The former 3rd round pick did yeoman’s work last year, with a paltry 7 points over 61 games. His ice-time average and CF% imply that he was an energy guy, somewhere between late-career ruptured hemorrhoid Raffi Torres and off-the-ice-good-guy Danny Carcillo. In fact, his CF% last year looks bad not only on its own but also relatively, with an abysmal -5.8 CF% Rel.
But there’s a massive rub in those stats: Unlike your typical energy guys, Bouma has ALWAYS lived in the defensive zone.
Last year saw him in his own zone more than two-thirds of the time, which is approximately the amount of time one would spend on the toilet after having a $5 Box and a Crave Case for lunch. And that’s what Calgary often asked him to do: consume garbage zone starts and evacuate the puck from the bowels of his own zone.
Even more interesting are Bouma’s career zone-start stats: Over 304 career games, Bouma has started in his own zone 61.8% of the time. The only year in which he had more offensive zone starts was his rookie year, and he only played 16 games that year. Compare that to Kruger’s 368-game, 70.5 dZS% clip. None of this is to say that Bouma is a one-to-one replacement for Kruger, because the comparative career CF% Rels are canyons apart (Bouma’s at -4.8, Kruger’s at -1.7), but given that Bouma was on some bad Flames teams, even those comparisons aren’t entirely square.
Perhaps the most exciting thing to look at with Bouma is a stat called Corsi Rel QoC, which, in short, ranks Corsi in terms of the quality of the guys a player was up against (negative numbers meaning he was sheltered, higher and positive numbers meaning he faced stiffer competition). From 2013–2016, which is both as current as I could find and reflective of years in which Bouma played at least half of the Flames’s games, Bouma had the following Corsi Rel QoC ratings:
|
Year |
Games Played |
Corsi Rel QoC |
Points |
|
2013–14 |
78 |
0.453 |
15 |
|
2014–15 |
78 |
0.838 |
34 |
|
2015–16 |
43* |
-0.065 |
7 |
*The site I used only tracked him through 43 games. Bouma played 44 that year.
Looking at the table, in years in which Bouma played an assload, he spent a lot of time against his opponents’ better lines (save 15–16, where he played against essentially average guys). And 2014–15 should make the ol’ crotchal region tighter, moister, or some combination thereof for all Hawks fans. In 2014–15, Bouma not only faced higher-tier opposition but also scored 34 points (16 G, 18A) while averaging about 14 minutes a game. (While that year may be an outlier, hope springs eternal.)
Compare that to comparable Kruger years:
|
Year |
Games Played |
Corsi Rel QoC |
Points |
|
2013–14 |
81 |
1.114 |
28 |
|
2014–15 |
81 |
0.902 |
17 |
|
2015–16 |
39* |
0.550 |
4 |
*The site I used only tracked him through 39 games. Kruger played 41 that year.
But what kind of Internet writer would I be if I didn’t come stomping and shitting all over the newfound optimism I’d set you up for? Because there’s a catch to all of this, and we can find it in another advanced stat that lives in the dungeon called Corsi Rel QoT, which is a measure of the quality of teammates a given player had while on the ice (higher numbers representing stronger teammates, lower numbers representing beer rats who “deked Montoya dat one time”).
Have a look at Bouma . . .
|
Year |
Off. Zone Start % |
Off. Zone End % |
Corsi Rel QoT |
|
2013–14 |
39 |
44.2 |
-0.028 |
|
2014–15 |
34.6 |
44.3 |
-0.745 |
|
2015–16 |
46.9 |
51.1 |
-0.173 |
. . .who did a good job of flipping the ice with teammates who weren’t world beaters.
And Kruger . . .
|
Year |
Off. Zone Start % |
Off. Zone End % |
Corsi Rel QoT |
|
2013–14 |
20.9 |
45.1 |
-4.824 |
|
2014–15 |
25 |
43.7 |
-3.425 |
|
2015–16 |
19 |
40.2 |
-1.044 |
. . . who not only turned the ice at obscene rates but also did it while skating with actual Shoot the Puck contestants.
A Look Ahead: So what does it all mean, Basil? Aside from expending over 1,000 words on a guy who might only play handful of games, it means that Bouma could be a decent turning-the-ice sieve if necessary. Yes, we had to go back a few years to find evidence, and yes, he was kind of a pit last year, but what’s the point of being a fan if you can’t be optimistic? Bouma’s underlying numbers and past performance could let slip the hogs of war (or whatever farm animal of war, Lana, shut up) on the Hawks’s lower half.
I suspect that Bouma will get a shot on the 4th line to start, albeit from a wing if we assume that Schmaltz and Working Class Kero are going to line up down the middle. It’s plausible to find him on the PK as the 2b option, behind the likes of Toews, Saad, and Kero, given that he averaged 1:36 there in Calgary last year, but that would likely speak to a supreme lack of trust and depth for the PK, since most Calgary followers say Bouma sucked at it.
It’d be silly to expect Bouma to replicate 2014–15, since he hasn’t since. But there is precedent for success there, and if he can come anywhere near it, his $1 million cap hit will look like a steal.
He may not pass the eye test, and he may be on a decline, but I’m a sucker for guys people doubt. I’ll be the first to say it: I believe in Bouma.
Unlinked stats retrieved from hockey-reference.com
Special thanks to Behind the Net. Hopefully they all pick up tracking again soon.
Photo credit to Jeff McIntosh, via sportsnet.ca.
Previous Player Previews
We could have written the same preview for the New York Rangers for at least the last three years, probably the last five, maybe the last ten. They’ll get more TV and press time due to their locale and Original Six status, but this is the same collection of small, quick, faceless forwards who don’t quite do enough in front of a top-heavy blue line that’s slightly better than it was but the bottom sucks so hard so who cares and all in front of an aging Henrik Lundqvist who will remain handsome but not able to bring this team through. The most interesting thing about the Rangers was that run-on sentence I just produced. And we do this every year. One day, maybe the Rangers will have a center. I’m just sure I’ll be incontinent by the time it happens.
New York Rangers
’16-’17 Record: 48-28-6 102 points (4th in Metro, lost to Ottawa in 2nd round after beating Montreal)
Team Stats 5v5: 47.9 CF% (25th) 48.6 SF% (24th) 48.4 SCF% (23rd) 8.8 SH% (4th) .923 SV% (18th)
Special Teams: 20.2 PP% (11th) 79.8 PK% (18th)
Once again, almost all of the talk about the New York Islanders won’t have much to do with what goes on on the ice. There’s going to be tons of stories about where they’re going to move, because clearly sticking in Brooklyn isn’t going to work (who knew a building built for basketball wouldn’t attract a fanbase that is still mostly based an hour away, nor could they generate a following amongst Brooklyn residents who are more concerned with finding a vinyl copy of that album with the girl who plays a theremin with cat). When it’s not that, it’ll be whether they’re trading John Tavares or where he might go as a free agent if they don’t. Or if he’ll stay (he won’t). And sadly for the twelve Islanders fans that are left, the product on the ice isn’t likely to be nearly enough to distract from all of this.
New York Islanders
’16-’17 Record: 41-29-12 94 points (5th in Metro)
Team Stats 5v5: 47.7 CF% (28th) 49.0 SF% (22nd) 46.0 SCF% (29th) 8.8 SH% (3rd) .918 SV% (24th)
Special Teams: 14.9 PP% (28th) 81.9 PK% (11th)
I’ll name it that because A) It’s true and B) I don’t know what the hell else we would talk about when it comes to New Jersey. Certainly not their hockey team, and certainly not the ambience. But I guess that’s our lot in life, so we’ll address Nico Hishier, Taylor Hall (for the 50 games he’s actually upright for), and whatever the hell else isn’t wearing green and red like they should be.
NEW JERSEY DEVILS
’16-’17 Record: 28-40-14 70 points (dead-ass last in the Metro)
Team Stats 5vs: 47.8 CF% (27th) 47.4 SF% (26th) 47.7 SCF% (26th) 6.2 SH% (28th) .924 SV% (14th)
Special Teams: 17.5 PP% (22nd) 79.6 SV% (23rd)
It’s easy to take a guy like Anisimov for granted. When blinded by the light streaming from Artemi Panarin’s cherubic face, or from Patrick Kane’s…face, one might lose sight of the fact that wingers with over 30 goals must have a pretty decent center helping to make it all happen. It was a career year for Anisimov in a lot of ways, as we will see. But if this is any kind of fairy tale—brought back to life by the kiss of Quenneville after getting lost in the deep, dark Blue Jacket woods and getting his brain scrambled repeatedly—the clock is perilously close to midnight.
Continuing through the Metropolitan division, we now find a team that most of the Sharpest Minds agree that is due for a serious regression in that midwestern Big 10 city known for its cosmopolitan nightlife and culture, Columbus, Ohio.
