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Game #47 – Golden Knights vs. Hawks Q&A: Ken Boehlke Of Sin Bin Vegas

By Sam Fels 1547 0

Sinbin.vegas is your home for anything Knights. Ken Boehlke is at the heart of it. Follow him on Twitter @kenboehlke.

Last time we talked the Knights were still flickering on and off a bit.  Now they’ve won seven in a row, are a point behind the Flames. What’s been the difference?

The biggest difference has been getting players back in the lineup. It started with Nate Schmidt coming off the suspension, then Paul Stastny got back into the lineup, and then Max Pacioretty got fully healthy. As that happened they began to start playing more consistently and it’s continued even through this recent rash of injuries. They look a lot
like the team they did last year once again with a simplistic style of defending, a tenacious forecheck, and transition game that gives many teams nightmares.

Paul Stastny has recently returned from a long-term absence. How is he  fitting in?

Unbelievably well. He’s such a smart player that almost on every shift he does something that makes you say “Damn, Paul is good.” Playing with Alex Tuch has been a perfect match for Stastny as Tuch’s speed helps settle defenses into the zone and Stastny then picks them apart with his vision. Almost all of Brandon Pirri’s unbelievable run of success has come because of his linemates helping to set him up in great positions to score. Of course, you’ve got to score them, which Pirri has done, but that line has what I call the “homerun hitter feeling” which is that every single time they are out there you are expecting something big to happen. When a homerun hitter in baseball is absolutely smoking, he hits one out once every 10th or 11th at bat, which is a fairly low number when you consider everyone watching feels like it is coming every single AB. That’s how Stastny, Tuch, and Pirri/Pacioretty have felt and it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Still doesn’t seem to be clicking for Max Pacioretty. Two goals in his last three but only 12 on the year, and some of the worst metrics on the team. Anyone getting impatient?

He’s been in and out of the lineup with injuries which culminated in a nasty looking one that kept him out for a bit. Since he’s come back, he looks like a completely different guy. He looks faster, he’s around the puck more, he’s popping up in dangerous areas more often, he looks like Max Pacioretty. People were growing very impatient with him (at one
point I called for him to be healthy scratched), but when he came back I decided to completely throw out the first portion of the season, give him a fresh start, and try to re-judge him as a player. In the four games since he’s been back, he looks terrific. I expect great things from Pacioretty for the rest of the year… as long as he’s healthy.

Is Wild Bill Karlsson’s contract going to get straightened out? Seems
weird this hasn’t been resolved yet given how the Knights have generally
conducted business.

It’s such a tough contract because he’s playing in a role that could easily command $9-10 million but his history suggests paying him that much would be ludicrous. Everybody involved seems to be in this holding pattern basically just wanting to gather more information. Is he really a 30-40 goal scorer? Is he really a #1 center? Is he really a consistent Selke candidate? He’s played for a year and a half, and we kind of have answers to those questions, but the more he plays the clearer it gets
for each side. Nothing would surprise me in these negotiations. I can see him taking a five-year deal at $5 million AAV, and I can see him getting a seven-year deal at $8 million AAV. I could also see it being signed tomorrow and I could see it going to all the way arbitration again (technically he signed minutes before the hearing). Either way, I don’t think William Karlsson is going anywhere any time soon.

 

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Game #30 – Hawks vs. Knights Spotlight: Patches Sliding Toward Becoming Poor Violet?

By Sam Fels 1549 0

There’s a school of thought that hockey players, especially forwards, peak at the age 0f 27. Some punch through that, such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, perhaps Patrick Kane, Joe Pavelski, and this could go on. But for the most part, it’s true. Max Pacioretty was thought to be a player who wouldn’t fall victim to that. Maybe we all should have been paying more attention.

Since he came into the league full-time in 2011, Patches is 9th in the league in goals. He trails Ovechkin, Stamkos, Tavares, Pavelski, Seguin, Benn, Malkin, and Kane. Those are obviously some names. When one of the top-10 scorers in the league goes on the market, teams pay attention.

More impressively, Pacioretty got there playing without any prime centers in Montreal. Some names that Patches had to run with are David Desharnais, an aging Thomas Plekanec, Alex Galchenyuk, Phillip Danault, and Andrew Shaw (boy that guy really needs to write a book on how to fall upwards). And yet Pacioretty produced.

But dig a little deeper, and the warning signs are there. This is the fourth-straight season that Pacioretty’s attempts per game have dropped. Same story with his shots-on-goal per game. And it’s the same with his individual expected goals per 60 minutes of even-strength time.

Patches has been able to overcome that so far this season by rocking a much higher shooting-percentage than he has in a few years, of 11.3 at evens, which is his highest since 2013-2014, and overall 15.2% which would be a career-high. But he’s doing that with worse shots. That’s not a sustainable model. Then again, Cody Eakin isn’t exactly a huge improvement over the mishmash of whatits he had in Montreal.

Which really makes one worry about the four next years when he’ll be making $7 million. That takes him to 34 years old, or seven years past his prime. It could get icky.

As we said with the contract that Marc-Andre Fleury got when the Knights were in Chicago, just because GM George McPhee had all the cap space in the world to throw around didn’t mean he had to. Patches still qualifies as one of the best scorers in the game, but that has a shelf-life. Perhaps Tavares was never going to listen to him, though he presents the same problem as Pacioretty in that he plays a slower game. Doesn’t seem to be affecting him in Toronto, though. What about Erik Karlsson? Or waiting for Panarin?

McPhee had such a cushion that he’ll get out of it. Only the raise to William Karlsson is on the horizon, and everyone else is pretty much set. The Knights will have $11 million in space in the summer as of now, minus whatever raise Wild Bill gets. Two years from now Cody Eakin and Ryan Reaves are off the books. But there might not be too many more contracts for him to hand out before it’s trouble.

None of this means that Pacioretty is going to be a detriment. He’ll probably get a team 20-25 goals for another few years simply because he can be a bad-shot maker. Hell, get him a prime center some day and it might juice him a little. He’s just not going to be, or likely isn’t, what the Knights had hoped they had traded for.

 

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Game #30 – Hawks vs. Knights Q&A: SinBin Vegas (Again)

By Sam Fels 1593 0

Ken Boehlke is one-half of sinbin.vegas. This was the Q&A we did with them when the Knights were in town just a couple weeks ago. Follow them @SinBinVegas.

We know the Knights benefitted last year from insane goaltending along  with their more than solid even-strength play. But having among the worst save-percentage and shooting-percentage this season seems a violent market correction. Is there something systemic here more than just rotten luck?

What it really comes down to is Grade-A scoring chances and the subsequent execution of them. Early in the season the Golden Knights were having a hard time creating anything in the dangerous areas (in the house, if you know that term) but what was worse than their inability to create the chances was a consistency in not finishing those chances when they did arise. Luckily, as tends to be the case in hockey, that has turned recently, especially since they’ve begun to play more
Pacific division teams.

How big is the injury to Paul Stastny?

To be completely honest, it hasn’t had a major impact to this point. It’s the loss of Haula that seems to be more of a detriment to the team. Stastny certainly would have been, and hopefully will eventually be, a nice center for the 2nd line, but Eakin has stepped in incredibly well and appears to be thriving with goal-scorers on his line again. The loss of Haula however has definitely taken an level of speed away from the team and at times they don’t look like the quick, ferocious, probably considered annoying team that won the Western Conference. They’ve been searching for anyone to make the 3rd line go since Haula’s gruesome injury, but it hasn’t really happened yet. Would they be better with Stastny back? Of course, but if you gave me one or the other right now, I’d rather have Haula.

And the suspension to Nate Schmidt? While he’s unquestionably a good player is he really a top pairing d-man that a team would miss so heavily?

I’ll be completely honest in saying I heavily underestimated the impact Schmidt would have in the lineup upon his return. When a guy is out for the first 20 games of the season and the last memories of him are the Cup Final when not a single defenseman was any good, there certainly has to be a level of skepticism about how good the player really is, especially a player who has only a one year track record of being a top pair defenseman. But this guy is everything and more on the ice that made the hockey world realize that he’a a top 20 defenseman in the league and maybe even better. He’s kind of been this a stabilizing force to the defense in that they aren’t allowing an odd-man rush a period anymore, but it’s added an element of transition back into Vegas’ game and most importantly, it’s meant the return of Colin Miller and Shea Theodore to more familiar, less defensively responsible, roles. All of that was a long way to say, YES, Nate Schmidt is that good.

Max Pacioretty started slow, there was concern, and now he’s bagged six goals in four games. Was this just a product of all scorers going through hot and cold streaks?

I don’t think it was simply a cold streak that a scorer tends to go through. We’ve all seen those cold streaks and they tend to mean lots of great saves against, post hits, miraculous backchecking, and the likes. That’s not what this was for Pacioretty. He was just not good. He wasn’t creating much by means of scoring chances and he was uncharacteristically a liability defensively. When I say he was bad, I mean, he was legitimately one of the worst forwards on the team. However, he’s definitely not that anymore, and it’s not because he’s scored a bunch of goals recently. It seems to have much more to do with
his linemates. Playing with Alex Tuch isn’t as simple as it would seem. He’s so much faster than he looks and he plays with a power that’s not horribly common in the NHL. Pacioretty seemed to always been a half  second behind Tuch, likely because he didn’t expect Alex to be able to pull off some of the stuff that he does. Now, Pacioretty expects Tuch to win every puck, to undress guys at the blue line, and to fire passes through people every shift. Pacioretty is starting to find himself in much better positions when Tuch and Eakin create turnovers, and the three of them are starting to look dangerous every single time out as a unit rather than individually. Pacioretty told me about two weeks ago that he thought he was thinking too much and it was slowing him down. That’s a huge problem when you play with Tuch. That appears to be over
and the flood gates might just be open.

 

 

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Game #30 – Hawks vs. Knights: Lineups & How Teams Were Built

By Sam Fels 1311 0

Notes: Last night was truly sobering. DeBrincat and Jokiharju barely got 10 minutes of even-strength time. Why? What are you holding onto here? Forsling played with Keith just as much as anyone, and we know how that goes. This is the last game you’ll have to watch Manning regularly though, so that’s nice. Maybe. Also, Corey Crawford basically sucks right now. And the season hinged on him. Which isn’t fair to him considering what he’s been through, but that’s the reality.

Notes: Marchessault hasn’t scored in his last eight…Wild Bill has scored in four of his last five…Eakin has six points in his last four games, including three against the Hawks last time even though that line has struggled with him at center…The real strength of late has been their bottom-six, which no one seems to be able to match. Especially the Hawks.

 

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Game #25 – Golden Knights vs. Hawks Preview: Yet Another New Toy Day

By Sam Fels 1689 0

 vs. 

RECORDS: Knights 12-12-1   Hawks 9-10-5

PUCK DROP: 7pm

TV: NBCSN outside the 606, NBCSN Chicago inside

DIAMONDS AND DUST: Sinbin Vegas

I suppose one of the good things about following a team in transition is that every couple of weeks you get something new to watch and study. A few weeks ago it was Jeremy Collition and the changes he would bring. Let’s throw Gustav Forsling in there, just because he was an improvement on a defense that was just that bad, and because we have so little. And tonight, the Hawks will unveil Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini. They even gave them normal numbers. So you know it’s real.

While the United Center faithful didn’t have any strong attachment to Nick Schmaltz, at least I don’t think they did, it won’t stop them from having the knives out and the boos ready if Strome and Perlini don’t immediately make an impact (somewhere around four goals each, I’m guessing). Stan Bowman isn’t out there for everyone to jeer, so they’ll go through his proxies if they have to.

From practice yesterday it doesn’t sound like Strome is going to slot directly into the second line, which he should, because no one has told me why we have to stick with Artem Anisimov and the increasingly shrinking amount of things he does. Strome will start on the fourth line between Marcus Kruger and…Alex Fortin? Dominik Kahun? Maybe Perlini? Perlini is a good bet to start on the third-line with Kampf and either Kahun or Fortin. And if things go well, don’t be shocked if Strome gets a promotion right away.

Elsewhere, Henri Jokiharju is under the weather and they’re not sure if he’ll play, which is a real fucking problem tonight. But we’ll get to that. Corey Crawford will start.

This is not the best night for any new Hawks to debut (or de-butt in the words of Matt Riddle) or for them to be without The HarJu, because the Golden Knights are the type of team the Hawks can’t deal with and the team that simply used them as a hand-puppet last year to do unspeakable things they could blame on an alter-ego. This is the model the Hawks probably want to chase in terms of style. It’s the one they can’t actually match in terms of ability to play it.

The Knights have struggled all year, or more to the point they’ve been extremely unlucky. Their metrics actually suggest they’ve been better this year than they were last. What they haven’t been able to do is get a save or catch a fish with dynamite. They roll in with the sixth-lowest shooting-percentage at even-strength and the third-lowest save-percentage as well, and that’s with two shutouts in their last two games. Marc-Andre Fleury has been sinking them until this week. and other than Jonathan Marchessault they can’t really get anyone to consistently score. William Karlsson‘s shooting-percentage has cut in half from last year, which no one gleefully saw coming, of course. Reilly Smith has the NBA Jam announcer following him around at all times screaming, “CAN’T BUY A BUCKET!” Max Pacioretty was nowhere until a six-goal week last week. As any Vegas visitor will tell you, the market correction on good luck can be swift and violent and leave you weeping with no pants.

Still, this is a team coming in off shutting out the Flames and Sharks, two teams ahead of them in the Pacific, on back-to-back nights at home. This is the team that plays fastest in the league, and no matter how you try and dream it up you can’t find a way that the Hawks defense can live with that. If there’s something to cling to, it’s that the Knights have been woeful on the road, at 5-9-0. But again, that’s mostly because Fleury or Malcom Subban have been trying to stop pucks by talking nicely to them for most of the season. Their metrics are right in line.

The task is tall and clear. This is one of the best defensive teams in the league. The Knights give up the second-least amount of attempts, the least amount of shots, and the second-least amount of scoring chances at evens in the league per 60. Their expected goals-against per 60 is fourth-best. They give nothing, and we know they can take everything from the Hawks on any rush. It also would behoove the Hawks to like, kill off a power play. Maybe even two, but I don’t want to be accused of being greedy. Either way, the Hawks are going to have to find a way to create chances with a lineup short on offensive dash against a team giving up basically nothing all year. Good seats still available!

Still, the Hawks schedule isn’t kind for this month. The Knights are on it twice. So are the Preds. So are the Jets. So are the Avs. The Sharks appear once. Blink and the Hawks could be done by Christmas. So if it’s ever going to click into gear, it had better be right now. If it doesn’t…Stan, meet Hextall.

 

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Game #25 – Golden Knights vs. Hawks Spotlight: Don’t Have A Whiff Of This Posy

By Sam Fels 1505 0

You’d be tempted to accuse the Knights and Marc-Andre Fleury of falling into the famous “Free Agent Year” trap, except that last year Fleury wasn’t in his free agent year. It seems unique to hockey that you have to sign a player to an extension a full season before he gets to free agency, as the dreaded “distraction” of a contract negotiation is feared to be something akin to Godzilla to the fleeing Japanese of a regular season and team. That’s how we got here with Brent Seabrook, after all. You’d think you’d want to grow the sample size before committing money to anyone aging and/or coming off a performance out of line with the rest of their career. But the NHL has always been where logic goes to die.

What was clear after last season is that Flower had a career season. His .927 SV% over the year was the best he’d accomplished by six points, which was two seasons previous in Pittsburgh, a season that saw him give way to Matt Murray late anyway. While Fleury had saved himself after his playoff meltdowns earlier in the decade, .927 was never going to be the norm.

NHL GMs seem to bathe in the good feelings of a team more than any others though, and because everything around the Knights was essentially Prozac from last spring on, he couldn’t help but hand Fleury three more years at $7M. No waiting around to see if Fleury could match that performance. No being sure. No thought that maybe at age 34 that was as good as it was going to get for Fleury.

And then you get what we have now.

Fleury has been terrible for most of this season, though has rebounded the last two games with shutouts to vault his SV% to .913 for the season. It was far below that before, at .901. What was more indicting for Fleury is that the Knights have been defensively more sound in front of him than they were last year. By some margin, as well. They’re giving up six attempts less per game at even strength, three shots less, and their xGA/60 dropped from 2.26 last season to 2.09. Which is why Fleury’s expected-save-percentage at evens went from .920 last year to .923 this year. But his actual SV% at evens went from .931 to .910.

Perhaps Fleury’s back-to-back shutouts signal a turnaround, and all will be well on The Strip once again. And maybe most think that this is the Knights, and the cap space he’s eating up doesn’t matter because they have all of the space in the world thanks to their expansion status. Not so, fucko…

After extensions to Fleury, Jonathan Marchessault, Nate Schmidt, Shea Theodore, Alex Tuch, the acquisitions of Max Pacioretty and Paul Stastny, the Knights only have about $7 million in space next year with just 14 players signed. And that’s before a major raise for William Karlsson, despite his restricted status. He won’t be getting a bridge deal, needless to say. He’s at $5.2M per year now. What’s coming? $7M? $8M? That $7M they’re handing to Fleury next year could actually be costly.

Maybe Fleury has found the Pekka Rinne fountain of youth, which the Predators are also banking on. Goalies certainly do have a different aging curve than skaters. However, in the past 20 years there have only been eight seasons where a goalie put up a .920+ SV% after the age of 35, and only Roberto Luongo and Tim Thomas did it twice. And as we know, Tim Thomas’s career didn’t really start until he was 30. Fleury has been in the league since he was a teenager. Is it the miles instead of malaise? 800 starts seems like a lot, and he’ll cross that threshold either this year or the beginning of next.

It was a beautiful dream last year. Perhaps it’s best to not snort that when trying to figure out the future.

 

 

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Game #25 – Golden Knights vs. Hawks Q&A: SinBin Vegas

By Sam Fels 1579 0

Ken Boehlke is one-half of sinbin.vegas. Follow them @SinBinVegas.

We know the Knights benefitted last year from insane goaltending along  with their more than solid even-strength play. But having among the worst save-percentage and shooting-percentage this season seems a violent market correction. Is there something systemic here more than just rotten luck?

What it really comes down to is Grade-A scoring chances and the subsequent execution of them. Early in the season the Golden Knights were having a hard time creating anything in the dangerous areas (in the house, if you know that term) but what was worse than their inability to create the chances was a consistency in not finishing those chances when they did arise. Luckily, as tends to be the case in hockey, that has turned recently, especially since they’ve begun to play more
Pacific division teams.

How big is the injury to Paul Stastny?

To be completely honest, it hasn’t had a major impact to this point. It’s the loss of Haula that seems to be more of a detriment to the team. Stastny certainly would have been, and hopefully will eventually be, a nice center for the 2nd line, but Eakin has stepped in incredibly well and appears to be thriving with goal-scorers on his line again. The loss of Haula however has definitely taken an level of speed away from the team and at times they don’t look like the quick, ferocious, probably considered annoying team that won the Western Conference. They’ve been searching for anyone to make the 3rd line go since Haula’s gruesome injury, but it hasn’t really happened yet. Would they be better with Stastny back? Of course, but if you gave me one or the other right now, I’d rather have Haula.

And the suspension to Nate Schmidt? While he’s unquestionably a good player is he really a top pairing d-man that a team would miss so heavily?

I’ll be completely honest in saying I heavily underestimated the impact Schmidt would have in the lineup upon his return. When a guy is out for the first 20 games of the season and the last memories of him are the Cup Final when not a single defenseman was any good, there certainly has to be a level of skepticism about how good the player really is, especially a player who has only a one year track record of being a top pair defenseman. But this guy is everything and more on the ice that made the hockey world realize that he’a a top 20 defenseman in the league and maybe even better. He’s kind of been this a stabilizing force to the defense in that they aren’t allowing an odd-man rush a period anymore, but it’s added an element of transition back into Vegas’ game and most importantly, it’s meant the return of Colin Miller and Shea Theodore to more familiar, less defensively responsible, roles. All of that was a long way to say, YES, Nate Schmidt is that good.

Max Pacioretty started slow, there was concern, and now he’s bagged six goals in four games. Was this just a product of all scorers going through hot and cold streaks?

I don’t think it was simply a cold streak that a scorer tends to go through. We’ve all seen those cold streaks and they tend to mean lots of great saves against, post hits, miraculous backchecking, and the likes. That’s not what this was for Pacioretty. He was just not good. He wasn’t creating much by means of scoring chances and he was uncharacteristically a liability defensively. When I say he was bad, I mean, he was legitimately one of the worst forwards on the team. However, he’s definitely not that anymore, and it’s not because he’s scored a bunch of goals recently. It seems to have much more to do with
his linemates. Playing with Alex Tuch isn’t as simple as it would seem. He’s so much faster than he looks and he plays with a power that’s not horribly common in the NHL. Pacioretty seemed to always been a half  second behind Tuch, likely because he didn’t expect Alex to be able to pull off some of the stuff that he does. Now, Pacioretty expects Tuch to win every puck, to undress guys at the blue line, and to fire passes through people every shift. Pacioretty is starting to find himself in much better positions when Tuch and Eakin create turnovers, and the three of them are starting to look dangerous every single time out as a unit rather than individually. Pacioretty told me about two weeks ago that he thought he was thinking too much and it was slowing him down. That’s a huge problem when you play with Tuch. That appears to be over
and the flood gates might just be open.

 

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Game #25 – Golden Knights vs. Hawks Douchebag Du Jour: Gerrard Gallant Proving Even Cowgirls Get The Stupids

By Sam Fels 1457 0

Gerrard Gallant will go down as the author of one of the most incredible seasons in North American sports history. He took an expansion team–a group of misfit toys and discarded fruit pits–with no real stars to three wins from the Stanley Cup. He did it by getting on the cutting edge of where the league is going, by having his team play faster than almost anyone could live with. The Knights got the puck up the ice as quickly as possible, trying to cram their chances in before teams could get set up to get in shooting lanes.

Gallant benefitted from a lot of players having career years, but he provided the atmosphere for players to flourish and enjoy their game. He didn’t try to shackle anyone. He may never accomplish as much again. And yet, on the biggest stage, Gallant went full hockey meatball.

Ryan Reaves, defying all that is good and right in the world, scored the game-winning goal in Game 1 of the Final. He did it in the only way Reaves can, getting in the way and having the puck bounce off of him. Reaves will never be more than a mouthy obelisk, and every so often when the planets align and all fart at the same time–or at least show a callousness to what should be- he’s an obelisk in the right place.

Which then prompted Gallant to throw out Reaves as his extra skater when the Knights were chasing the next four games. He did it three times, sending Reaves over the boards when pulling Fleury and chasing the Capitals. It would have left many dead from shock if they weren’t laughing so hard every filling popped loose and intestines were ruptured.

This is another backward hockey-think that should get anyone responsible stripped of their driver’s license to not put the rest of society in danger. The “hot stick.” Because Reaves had barfed a goal or two in recent games, Gallant was under the impression some hockey fairy or imp was planted on his shoulder that would make up for the fact that Reaves is nothing more than a well-compensated and less mobile ox. It’s like a reverse “cooler.”

The Knights weren’t getting to the Capitals anyway. And maybe Gallant had seen every gamble come up 7s for the Knights last season and figured he might as well push all-in again. No point in going conservative at that point. Still, even at the pinnacle of an impossible season, Gallant couldn’t escape hockey mysticism.

 

 

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