November 18, 2014
steve laidlaw
2014-11-18
Regression coming for Callahan, Nash and Brassard plus some interesting Lundqvist splits and more…
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After a quick vacation I'm back for a quiet Monday with just one game on tap. Props to Dobber for going retro and giving you damn near a full week's worth of ramblings. I was checking in from the road. Good stuff. Thanks big man!
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Dominant performance by the Lightning who just keep on rolling. Ben Bishop didn't have to do much work for the win stopping 15 of 16 shots. The lone goal he allowed was put in by his own defenseman. Bishop continues to perform like a top-five fantasy goalie.
Steven Stamkos led the way for the Lightning with three points in just 15:43 of action. The Lightning have really been rolling their four lines all year showing off their tremendous depth. My initial instinct was to compare it to the way that the Bruins run things but the Bruins also roll their power play units. The Lightning haven't gone that far… yet.
But they do have incredible speed and skill up and down the lineup. On any given night any line can go off. Last night it was certainly the Stamkos line and good timing too as Ryan Callahan scored a pair of goals in his return to New York to face the Rangers.
Callahan has an interesting game log this season. He has as many multi-point efforts as he does goose eggs. The sum total is a point-per-game pace that surely won't be sustained. He's currently shooting 16.2%, which is about 5% too high. The multi-point efforts aren't usually a Callahan staple so when those dry up he'll return to a more reasonable pace.
It's funny how when a team is winning no one talks much about how the hot shot rookie isn't playing all that much. Jonathan Drouin continues to skate with Vladislav Namestnikov and a rotating third winger (typically Cedric Paquette or Alex Killorn) at evens while also seeing some time with the second power play unit.
It does help that Drouin has been reasonably productive in his limited minutes. He has eight points through 13 games. I don't expect much from him if this usage continues though. And considering the depth on this roster there is little reason to push Drouin into a larger role at this point. He'll be fine, just not so hot for the immediate impact we all hoped for.
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Just when Henrik Lundqvist was turning the corner last night happens. Prior to the game last night, Lundqvist's November numbers were sitting at 2-1-3 with a 1.60 GAA and .946 Save% through six starts. Five goals on 30 shots later…
Lundqvist will be fine though. We all know he's a beauty. Interestingly enough Lundqvists career monthly splits show quite the trend. Check out his month-by-month save percentage throughout his career:
October – 0.915
November – 0.924
December – 0.910
January – 0.924
February – 0.924
March – 0.920
April – 0.931
For every month but April you are looking at at least a 75-game sample size, which isn't necessarily enough to draw serious conclusions but we've made larger leaps with a lot less in the past. The interesting part isn't the fact that Lundqvist is basically a puck-stopping cyborg for much of the season it's how average he performs in October and December.
If this is a real thing and not just random sample noise then Lundqvist owners are headed towards another rocky month. I for one hope that is the case. I'd love nothing more than some terrible mid-season stats for Lundqvist, which I could use to bargain a cheaper price tag for him.
Dan Boyle has been unproductive since his return to the Ranger lineup but that's okay because none of the other Ranger defensemen had been doing much in his absence. It's pretty clear that we are all waiting on Ryan McDonagh to return from his own injury before we see consistent scoring from the blue line on this team.
And Boyle has been soaking up the big minutes too. He skated 20:06 last night with 3:02 on the power play. I suppose that's not huge for a defenseman but his power play usage has been of the extreme top unit variety. That won't continue when McDonagh returns. Or at least it won't if he continues to squander this opportunity.
After a couple of down years for Boyle on some filthy good Sharks teams it might be time we start talking about Dan Boyle the carcass rather than Dan Boyle the fantasy asset but we're still a little early yet. For one, he is still producing SOG at a quality rate of 2.0 per game.
Dobber mentioned something about Derick Brassard's production drying up with Derek Stepan back. I don’t remember the specifics so I hate to throw him under the bus but I don’t know that I agree with that sentiment.
Brassard notched an assist last night to give him four points in six contests since Stepan's return, which helps my argument so maybe this is just fortunate timing. But I’m looking at how that assist came on a power-play goal. The same power-play goal that Stepan also got an assist on. They are both skating together on the top power play unit along with Boyle (for now), Rick Nash and Martin St. Louis. Meanwhile it's Brassard who has maintained his top line duties with Nash and St. Louis while Stepan skates with Mats Zuccarello and Chris Kreider. I just don't see why there isn't room for both of these guys to eat.
Let's be clear, I do agree that Brassard is going to see a market correction but it won't be because of Stepan. No, it'll be because Brassard's shooting percentage needs to regress from 16.7% down closer to his career average of 11.0% and Nash's is already in the process of regression having fallen to 17.9% but still has a ways to go towards his career average of 12.5%.
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You could see Olli Maatta return to the Penguin lineup tonight. Not that I'm overly interested in Maatta for fantasy purposes but it's a great human interest story if nothing else. I can't imagine the emotions he must be dealing with.
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Lots of buzz about the Wild placing Josh Harding on waivers after activating him from the IR. Most of the buzz was speculation about where he might land. If he does get claimed by anyone, you can bet we'll have a piece discussing the fantasy implications but my guess is Harding clears and heads off to Iowa.
I've pretty well written Harding off. Just too star-crossed. There remains a chance he could become relevant. All it would take is an injury to Backstrom for Harding to get called up and that's in the "worst case scenario" where he goes unclaimed. That situation isn't all that unlikely. So yeah, you could make a move to stash Harding if you've got the roster space to spare. I'd just as soon not bother.
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Lost in the Harding news was Dallas placing Kevin Connnauton on waivers. Not much fantasy impact here. You could argue that this is the end of the road for Connauton but really, we've seen defensemen take years to finally develop. So in leagues with massive rosters where Connauton can be stashed then you keep stashing him, otherwise, it's off to the waiver wire.
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It being Tuesday morning, it's time for our weekly ranking of the top candidates for the Jeff Schultz Memorial Trophy. (Weekly disclaimer: "the Schultz" is handed out to the defenseman who records the highest plus/minus total while scoring less than 30 points on the season.) The top candidates are as follows:
The latest on Hedman is that he won't return until early December so there is still time for Garrison to continue producing for the next couple of weeks. Enjoy the points while you can and then continue to reap the plus/minus rewards when this cow dries up.
T4. Plus-Nine
Andy Greene
That's quite the throng coming in at plus-nine. Many of these characters have been talked about in previous weeks but I'd like to welcome Emelin and Gilbert a surprising duo from the Montreal Canadiens. What' interesting is that Emelin and Gilbert haven't even been a frequent defense pairing:
Even Strength Line Combinations
|
Freq |
Line Combination |
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42.3% |
GILBERT,T – MARKOV,A |
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30.6% |
BEAULIEU,N – GILBERT,T |
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18.5% |
EMELIN,A – GILBERT,T |
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5.4% |
GILBERT,T – WEAVER,M |
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3.2% |
GILBERT,T – TINORDI,J |
How Gilbert and Emelin have managed such strong plus/minus figures while not skating together that much is a genuine mystery. It helps that they have skated for a Canadiens team that has one of the highest even-strength goal differentials in the league. Whether or not that is smoke and mirrors is certainly a debate worth having.
As we reach the quarter mark of the season the Canadiens have the fifth highest PDO in the league, just ahead of a Lightning team I just lauded above. Emelin and Gilbert have been big beneficiaries ranking 29th and 30th respectively in individual PDO. But everyone is welcome in the Jeff Schultz Memorial Trophy race. We do not discriminate based on talent level!
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An interesting look at a better way to assess power play efficacy.
I want to head off a misconception when I talk about evaluating powerplays. Goals are what decide the game, so it seems silly to look at the Penguins’ powerplay and say anything other than “they’ve been phenomenal.” That’s a true statement if our task is simply explaining what happened in the past. However, I’m more interested in the future, and I think most people are too. We want to know where our team is headed and whether they can keep it up.
That’s why it’s critical to use CF/60 when evaluating a powerplay. The Penguins have done a good job this year generating shots on the man advantage, but their powerplay unit has under-performed relative to its counterparts in earlier years. To maintain their success with the man advantage, they should aim to generate more shot attempts in the future. Given their talent, that seems like a reasonable expectation.
Not really that unconventional in this day and age. Shot attempts are a better predictor of future scoring success than past scoring success. What's crazy is that the Penguins' dominant power play has actually been underperforming by this measure compared to previous seasons so they could see some serious regression headed their way.
Which teams boast the most productive power plays by shot attempts per 60 minutes? That would be the crack power play units in Washington, Philadelphia, Arizona and San Jose.
Which teams rank last? That would be New Jersey, Dallas and Tampa Bay by a good margin. Surprising to see the highly efficient Lightning power play grade out so poorly here. Of course, it's less surprising when you discover that they have scored on over a fifth of their shots with the man advantage, which is tops in the league.
If ever there was a situation where you could talk me into the shot quality argument it would be on the power play but not even a power play featuring Stamkos should be scoring on that high a percentage of shots.
One more note here. The Wild have scored on less than 5% of their shots while on the power play, which is incredibly unfortunate. Chalk that up as yet another excuse to buy low on Wild players. The bubble has to burst eventually for them.
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By now I'm sure you've heard about the research indicating that there is value in playing your backup for one half of back-to-back situations. Here's an interesting argument for situations when playing the starter for both ends of the back-to-back can have value.
Now obviously there are other factors to take into account. If you assume that a backup needs to play 20 games in a season, it makes more sense to have them play games during back-to-backs, because the drop off in save percentage will be greater if you're sitting a rested starter. But let's say Alain Vigneault feels his team really needs a slump-busting win one Saturday night, and that the loss in overall save percentage taken by starting Lundqvist now rather than a game down the road was worth it for team morale and momentum, then it's not necessarily the wrong move. Or, even more obviously, let's say Colorado is playing a back-to-back to end the season, and desperately needs two wins to make the playoffs. I think it's safe to say that starting Varlamov for both of those games is the right call. Same idea for back-to-backs in the playoffs, if any came to be.
I totally agree. There are certainly situations where in a vacuum you'd start the #1. Where I take issue is when a coach continually does it like has been done with Cory Schneider this season.
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We all know that jersey advertisements are coming eventually but apparently some NHL (and NBA) teams are concerned about widening the disparity between big and small markets that is already large. The big thing for me is that if the league continues to be capped then that disparity doesn't really affect competitive balance. Instead this is just small market owners complaining because their business won't be as successful as someone else's because of the market.
This is like complaining at a party that someone else got a bigger piece of cake than you, never mind that EVERYONE got ****ing cake. The greed of the owners never ceases to amaze.
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Preliminary talks to get NHLers in on the next Olympics have begun.
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Stamkos had the moves going last night: