December 14, 2014

Thomas Drance

2014-12-14

Ryan Miller’s struggles, DJ Zbad cooking with oil, Tomas Tatar – 30 goal scorer? and more…

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It was a relatively injury free Saturday of NHL action, although Sidney Crosby didn’t play because he’s been drinking too much brain and nerve tonic (it’s like there’s a party in his cheek and everyone is invited).

Jonathan Toews made it back from his apparent head injury to face the Islanders though, and while Shea Weber and Patrice Bergeron left their respective games with apparent injuries, both ultimately returned and seemed not too much worse for wear.

We’ll see if we learn more today or tomorrow, Bergeron in particular could be nursing a broken hand or something, so if you own either player I’d probably set up a google alert.

William Foley, the leader of Las Vegas Hockey-Vision and a prospective NHL owner, really wants a potential Las Vegas NHL team to be called the “Black Knights.” That’s just truly awful.

I’m reminded that the original owner of the New Jersey Devils wanted that team to be called the Meadowlanders, which would have been a travesty. Hopefully the Black Knights nickname meets a similar fate.

On Saturday afternoon, the Boston Bruins blew two one-goal leads before falling to the Ottawa Senators in a shootout. The weighted coin flip gave new Senators coach Dave Cameron – who made his mark on the Senators by scratching veteran defender Chris Phillips and replacing him with the much better Patrick Wiercioch – his first win as an NHL bench boss.

Mike Zibanejad scored one of Ottawa’s goals and added a shootout marker to remain scrorching hot. In his past six games, Zibanejad now has five goals and seven points, and perhaps more importantly has taken 19 shots. Until this latest stretch of quality games, the skilled two-way center was taking a couple shots per game. If he can maintain his new three-plus per game clip though, while continuing to drive play, the Senators could really have something here (and you could too, if he’s available on your waiver wire).

Zdeno Chara had what I might describe as a tentative game, and he was benched in the overtime period. He doesn’t quite look like himself yet, but hopefully that’s just rust.

I tend to think that Chara *has* lost his fastball as an incomparable two-way force, and obviously the best defender of the post-Pronger era, but he’s coming down from a high-ceiling. Even if he’s not quite 2009-2013 Chara, he’s still likely to be a top-10 NHL defender, not to mention a useful fantasy asset.

The Flyers steamrolled the Carolina Hurricanes 5-1 in the other Saturday matinee.

Sean Couturier picked up another goal and has now managed a point in every Flyers game this month, a six game point streak. Couturier’s shot rate and ice-time is flat, but he’s become a more prominent part of the Flyers’ typically dangerous power-play as the season has gone along. It’ll be very interesting to see if he can continue to be productive at a higher rate than he’s managed in his first few seasons.

Flyers center Scott Laughton scored his first career goal. Laughton has aced the eye test in his rookie season, even though his underlying numbers are somewhat less than astounding (which isn’t unexpected for a 20-year-old player).

Anyway, I’m a huge fan of his game. I used to track the Oshawa Generals pretty closely when he was in the OHL – largely because I was blogging about the Canucks at the time, and Nicklas Jensen was on the team (later Cole Cassels). On a loaded Generals club that employed guys like Jensen, Boone Jenner, Lucas Lessio, Christian Thomas – Laughton’s game always stood out to me as particularly effective, and impressive.

The Buffalo Sabres are 9-3 over the past month, which is preposterous. No wonder we’re beginning to hear rumors about Tim Murray being willing to trade a goaltender! Both Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth have been playing out of their minds during this stretch, so sell high young man!

Honestly, people love to make up reasons for a team starting to do well – confidence! Belief! Out-working opponents! – when sometimes it’s just blind luck (or a hot streak from a goaltender). That’s what’s happening to the Sabres right now, and don’t bother kidding yourself – it’s simply luck and insane goaltending.

For all that the club is racking up wins, they’re also controlling a brutal 36.4 percent of Corsi events over their last month of games. These wins aren’t going to continue, the Sabres remain the worst team in hockey, and if you’re looking to explain what changed to allow Buffalo to start winning games, all you need to know is that .950 goaltending covers up a lot of hockey sins.

Whether or not Buffalo’s wins are a mirage, it’s really cool to see former London Knights defender Nikita Zadorov score the overtime winner. The big Russian defenseman is one of those giant guys with a hilariously deep voice, and when I’ve interviewed him in the past he’s seemed significantly more curious than your average major junior player. Particularly, he’s always come off as very eager to chat, just to try and soak up more english.

Then he gets on the ice and he has that mean-spiritedness that every team in hockey wants in a defenseman…

Anyway, the heavy hitting defender has been logging insane minutes for the Sabres all year, and is regularly over 20 minutes recently. He’s also actually leading all Buffalo defenseman in shot attempt differential. His Corsi For percentage is below 40, but it’s the best mark relative to his overmatched teammates – which ain’t nothing.

Sean Bergenheim managed a goal and an assist in the Panthers loss, and also took five shots on goal. Bergenheim is a high-end volume shooter, whose posted auspicious peripheral numbers with a high degree of consistency over the past few seasons. It never worked out for him in Florida, and he particularly clashed with Kevin Dineen, but in the right situation I think Bergenheim could be an enormous help to a contender.

The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Detroit Red Wings for the second time this week, and this time they legitimately deserved the victory!

The Maple Leafs pummeled the Red Wings both on the scoreboard (they won 4-1) and on the shotclock, where they recorded over 40 shots on goal.

Dan Carcillo and Cal Clutterbuck exchanged goals just six seconds apart in the second period, before the Islanders took over in the final frame – ultimately winning on a pair of goals from Kyle Okposo and Lubomir Visnovsky mid-way through the third period.

Visnovsky’s a tough fantasy asset to gauge, for me. He’s logging a good deal of time on the power-play, but it’s tough to know if he’ll continue to do so when the Islanders are healthy (he’s generally been ahead of Nick Leddy on the power-play pecking order, for whatever that’s worth). He’s also managed to be reasonably productive, with eight points in 20 games. The problem is that he’s unlikely to remain in the lineup due to persistent durability issues, so you’ll just have to deal with and expect recurrent injuries here and there.

If you’re in a deeper league and need a defenseman, he’s worth owning. He comes with head aches though.

Brock Nelson’s breakout campaign has been built on ridiculous percentages, but every now and then he’ll put together a seven or eight shot contest, in which he really seems to be driving things offensively. Last night he flashed the sort of game that makes me stop and think: damn, this guy could be a beast!

I really liked that tertiary line with Nelson, Michael Grabner and Anders Lee that the Islanders had rolling last night, but if Nelson can string together a few games in a row like the one he had on Saturday, I’d be tempted to put him on the Okposo/Tavares line…

I’ll be curious to see if Joel Quenneville sticks with Patrick Sharp on the third-line following Saturday night’s loss. Sharp has been playing with Bryan Bickell and Andrew Shaw on Chicago’s third forward group since returning from injury earlier this week, and was pretty good on Saturday despite finishing the contest with a minus-two rating. I’ll be curious to see if Quenneville gets trigger happy following the loss. Personally, I’d like to see Sharp given some more time to fit in there, partly because the idea of Sharp just wreaking havoc against the bottom-end of opponent’s rosters is all kinds of fun.

Nicklas Backstrom scored his first career regular season hat-trick in Washington’s 4-2 victory over Tampa Bay on Saturday. Alex Ovechkin picked up a couple of assists on Backstrom’s goals, to go along with five hits, seven shots, and a +3 rating; as the sniper and his most usual set up man enjoyed a tonne of success in a role reversal kind of game.

Tom Wilson continued to fill the boxscore hilariously, and is particularly valuable these days if you’re in a PIM league. Two assists, no shots on goal, five penalties minutes and one hit is pretty much the Tom Wilson-est boxscore line of all time.

A situation worth keeping an eye on: four Capitals defenders logged more minutes than Mike Green did on Saturday night. Say what you will about Green’s defensive play, but his track record suggests that he’s a well above average top-pair defender. Limiting his minutes to that extent is massively wasteful. If it continues for long enough that “but he just returned from injury” is no longer a semi-convincing excuse, that would be a pretty clear signal that Green’s time with the Capitals is at an end.

The Columbus Blue Jackets defeated the Crosby-less Pittsburgh Penguins 4-3, a victory that the depleted Ohioans surely needed – just for local morale.

Kerby Rychel got into the lineup for the Blue Jackets in place on Scott Hartnell, and threw four hits while doing nothing else really. Rychel is enormously skilled, and his production bears watching closely here. I suspect that if he gets the right opportunity and a bounce or two, he could go off.

Patric Hornqvist and Kris Letang have now returned from injury and they looked like their old fantasy-stud selves on Saturday, even without Crosby’s all-world playmaking ability floating all boats. Hornqvist managed to take five shots and throw a few hits, though he finished without a point. Letang meanwhile was just a power-play goal short of the Mario Lemieux hat-trick, as he scored a goal at evens and short-handed, while also contributing four shots on goal, three hits and finishing the contest with a +3 rating…

The Winnipeg Jets have been one of the best teams in hockey and Michael Hutchinson has been hot enough to steal seven starts from Ondrej Pavelec in the Jets’ last 15 games. Considering that Hutchinson started two games in Winnipeg’s first 16, it’s clear that he’s turned some heads…

Hutchinson came back to earth somewhat on Saturday, though allowing three goals against on 30 shots as he was outduelled by Frederik Andersen and the Ducks.

Jets swingman Dustin Byfuglien, who is back on defense, logged a tonne of minutes and finished with a -3 rating. Every time this occurs Byfuglien fantasy owners (and also fans of seeing the best players play the position they’re best suited to) have to get nervous…

Byfuglien by the way is the sixth most valuable player in a relatively simple Yahoo league that counts G, A, PPP, SOG, hits, and +/- over the past 14 days.

Antoine Vermette managed a goal and an assist in a shootout loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday night. With the Arizona Coyotes’ ownership situation still in doubt, it remains unclear whether or not the club will be able to make Vermette an extension offer. If he hits the open market, in a world where realistically one of the next best centremen available could be Mike Santorelli (who is a winger), he’s going to get all the money.

Are you prepared to live in a world where Vermette’s contract has a $7 million AAV?

The NHL’s leading scorer Tyler Seguin managed a goal, an assist and seven shots on goal in a ho-hum 4-3 Devils victory over the New Jersey Devils.

The Devils are probably the team I pegged the worst before the season. I was sure they’d be decent, but yeah, no, they’re awful.

Erik Johnson scored two goals and had himself a big fantasy day as the Colorado Avalanche dropped a 3-2 decision to the St. Louis Blues in overtime. Gabriel Landeskog added a couple of assists for good measure. For the Blues Vladimir Tarasenko was unable to score, but managed an assist and five shots on goal.

Finally in Vancouver, the Rangers and Alain Vigneault kicked out the Canucks’ teeth, building an early 3-0 lead and pouring additional salt on the wound over the balance in a 5-1 win. Vancouver’s defense wasn’t good, in fact it was atrocious, but Ryan Miller’s continued struggles are the bigger story.

It’s funny how everyone is ignoring just how putrid Miller has been this year because, y’know, he’s stolen a couple games, and also count the wins. On the whole though Miller’s body of work has been lacking, and then some.

So far this season 28 NHL goaltenders have logged at least 800 even-strength minutes in the crease, so it’s a good proxy that we can use to define a “starting goaltender.” Of those 28 goaltenders Ryan Miller ranks 27th in even-strength save percentage, ahead of only Mike Smith.

The only goalies in the same stratosphere of bad as Miller this year are guys like Ben Scrivens, Darcy Kuemper, Cam Ward, and Smith – all of whom are sharing their crease with a backup way more regularly than Miller is, especially of late.

Simply put: Miller hasn’t played well enough to be given the benefit of the doubt in games when he lets in five goals on 23 shots. He also hasn’t played well enough to continue to be given a workhorse starter’s workload. Finally, if you’re still evaluating goaltenders based on their win/loss record I’d like to welcome you to 2014. We all have smart phones now.

Thomas Drance is a news editor at theScore.