Ramblings: Terry’s Torrid Start; Seattle’s Turnaround; Zibanejad’s Struggles – November 11

Michael Clifford

2021-11-11

It has been a remarkable start to the season for Anaheim's Troy Terry, perhaps one of their forgotten prospects. While not a true prospect anymore, really, he has fewer than two seasons of games played and just turned 24 in September. If he could find his trajectory as a prospect again, there could be something here for Anaheim for the long-term.

Well, he has 16 points in 13 games, a surreal feat considering his career-high is 20 points, which he could top by Thanksgiving. Of course, whenever a player has an unbelievable start like this, we need to dig under the hood to see what's going on, and what we can expect moving forward.

What stands out immediately is Terry is shooting 31%. Had he been shooting around 10% (career average of 8.8% heading into this season), he would have three goals instead of nine, and 10 points instead of 16. That is… a massive, massive difference in production. That is from a 57-goal pace to a 19-goal pace, and a 101-point pace to a 63-point pace. Now, it is worth noting that 20 goals and 60 points is still a good season, and a wonderful season for Terry in particular. But it is nowhere close to what he's doing now.

The next part is the assists, of course. If he can maintain a 20-goal, 60-point pace, that's fine. If the assists start to fall off as well, then we're going to have real problems. So, let's look into those seven assists.

At 5-on-5, his assist rate is 1.05 per 60 minutes, on the heels of 1.12 last year and 0.84 the year before. It seems to me that at least at that strength, there isn't a huge regression expected here unless the team really goes cold. It is not his assists at even strength driving the over-inflated totals. What about the power play?

With the man advantage, he's averaging four assists per 60 minutes this year. That is kind of high, but not excessive. Across the league, it's about the 75th percentile in power-play assists. Not excessive, but a bit of a concern considering the team is shooting 26% with the man advantage. Those PP assists might come down a bit, but I don't think they crash. He won't be a massive PP contributor this year, but he'll get to double-digits.

There is obviously a lot of pullback coming for Terry, but most of it is through goals. The bonus here is he's earning a lot more ice time of late, skating over 20 minutes a night over his last six games. Any pullback in rates can be somewhat offset by the raw increase in ice time.

All this is to say no, he most likely won't be a point-per-game player this year. A 60-point player is within reach with his ice time though, so as long as they keep skating him as a first liner, there's no real reason to trade him unless the offer is excessive.

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There has been a lot made of the Rangers' early struggles. Despite the record, it's clear to anyone watching their games that the team is riding a hot start from Igor Shesterkin, who is sporting a .931 save percentage. The team in front of him is 27th in shot attempts allowed and 25th in expected goals allowed at 5-on-5, and bottom-5 by shot attempts allowed on the penalty kill.

A lot has been made about what's going wrong but I present one explanation for part of the problems: the loss of Pavel Buchnevich. To illustrate, here are Buchnevich's and Mike Zibanejad's numbers over the last two seasons when skating together, and when skating apart, from Natural Stat Trick:

While we could say this is a small sample for Zibanejad, the fact is that this has been a problem for a while. From HockeyViz, here are his offensive and defensive impacts over his career. Look at the last four years, including this one. Not a single season with a positive impact offensively:

Without inundating with more graphs, the picture is the same over at Evolving Hockey: a player who cannot drive the play offensively, and hasn't been able to for years. From Corey Sznajder's zone entry numbers, it was Buch who drove the top line for transition play, and not Zibanejad, in the shortened 2021 season.

There is not much doubt in my mind that Zibanejad is an elite scorer and is a good distributor once he gets in the zone. The problem is creating turnovers to get the play moving the other way, or gaining the zone with control to set up better shot options. It seems like the player who stirred the drink on the top line was expendable while the finisher was not. And we are seeing the results of that in that line's play so far this season.

The obvious problem is the young wingers haven't progressed as anticipated. Kaapo Kakko doesn't seem to have rebounded from his early injury, I couldn't even tell you what line Lafrenière has been playing on because he's been that invisible, and only slightly more visible than Vitali Kravtsov, who is now in Russia. Those guys were all supposed to be, at bare minimum, top-9 players by now, and Kakko/Laffy should be pushing top-line status. The truth is they look ready for another stint in Hartford, and after losing Buch, there just isn't enough winger depth left to support three centres. Losing Buch wasn't supposed to hurt this much, but it has.

It really is up to the kids in New York now. Adam Fox is still a stud, but Laffy, Kakko, Miller, et al. need to start showing as high-end players, or the Rangers are in serious, serious trouble, Shesterkin or not. They say they're in no rush to trade Kravtsov; we'll see what a five-game losing streak in the next month or so does to that attitude.

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I have mentioned it before but we need to start paying closer attention to Seattle's turnaround. I mean, I could write about Calgary, but they're legitimate Cup contenders, and I think we all realize that at this point.

No, it's Seattle. They had a brutal start to the season, going 1-3-1 to star the year. The worst part is it was a five-game road trip, all in eight days, starting in Vegas and going to New Jersey. That is a brutal, brutal schedule at any point, let alone to start the year as a brand-new team. Unsurprisingly, they were a bottom-10 team by shot and expected goal share in that span.

Since then, the wins have still been hard to come by, but not because of poor team play. They are 3-5 in their last eight games, but are second in shot share in first in expected goal share. Again, that's across the entire league. You know what's holding them down? A league-worst .880 save percentage in that span. Only one other team is even under .900 (Minnesota at .895). Had this team not been enduring absolutely abysmal goaltending, they could have easily reeled off something like a 6-2 stretch rather than 3-5, and be in a playoff position, rather than last in the division.

It's weird, right? I don't think we expected this team to be so bad in net, and to have that be the reason why the team is at the bottom of the Pacific. But is just eight games, and it's a better sign to have the team playing well than the goalie. Just ask the Rangers and their fans about their panic level in that situation right now.

This is a fun team to watch and they're playing great team hockey. However, their next 11 games include Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida, and Edmonton. Plus a couple tougher road games than we previously thought in Buffalo and Detroit. We will have a much better read of this team in three weeks, but the turnaround so far has been real nice to see.

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Hendrix Lapierre, unsurprisingly, was sent back to the QMJHL. He did get in a half-dozen games and looked fine, but he's still a young rookie while this team is getting healthy and a Cup contender. There just isn't room, but that is good news for Connor McMichael, who looks to be in for the long haul. This infusion of young talent is what this team needs at this time in their franchise's history.

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Some news from Chicago:

It is Hagel that is of interest to us here. He had three goals in his last four games but now, the injured list. A tough break for the 23-year-old who'd started to carve himself a nice career in the NHL. It shouldn't be much of a setback, though.

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More bad news for Colorado:

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For absolutely no reason, here is Alex Ovechkin in a commercial for a Russian bank pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. I don't understand a thing, though the last word sounds familiar:

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It doesn't sound like the Stars plan to use Benn at centre anymore, at least for a while:

That hurts people in multi-cat leagues there were getting those face-off wins on the wing. Tough break there.

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A solemn Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans’ Day in America. Love and respect to those who fought and died in the World Wars to preserve our freedom.

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