We are back at it this week with a Frozen Tool Forensic's classic. Given the holidays and some other recent events I have been a bit out of the loop the last few weeks so decided to get back into the swing of things by looking at player deployment and trying to get an idea of what has changed since last we spoke. For this week we are going to be digging into time on ice numbers to figure out who is coming up in the world and who is taking a step back in the new year.

As far as process goes, we are of course using the Frozen Tool's Time On Ice Report. We are using data from the last two weeks and comparing that to the prior month. The technical timeline is just after American Thanksgiving up until the NHL took a very brief holiday break, and then from when action resumed until now. We can do this using the report page's custom report figure and enter in the timelines we choose. Once I had those tables exported, I combined the data and selected the columns I wanted to compare.

For the purposes of this article we are going to be using percentage of team total for each of the game states. We are using a slightly smaller sample size this time around so going by straight time on ice is a little more subject to things like the amount of penalties called in a game etc. For these last two weeks we will also be only looking at players who have played at least five games (again trying to eliminate some of the noise of the smallest sample sizes).

The following tables contain percentage of total team time for power-play, even-strength, short-handed time, and total team time on ice. Going from left to right we start with the most recent set of games, then the gray section is from the larger sample of December, and the final section is the difference or change between the two time periods.

Let's kick things off with power-play time. Here are the top five gains over this time sample.

And the five players who have lost out on the largest share.

Erik Gustaffson is by far the biggest and most impactful winner, taking over on the top power-play from John Carlson in Washington. He has been running with it, so grab him if he is somehow available, though it is unlikely at this point.

There are multiple players here from Detroit and Philadelphia, so it is worth dipping into what has been happening in those situations (for reference all game data is as of 1/12).

Michael Rasmussen and Joe Veleno had been getting access to Dylan Larkin at even strength and some on the power-play over this time period, though neither are currently on the top power play. With the return of Fabbri and Tyler Bertuzzi, Rasmussen and Veleno have been bumped from the top power-play. These changes happened right at the end of the window we pulled from, so we haven't seen the fall off in average time yet, but definitely do not go add them expecting power-play time. Andrew Copp's fall in deployment is still very accurate though. He does not seem to be a regular on either unit at this point getting about ten seconds of power-play time as of their last game on what looks like a shift change.

Over in Philly the top unit is Scott Laughton, Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Joel Farrabee, and Tony DeAngelo. Noah Cates is seeing time on the second unit\, which aligns with his drop in percent. Tony DeAngelo is an interesting case. He still appears to be the top power-play QB, but does have a relatively large percentage drop here. The likely culprit is a game on Jan 8th where he only played 7ish minutes and had no power-play time. He seems to have returned to form though so hopefully it does not become a recurring issue.

Moving on to even strength

We see a couple of depth D who might be in line for a few more peripherals because of this increase, but I wanted to take a quick look at Milan Lucic and Barrett Hayton.

Milan Lucic has been playing on a top line with Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau, which is great news for his even strength potential. He has responded a bit with three points in his last three games, which is great, but it is two goals on four shots so that level of production isn't likely to continue. Still his shot rate has increased (but is still less than two per game) plus he hits a fair amount so certainly has value in some formats.

Barrett Hayton is much more interesting. He has been spending time up on the top line with Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz, and thus far the experiment seems to be working. He has eight points in his last eight games, is averaging close to 18 minutes a night, and increased his shot rates to about 2.5 per game. He has also been on the top power-play with those same linemates plus Shayne Gostisbehere, and Jakob Chychrun – though for some reason Arizona hasn't been giving this unit a significant preference over their second unit in recent games, limiting some of Hayton's overall power-play minutes. Count me interested as long as he is in this position though. He has also been hitting a bit and taking faceoffs for what it's worth.

Josh Leivo had a nice little run back at the beginning of December (well more like a good week really) but has fallen back to earth with less than 11 minutes of total ice time in each of his last eleven games, though he has not dressed for St. Louis's last two.

Kevin Hayes seems to have gotten on the wrong side of John Torterella a time or two recently. He had been consistently getting 18-20 minutes a night for a big chunk of the season and then in the middle of December was benched and then healthy scratched. That initially seemed to be the end of it, but then from Dec 29th, to Jan 8th (a series of six games) he averaged 14.5 minutes a night. He still put up five points during these games, but definitely saw a decrease in his shot rate from his scratch until his most recent game. In Philly's most recent game (1/11) he saw almost 19 minutes of ice time and had his second consecutive game of more than four shots. He is on an even strength line with Scott Laughton and Wade Allison which isn't ideal, and also isn't on the top power-play. This whole stretch has been the coldest of his season, while his time on ice in his last game was encouraging his even strength linemates and second power-play deployment are a bit troublesome.

And just for fun we are going to highlight a few players who are increasing their share of shorthanded time. There isn't a lot of analysis needed here, but these are some players that might be seeing an increase in their block numbers if this role sticks.

That is all for this week

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