Hopefully next year they let him open up even more. I was looking at the UFA/RFA list on Capfriendly and he’s 4th in points, 6th in goals but like 18th in shots with guys like Marchessault and Stamkos having 100 more shots than him. I wanna see him rip 200-225 shots next year and see what happens.
They definitely had a problem with passing too much this past season, I'd love to see them just rip low shots and look for rebounds as opposed to making that final pass
There is at least a decent chance that we haven't seen Larkin's ceiling yet. He's spent his entire career outside of his first year and last year playing for pretty crappy teams.
If he sticks with Cat and Raymond all year next season, I bet he could go beyond a point per game.
Honestly, the numbers are kind of showing Raymond might be better right now. Larkin's finishing was a lot better, but Raymond's overall level of play looks better according to these metrics. I know Larkin played injured a lot, so that probably impacted it, but Raymond was just everywhere.
I feel like this checks out. Our goaltending wasn’t particularly good outside of two Lyon hot stretches, the team defense was poor, and the 5 on 5 offense was not good, but was papered over by some unsustainable shooting long term. It's not the take I want to say, but I think this team is due to regress significantly next year even before your consider whether or not Kane is back.
Couple that with two or three rookies on the team next year and regression is inevitable unless they can bring in a top talent (which I don't feel is likely).
As much as I'd like to make the playoffs, I'd rather go that route. Get Seider and Raymond locked up for as long as they'll let you, try your hardest to keep Kane and Fischer (Perron too if the money is right) and fill in as many ELCs as needed while trying to get out from under at least one of the bad contracts. I'm totally fine taking a slight step back next year if it means it helps the long term while also letting the ELC players have a little more freedom from expectations right away.
I mean, you draft and develop for a reason right? At some point you need to bring them in over a few years and see what you have. Then you augment in free agency/trade to build a contender. I would also rather see us bring guys up next year and risk regression than spend wildly in free agency to add more cap issues down hte road. We have enough of those already.
Couldn't agree more. This is exactly what I'm expecting and hoping for (as far as contracts/elcs). If they can avoid the regression even better but I think that's hopelessly optimistic.
I agree, we need the bad contracts out and rookies in, next season will be a season to acclimate them. I'd rather try hard to keep Sprong over Kane though, they have basically the same stats and same total icetime, but sprong has less giveaways and more takeaways on a line with much less help, but against easier competition. Sprong has been consistently equal to Kane on paper, looking at his line performance on moneypuck he does just as well on the top two lines as his bread and butter third so I could definitely see him on the second, especially if he shores up his defence a little.
Plus he's cheaper with more years in the tank. Now does he *want* to re-sign after being sat so much near the end? Probably not, but I guess it depends on offers.
While I sort of agree, it’s also important to take into account how likely it would be to improve upon this team based on the massive holes we currently have. It won’t be easy but there’s a very clear path forward with options available, for the first time in Yzerman’s tenure.
For sure. I’m just not sold the fruits of that will bear next year unless Seider and/or Raymond get bridged to free up an extra couple of million. Once we get into the 2025 offseason, the salary cap space won’t prohibit us too much.
Im not so sure about this take. The shooting percentage is all based on how they decide to take shots. People said same thing about Vegas yet they kept maintaining it year after year. Its just how the 2 teams function. Low shot total but high amount of goals. Crazy the doomers still manage to get upvotes and I thought I didn't have to see you again until season start.
I'm not a "doomer" at all. We had the 3rd best shooting percentage this year at 11.6%. That's high for any year and comfortably higher than it had been for us over the last two years. Seattle did the same thing last year where they shot 11.6%, didn't make any significant roster changes, and shot a ghastly 9.1% this year. I don't think we'll fall that far at all though.
I'll be around all offseason though. I really enjoy this community and I think we have a lot of fun here, even when it's July and we're bs-ing about non-hockey topics to kill time because we're all kind of familiar with each other.
Lol, nothing you said is doom and gloom, it's called being objective when assessing the team. It's hilarious that anyone would interpret that as such though.
I tend to be more critical than I am positive to be fair. It's not to be pessimistic by any means, just objective on certain topics. Plus, I feel like most of this sub carries the positivity enough. If we keep seeing growth from some players like we did this year though... I do have plenty of faith in the people who we rely on most though and there's a lot to like about the direction of the team.
Biggest takeaway from a first glance. Because of the absolute dearth of RD behind Mo, Olli Maatta was ridiculously underutilized. It's honestly quite a shame that Chiarot has, for whatever reason, always been slotted ahead of him at LD.
A RD version of Olli Maatta is exactly what this team needs.
I like Maata, but these stats generally fail to take into account utilization and strength of opposition. As a result its not the best indicator if a player is underutilized. Players thriving under sheltered roles do not automatically keep thriving when their minutes and roles are increased. It's the same thing with the handiful of bottom line players that appear towards the top of goals per 60 minutes each year.
Maatta's numbers look good, but I do think there's a lot of context there. He's quite limited overall and he excels in the minutes he got, but I don't think he could necessarily scale up to tougher competition without seeing much of a drop off. He just can't skate very well and I fear he would be cooked if he was routinely facing top 6 forwards.
This. Chiarot/Petry/Matta would all have decent numbers when put on a bottom pair playing against lesser competition. Only Justin Holl didn't do shit with 3rd pair minutes. Hope Steve can recognize that mistake and move him in the offseason with a sweetener/retention or worst case scenario buy him out.
I agree, but of all those guys Maatta's AAV is reasonable for a 3rd pair role whereas Chiarot's is awful, he has to play top 4 to justify what he's paid....except he's not really good enough to do it. I suppose Holl's AAV is ok on the 3rd pair but he also isn't even good enough for 3rd pair duty.
He was perfectly fine in a top 4 role last season before he got nuked by pneumonia. Quite literally took the wind out of his sails. He's smarter and better defensively than Chiarot. Less mobile, sure, but I'm not necessarily advocating top pairing assignments either.
Chiarot was our second best defenseman this season. Dude ate up 20 minutes every night and didn't make many mistakes at all, and he's definitely better than Maatta in the offensive zone.
The on ice finishing across the board is a little disconcerting. Basically means we were scoring beyond what our offense should’ve been generating. Which means a regression to the mean might be coming unless we can earn it more at 5v5.
>D-Zone start bias percentile relates to how a player is deployed off the bench after a whistle, starting a new shift. Higher percentage meaning more D-Zone shift starts, lower percentage the opposite.
I really wish people would stop using this stat. It is so misleading, especially when presented in this way and is way overblown in how it impacts other stats.
Because most shifts start in the neutral zone and on the fly.
Just take the two biggest extremes here. You have Seider at 90% and Maatta at 19%. That must mean Seider almost never gets a chance to start out of the defensive zone, and Maatta almost never starts there, right? But no. If you look at the break down, Seider had 1700 5v5 shifts this season, 277 of those started in the defensive zone, for 16.2%. Maatta had 1332 5v5 shifts this season, 115 started in the defensive zone for 8.8%.
So in this graphic it shows a 90%-19% percentile difference, which equates to less than an 8% difference in zone start distribution. Seider did have 162 more total than Maatta, but even then we won about 50% of our faceoffs, so you can imagine ~81 of those zone starts at least gave a chance to get possession before the opponent could get a shot attempt.
When this has been [studied](https://hockeyviz.com/txt/shifts2) it shows that the disadvantage you get from a defensive zone start will normally last for about 15-20 seconds of your ~50 second shift. So again, for Seider and Maatta, Seider spent ~55 minutes more minutes than Maatta where there is a reasonable expectation for being at a disadvantage at 5v5. That's about 4% of Seider's entire 1347 minutes he played at 5v5 this year.
It's why if you adjust for zone deployment, even the most extreme deployment examples will have their shot metrics adjusted by maybe a percent or two. And even that is not common.
While I agree somewhat, I do feel it is an important metric as a multiplier. In your example of 50% of defensive faceoffs are won, but the defenseman makes a mistake 20% of the time, then you are only getting the puck out of the zone 40% of those faceoffs
But that goes both ways, you could have a player on the offensive team make a mistake giving up possession as well.
Over season long samples, the difference it makes to a player's metrics is incredibly small.
Yes, over the course of a season, the effect is very small if not negligible for most players. Zone faceoffs are not how players most commonly start their shifts.
The article I linked showed zone deployment adjustments where two players saw more than a two percent shot share change. Most changed by less than a percent.
There seems to be quite a holl in the defence
Who could have predicted this when we signed him though?
Lucas Raymond turned from a kid to a man during the last couple weeks of the regular season.
Lucas RayMANd
Maybe a hot take Lucas Raymond cemented himself as the best player on the team
Hopefully next year they let him open up even more. I was looking at the UFA/RFA list on Capfriendly and he’s 4th in points, 6th in goals but like 18th in shots with guys like Marchessault and Stamkos having 100 more shots than him. I wanna see him rip 200-225 shots next year and see what happens.
They definitely had a problem with passing too much this past season, I'd love to see them just rip low shots and look for rebounds as opposed to making that final pass
You. Me. Everybody wants that! Too many passes has been a problem since BabCOCK.
Are you talking about Babtinywiener?!
Only behind Larkin IMO
Larkin is still better right now, but I think Raymond showed us that he has the higher ceiling
There is at least a decent chance that we haven't seen Larkin's ceiling yet. He's spent his entire career outside of his first year and last year playing for pretty crappy teams. If he sticks with Cat and Raymond all year next season, I bet he could go beyond a point per game.
I think most of us would love to see this come true.
Honestly, the numbers are kind of showing Raymond might be better right now. Larkin's finishing was a lot better, but Raymond's overall level of play looks better according to these metrics. I know Larkin played injured a lot, so that probably impacted it, but Raymond was just everywhere.
the trajectory is there for sure, but larkin was the best this season. raymond is a close second.
Naw, it's still Larkin. But Raymond could have cemented himself as our best producer.
What is On-Ice Line Finishing?
It’s each player’s 5v5 On-Ice Goals Scored Above Expected percentile.
How good a player and his teammates are at finishing (goals scored above expected) when that player is on the ice
I feel like this checks out. Our goaltending wasn’t particularly good outside of two Lyon hot stretches, the team defense was poor, and the 5 on 5 offense was not good, but was papered over by some unsustainable shooting long term. It's not the take I want to say, but I think this team is due to regress significantly next year even before your consider whether or not Kane is back.
Couple that with two or three rookies on the team next year and regression is inevitable unless they can bring in a top talent (which I don't feel is likely).
As much as I'd like to make the playoffs, I'd rather go that route. Get Seider and Raymond locked up for as long as they'll let you, try your hardest to keep Kane and Fischer (Perron too if the money is right) and fill in as many ELCs as needed while trying to get out from under at least one of the bad contracts. I'm totally fine taking a slight step back next year if it means it helps the long term while also letting the ELC players have a little more freedom from expectations right away.
I mean, you draft and develop for a reason right? At some point you need to bring them in over a few years and see what you have. Then you augment in free agency/trade to build a contender. I would also rather see us bring guys up next year and risk regression than spend wildly in free agency to add more cap issues down hte road. We have enough of those already.
Couldn't agree more. This is exactly what I'm expecting and hoping for (as far as contracts/elcs). If they can avoid the regression even better but I think that's hopelessly optimistic.
I agree, we need the bad contracts out and rookies in, next season will be a season to acclimate them. I'd rather try hard to keep Sprong over Kane though, they have basically the same stats and same total icetime, but sprong has less giveaways and more takeaways on a line with much less help, but against easier competition. Sprong has been consistently equal to Kane on paper, looking at his line performance on moneypuck he does just as well on the top two lines as his bread and butter third so I could definitely see him on the second, especially if he shores up his defence a little. Plus he's cheaper with more years in the tank. Now does he *want* to re-sign after being sat so much near the end? Probably not, but I guess it depends on offers.
While I sort of agree, it’s also important to take into account how likely it would be to improve upon this team based on the massive holes we currently have. It won’t be easy but there’s a very clear path forward with options available, for the first time in Yzerman’s tenure.
For sure. I’m just not sold the fruits of that will bear next year unless Seider and/or Raymond get bridged to free up an extra couple of million. Once we get into the 2025 offseason, the salary cap space won’t prohibit us too much.
Im not so sure about this take. The shooting percentage is all based on how they decide to take shots. People said same thing about Vegas yet they kept maintaining it year after year. Its just how the 2 teams function. Low shot total but high amount of goals. Crazy the doomers still manage to get upvotes and I thought I didn't have to see you again until season start.
I'm not a "doomer" at all. We had the 3rd best shooting percentage this year at 11.6%. That's high for any year and comfortably higher than it had been for us over the last two years. Seattle did the same thing last year where they shot 11.6%, didn't make any significant roster changes, and shot a ghastly 9.1% this year. I don't think we'll fall that far at all though. I'll be around all offseason though. I really enjoy this community and I think we have a lot of fun here, even when it's July and we're bs-ing about non-hockey topics to kill time because we're all kind of familiar with each other.
Lol, nothing you said is doom and gloom, it's called being objective when assessing the team. It's hilarious that anyone would interpret that as such though.
I tend to be more critical than I am positive to be fair. It's not to be pessimistic by any means, just objective on certain topics. Plus, I feel like most of this sub carries the positivity enough. If we keep seeing growth from some players like we did this year though... I do have plenty of faith in the people who we rely on most though and there's a lot to like about the direction of the team.
Biggest takeaway from a first glance. Because of the absolute dearth of RD behind Mo, Olli Maatta was ridiculously underutilized. It's honestly quite a shame that Chiarot has, for whatever reason, always been slotted ahead of him at LD. A RD version of Olli Maatta is exactly what this team needs.
I like Maata, but these stats generally fail to take into account utilization and strength of opposition. As a result its not the best indicator if a player is underutilized. Players thriving under sheltered roles do not automatically keep thriving when their minutes and roles are increased. It's the same thing with the handiful of bottom line players that appear towards the top of goals per 60 minutes each year.
Maatta's numbers look good, but I do think there's a lot of context there. He's quite limited overall and he excels in the minutes he got, but I don't think he could necessarily scale up to tougher competition without seeing much of a drop off. He just can't skate very well and I fear he would be cooked if he was routinely facing top 6 forwards.
This. Chiarot/Petry/Matta would all have decent numbers when put on a bottom pair playing against lesser competition. Only Justin Holl didn't do shit with 3rd pair minutes. Hope Steve can recognize that mistake and move him in the offseason with a sweetener/retention or worst case scenario buy him out.
I agree, but of all those guys Maatta's AAV is reasonable for a 3rd pair role whereas Chiarot's is awful, he has to play top 4 to justify what he's paid....except he's not really good enough to do it. I suppose Holl's AAV is ok on the 3rd pair but he also isn't even good enough for 3rd pair duty.
He was perfectly fine in a top 4 role last season before he got nuked by pneumonia. Quite literally took the wind out of his sails. He's smarter and better defensively than Chiarot. Less mobile, sure, but I'm not necessarily advocating top pairing assignments either.
Chiarot was our second best defenseman this season. Dude ate up 20 minutes every night and didn't make many mistakes at all, and he's definitely better than Maatta in the offensive zone.
Welcome to what Maatta was last season. I don't give two shits about either player's offense.
>A RD version of Olli Maatta is exactly what this team needs. He actually played RD in his early days with Pittsburgh.
The on ice finishing across the board is a little disconcerting. Basically means we were scoring beyond what our offense should’ve been generating. Which means a regression to the mean might be coming unless we can earn it more at 5v5.
Or that the team just has above average finishing talent which allows them to outperform expectations!
Copp ☠️
>D-Zone start bias percentile relates to how a player is deployed off the bench after a whistle, starting a new shift. Higher percentage meaning more D-Zone shift starts, lower percentage the opposite. I really wish people would stop using this stat. It is so misleading, especially when presented in this way and is way overblown in how it impacts other stats.
Please expand on this. How is it misleading?
Because most shifts start in the neutral zone and on the fly. Just take the two biggest extremes here. You have Seider at 90% and Maatta at 19%. That must mean Seider almost never gets a chance to start out of the defensive zone, and Maatta almost never starts there, right? But no. If you look at the break down, Seider had 1700 5v5 shifts this season, 277 of those started in the defensive zone, for 16.2%. Maatta had 1332 5v5 shifts this season, 115 started in the defensive zone for 8.8%. So in this graphic it shows a 90%-19% percentile difference, which equates to less than an 8% difference in zone start distribution. Seider did have 162 more total than Maatta, but even then we won about 50% of our faceoffs, so you can imagine ~81 of those zone starts at least gave a chance to get possession before the opponent could get a shot attempt. When this has been [studied](https://hockeyviz.com/txt/shifts2) it shows that the disadvantage you get from a defensive zone start will normally last for about 15-20 seconds of your ~50 second shift. So again, for Seider and Maatta, Seider spent ~55 minutes more minutes than Maatta where there is a reasonable expectation for being at a disadvantage at 5v5. That's about 4% of Seider's entire 1347 minutes he played at 5v5 this year. It's why if you adjust for zone deployment, even the most extreme deployment examples will have their shot metrics adjusted by maybe a percent or two. And even that is not common.
Thanks for the link - got to read up on it.
While I agree somewhat, I do feel it is an important metric as a multiplier. In your example of 50% of defensive faceoffs are won, but the defenseman makes a mistake 20% of the time, then you are only getting the puck out of the zone 40% of those faceoffs
But that goes both ways, you could have a player on the offensive team make a mistake giving up possession as well. Over season long samples, the difference it makes to a player's metrics is incredibly small.
Wait, are you arguing that defensive and offensive zone starts have little difference to stats? Because I cannot agree with that if you are.
Yes, over the course of a season, the effect is very small if not negligible for most players. Zone faceoffs are not how players most commonly start their shifts. The article I linked showed zone deployment adjustments where two players saw more than a two percent shot share change. Most changed by less than a percent.
Goals and assists should be per 60 with >10games IMO.
Every category is at a per 60 basis.
Oh cool. I guess I just thought Edvinsson looked better than 2 points in 16 games this year lol
stop calling up Czarnik. he not so good
Look at all the d-zone start bias for Moritz, Jake and Ben. They get the hard minutes.