Free Willie

The time has come.

Willie has suffered long enough in captivity. It’s time to return him to the open waters of hockey’s minor and junior leagues. He’s just not meant to perform on demand night in and night out.

It’s time to free Willie.

I’m sure many of you out there will think I’m jumping the gun. I mean, he’s a nice enough guy. He tries. He’s had success at other levels. But he just hasn’t made the jump.

We got a little taste of it last season when he “rolled” into the first round of the playoffs like it was just another mid-season stretch of games, and in the end wound up being badly outcoached by Bob Hartley of all people.

And in case you are under any misconception, Bob Hartley is not a good coach. Do not be fooled by that PDO Award Jack Adams Trophy he won last year.

Anyway, let’s set aside the Flames’ own coaching problems and get back to the topic at hand…

What brought on this sudden desire to see Willie released from his contractual captivity?

Well, while watching that dismal outing against the desperately trying to tank Arizona Coyotes the other night, the broadcast team suggested that with the Canucks down a goal and heading into the last TV timeout, Desjardins would be able to get the Sedins out for two more shifts.

Instead, we got this:

Sure enough the Sedins did get out for the final shift, with the goalie pulled, but there was a five minute gap where they just sat. Five minutes when you need a goal to tie a game against a divisional opponent that is just ahead of you in the standings, and you sit your three best scorers in favour of guys like Adam Cracknell and Derek Dorsett.

This is insane.

Ok, maybe it was just temporary insanity. Maybe the shifts just didn’t work out. Maybe there was an equipment problem with one of them. Or they just weren’t ready to go.

But then how do you explain this?

That is a list of the Canucks forwards ranked by % of time they are on the ice when the Canucks are down a goal.

Derek Dorsett leads the team. Adam Cracknell and Brandon Prust are proportionately on the ice more than Henrik Sedin. And Vrbata is even farther down the list, behind such clutch scorers as Ronalds Kenins and Chris Higgins.

This isn’t insanity. It’s just bad coaching.

You want to know who should be on the ice? Here are the Canucks forwards ranked by points per 60 minutes while down by one goal:

Compare this list to the one above it and tell me that Willie Desjardins has any idea of what he’s doing.

But points represent a small sample, and as loyal readers of Canucks Army, all you know that goals are heavily influenced by random chance so it’s shot attempts and scoring chances that are much more predictive of success. So here’s a chart from War On Ice that plots ice time vs. scoring chances for while the Canucks are down a goal:

What you would like to see is players that generate more shot attempts (bluer circles) and more scoring chances (higher on the chart) get the most ice time (further to the right). So if you were to draw a trendline through the data points, it should angle up and the the right.

Instead, we get the opposite.

Now that’s what I call “real good” coaching:

 

You can also check out the monthly collections of Graphic Comments over at The Sporting News.

 

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