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Monday Musings…
Jason Gregor
Jan 12, 2015, 22:31 UTC
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It was another rollercoaster weekend for Oilers fans. You were on a high after Friday’s convincing victory over Chicago, but the winning ride didn’t last long after yesterday’s loss to the Florida Panthers.
We are officially past the halfway point of the NHL season, with only the Rangers, Canucks, Panthers and Blue Jackets not playing 41 games, but we’ve seen 627 of 1230 games played.
Here are some thoughts on the first half and some expectations for the second.
  • Six players are on pace for 50 goals. Tyler Seguin, Rick Nash, Vladimir Tarasenko, Steven Stamkos, Joe Pavelski and Alex Ovechkin. It is very doubtful all six reach the half century mark. The last time the NHL had six 50-goal men was in 1994 when nine players did it.
    Since the start of the 2003/2004 season, the only western conference players to score 50 goals were: Jonathan Cheechoo (56 in 2006), Jarome Iginla (50 in 2008), and Corey Perry (50 in 2011).
    The East has had fifteen 50-goal seasons in that span: Ovechkin did it five times, (2006, 08, 09, 10 and 14), Dany Heatley (2006, 2007), Ilya Kovalchuk (2006,2008) and Steven Stamkos (2010, 2012) twice, and Jaromir Jagr (2006), Vincent Lecavalier (2007), Sidney Crosby (2010) and Evgeni Malkin (2012) once.
    Stamkos and Oveckin, based on past history, are the best bets to score 50 goals. Pavelski and Nash’s career high is 41 goals, Seguin’s is 37 while Tarasenko’s 23 goals this season is the most he’s ever scored.
    The west hasn’t had two 50-goal scorers in the same year since Teemu Selanne (52 in Anaheim)  and Pavel Bure (51 with Vancouver) did it in 1998. 
    I love goals, so I’m rooting for at least two of Tarasenko, Pavelski and Seguin to reach 50.
  • Sadly, no player is on pace to score 100 points this year. Jakub Voracek is the closest, with 50 points in 42 games. The last time the NHL didn’t have a 100-point scorer was in 2004 when Marty St.Louis led the league with 94 points. The league averaged 5.13 goals/game (6,318) in 2004, and this season teams are averaging 5.36 goals/game (3,363).
    As a fan of offence, I think it is bad for the league when you don’t have a 100-point scorer. Less offence is not good for the game, and the games become harder in the second half of year, usually, so it is very possible we see the leading scorer finish with fewer than 100 points.
  • I mention these numbers because we are hearing a lot of McDavid/Crosby comparisons. McDavid is an excellent player, but he will not score 102 points as a rookie like Crosby did in 2006. In 2006, the NHL brought in the shoot out, but they also clamped down on obstruction. It led to a huge increase in goals, averaging 6.05 goals/game (7,443) an increase of 1,125 goals from 2004.  
    We saw 6,573 goals last season, 5.34/game, and I don’t see anything in how the game is being played that leads me to believe we will see an increase anytime soon. I don’t find hockey nearly as exciting as it used to be. There is way too much focus on defensive schemes and video sessions to allow players to excel offensively. I’m not sure what the NHL can do to change it, but they need to change some rules to increase scoring.
    People need to temper their offensive expectations of McDavid and Eichel heading into next season.
  • Leon Draisaitl has three goals and four points in three WHL games with Kelowna. I expect he finishes the season close to two points/game with the Rockets.
  • OKC is 10-2-1 since Todd Nelson was recalled to the Oilers. Nelson had built a strong foundation and Gerry Fleming has done a great job since being promoted to head coach. The farm team is playing great, but don’t expect many of them to make the jump to the NHL next season. Martin Marincin will be in the NHL next season, but other than Brandon Davidson, Iiro Pakarinen and maybe Curtis Hamilton, I don’t see any skaters who are close to being NHL ready.
    OKC is getting great goaltending from Richard Bachman and Laurent Brossoit. Bachman is a not an NHL goalie, but Brossoit is developing nicely. Bachman has a 2.20 GAA and a .925 sv%, while Brossoit has a 2.43 GAA and .922 sv%. They are basically splittling duties, Brossoit has played 79 more minutes, and next season the Oilers should let Brossoit play 70% of the games. No one should expect him to be in the NHL next year. We need to see how he can handle being a #1 goalie in the AHL first.
  • I noticed much excitement about Nail Yakupov and his two-point game on Friday. The Oilers desperately need to him to keep developing, but no one should get too excited over one game. Yakupov’s effort has never been a concern for me. I think his work ethic is fine most nights. Clearly he is lacking some offensive confidence, and Friday’s game should help him with that, but the area he needs to work on the most to become a productive player is on-ice awareness. If he can improve his puck support and where he goes on the ice, then he could become a solid 2nd liner. Some of that improvement will come from coaching, but much of it will come from the player himself. 
    I’m not concerned he will bolt for the KHL this summer. He wants to play in the NHL, but his progression, for me, won’t solely be about points. Of course he needs to produce, but if he shows improvement in his overall positioning and thinking of the game, then he well could be a consistent 20-goal scorer.
  • Before you scream and yell about Yakupov only being a 20 goal-scorer, keep in mind how difficult it is to be a consistent 30-goal scorer in today’s game. In the past four seasons we have seen 81 players score 30 or more goals. Nineteen did it twice, but only Jarome Iginla, Corey Perry, Patrick Marleau, Patrick Sharp and Phil Kessel did it three times. Ovechkin scored 30+ in all four seasons. Becoming a consistent and regular 20-goal scorer would make Yakupov a solid second line player in today’s game.
  • The NHL all-star rosters were announced on the weekend and between now and the game we will read many articles on what is wrong with the all-star game. I don’t understand why people expect the game to be intense. Why do you need it to be? It is a chance for fans in the host city to see the best players up close and for the NHL to schmooze sponsors. Just accept the game for what it is. You will never get players to go all out, and you shouldn’t. Would any fanbase want one of their best players hurt in a meaningless all-star game? I sure wouldn’t.
  • The Nashville Predators are implement a new policy making it more difficult for fans of opposing teams to buy tickets to games in Nashville. Is this a good idea? Would you want this in Edmonton? 

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Canucks Army Prospect Profiles: Midterm Re-ranking
Josh W
By Josh W
Jan 12, 2015, 16:30 UTC
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If you are a regular reader of Canucks Army, you know how much we love our prospects (well, except for Rhys because he hates everything).  You’ll also remember that every summer, we rank and review the top 20 prospects in Vancouver’s system according to our writing staff.  With the middle of the Canucks season tomorrow, we’ve decided to have a look back at how Vancouver’s prospects have been performing this year, and do a mid-year re-ranking taking the new information we’ve learned into account.
But this time, we want you, yes YOU, to participate. Read past the jump to find out how! 
Quite often we’re told that we’re idiots and don’t know what we’re talking about, but we definitely get more feedback telling us that we’re wrong about how we rate prospects than anything else.  In response to this, we’ve decided to let you vote on who you think Vancouver’s top-20 prospects are. 
Click this link to vote on Vancouver’s top-20 prospects now!
We have changed some things since our summer rankings, so here are a couple of things you will need to know:
  • We have changed our definition of “prospect” to include all Canucks players who would be eligible for the Calder trophy this season. That means that not only is Bo Horvat still a prospect, but so are players like Linden Vey and Joacim Eriksson.
  • You only need to rank your top-20 prospects. You can rank all 35 eligible players, and while we’d appreciate the effort, only the first 20 players on each ballot will be counted. Rank on the basis that #1 = the best prospect.
  • All voting is anonymous. Obvious troll ballots will be thrown out.
Voting will be open for one week, closing on Monday, January 19th at 11:59 PM PST.  At the end of the voting period, we tally up all of your votes, and will reveal our updated rankings along with your aggregated reader rankings in a mini-series touching on how each prospect has progressed (or regressed) so far this season.  If this exercise goes well, we’ll also ask for your input in our in-depth summer rankings, so be sure to vote early and tell your friends to vote too!

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The Kids Aren’t Alright
Josh W
By Josh W
Jan 11, 2015, 18:00 UTC
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When they were young, their future was so bright; the old
core was still alive.  And every prospect
in the whole damn club was gonna make it big and not be a bust.
But Tony Gallagher said something the other day that I had to
agree with, which is funny since I don’t often find myself agreeing with the man, certain people around here call “Skeletor,” very often; mostly because I rarely read any of his work.  Needless to say, Gallagher had some concerns
on the ice time and development of prospects down in Utica, a similar train of
thought I’ve been having since covering the team closely last year.
Let’s dig into it some more shall we!
After last Saturday’s game against Detroit, Gallagher ominously predicted doom and gloom in the future of the Canucks, as he has often been one to do. One of his key quotes was as follows:
Brendan Gaunce is
destined to disappoint this management group because he’s somewhat like Zack
Kassian in many ways.  He’s a big body that doesn’t hit anyone and even
though he has a great set of hands, they’re going to want him to be bouncing
people around and that’s simply not his game. And given the kids don’t seem to be getting major league ice time down
in Utica — Hunter Shinkaruk has been scratched a couple of times and Nick
Jensen was announced as a scratch Saturday night but was most likely injured,
you wonder if anyone is going to develop down there with journeymen enjoying
the coach’s favour.
If the lack of ice time for Canucks prospects is true, then Gallagher’s words are something that should be concerning both
for Canucks fans, and for the team itself.  Now AHL Time on Ice (TOI)  is not publicly available, but we can estimate it using on-ice goals for and against.  Let’s have a look at the estimated TOI (eTOI) for the Utica Comets below.

2014-2015 Forwards

2014-2015 Defencemen

With eTOIs, you want to mostly focus on the rank of the
players rather than the exact numbers used for their estimated minutes per game.  This method estimates ice time based on the
percentage of goals a player is on the ice for per game.  With only half of the AHL season played so far, you may see some funky numbers due to weird shooting percentages that have not yet
regressed.  
Special Teams can also affect
the overall times, but we have the ability to break that down into its components to compare PP, PK and ES on-ice
goals for/against.  Top end players typically
will be over-estimated, in terms of how much ice they see, and bottom-players are generally under-estimated – nonetheless this is
still a good indicator of who is being played the most.
When looking at the forwards and comparing it to what I have
seen at Utica Comets games, Cal O’Reilly and Dustin Jeffrey have typically been Utica’s first and second centres.  From the
prospect perspective, Alex Grenier and Nicklas Jensen usually float in the
middle-6.  Hunter Shinkaruk, Ronalds
Kenins and Alex Friesen typically are fixed on the third line, though Friesen has
been a healthy scratch similar to Mike Zalewski and Darren Archibald.  Brendan Gaunce is a fixture on the fourth
line with Wacey Hamilton and Carter Bancks, but that line seems to work well
together.  
Defence pairings get mixed up a fair amount, though Bobby
Sanguinetti and Alex Biega are usually on the top pairing.  Canucks prospect Frank Corrado is usually on
the second pairing, while the remainder of the defencemen are rotating in and out of the top-4.
Obviously, this is not a good sign as Vancouver’s prospects,
including their first round picks, are not getting heavy minutes from Travis Green.  If you believe that players will only improve with more ice time, this would indicate that the Comets could be developing Vancouver’s players more slowly than they should be. But, this tendency to lean on AHL vets could be a result of just one half season of data.  We can go back
and look at the 2013-2014 season to see if this is a pattern under Green.

2013-2014 Forwards

There are similar issues here with Grenier, Jensen, and Archibald in middle-six roles, seeing occasional second line time.  The rest of Vancouver’s prospect forwards are in the bottom-6.

2013-2014 Defencemen

The defence corps was much weaker last year, so Corrado
actually spent more time on the top pairing with Biega, while the rest of Vancouver’s defence prospects were among the bottom-4 guys.

Discussion

So yes, it does look like Canucks prospects are not getting
key ice time in the AHL.  The AHL is a
development league, and while some clubs are privately owned and want to win to
make profit, this is not the case for Utica. 
The Canucks had this issue in Chicago where their prospects were not
being played over key veterans, (i.e. Matt Climie over Joe Cannata) and this is
why the left that affiliation to buy their own club.
This is where things start to become more opinion – we can quantify who is getting what ice time,
but the question becomes: is giving bottom-6 ice time to prospects, while veterans see heavy minutes, the best way to grow your prospects?
In a development league, prospects should be given ample time
to develop into NHLers.  The NHL idea to play
the better players more often shouldn’t necessarily follow in the AHL because the main goal for an NHL parent club is to use their farm team to develop,
not to win.  This looks to be the
opposite of what coach Travis Green is doing. 
Discussing this with other AHL observers, it seems there are a number of coaches who
do this; they give cushy ice time to the AHL veterans, over the prospects, to allow
them to win.  It is in Green’s personal best interest to win, as it will likely earn him a coaching ticket in the NHL faster
than losing but excelling in developing young players. If you need a close-to-home example, just look at how Willie Desjardins got a job after coaching up the Texas Stars.
Intuitively, it seems the best way to develop a player is to
give them as much ice time as they can handle. 
In order to grow, you need to constantly be challenged, but not be so
deep that you can’t deal with it.  By
giving your top prospects more ice time in a professional league, they are being played in more
situations across a larger variance of competition – both of which should help
challenge and grow a prospect.  Can you
do that with less ice time?  It seems possible, but the results may not be as good or come as quickly.
One person suggested to me that you should be developing
your prospects by playing them in the role they will eventually be in.  If Brendan Gaunce, for example, is to become a 4th
line forward in the NHL, then he should be played as a 4th line forward in the AHL.  The problem here is two-fold. First of all, the NHL is simply a way better league, and the competition level is extremely high.  In order to even play in the league, you need to practice against the toughest competition you possibly can.  Secondly, the purpose of your fourth line and your first line are the same at the core: help your team out-score the opposing team.  At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter how this is accomplished, so long as it is accomplished, so whether or not a player plays a “fourth line style” or a “first line style” really doesn’t matter.  If they are good, those skills will translate to the NHL no matter their role.
One counter-point to the notion, that prospects should be given ice time to develop, is that ice time is something that has to be earned through merit, and Canucks prospects simply do not merit significant ice time.  At the end of the day, the AHL is still a development
league, and the Vancouver Canucks prime directive is to win a Stanley Cup.  For that, they need the best NHL players n years down the road. If a prospect is not “earning” AHL ice time, then that may just mean that they need more development.  It is NHL ice time that should be allocated based on merit, as NHL championships are the ones that matter the most.
When looking around the AHL, there is no definitive pattern to what other organizations are doing, so Vancouver is not a clear outlier.  Teams are using their prospects in various roles, from top minutes on the first line, to the middle-six like in Utica, or in purely bottom line roles to allow the veterans the plush time.  Prospect deployment is unique team by team and seems to vary depending on a number of factors and preferences.
When I saw this issue pop up last year, I didn’t think much
of it.  Vancouver has traditionally been poor at acquiring talent through the draft, and last year’s crop of Canucks prospects in Utica was hardly inspiring.  As it’s happening again with a more talented prospect crop, and
members of the mainstream media are commenting on it, I think the issue may be larger than I initially thought.  Turning prospects into NHLers is a two-sided coin with talent acquisition on one side and talent development on the other.  We know that acquisition has been a major issue, but development is much harder to pin down since it’s harder to determine what successful teams do and what poor teams don’t.  
With Vancouver purchasing Utica, with the express intent of giving more ice time to their top prospects, one would
think the Canucks would be managing their AHL club closer and correcting
this, unless their philosophy has significantly changed before last season, which is doubtful seeing as the same patterns have appeared under two different management regimes.  Yet, the more I work with
analytics in this sport, the more questionable decisions I see coming from management that seem to stem from the lack of knowledge or awareness of potential issues.
If the Canucks wish to give their prospects the best chance
of developing, and follow their own goals they outlined upon purchasing the Peoria Rivermen, and relocating them to Utica, then guys like Hunter Shinkaruk and Brenden Gaunce should be getting more ice time.  Are bottom-6 minutes the best way develop Vancouver’s
first round picks?  I lean towards no,
but there is still much debate at this point.

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Canucks Army Postgame – The Flame That Scores First, Scores Twice As Long
Josh W
By Josh W
Jan 11, 2015, 06:59 UTC
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On Saturday night, the Canucks were scheduled to face the Calgary Flames on prime time on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada.  You knew it was going to be full of talent, exciting storylines, goals being traded back and forth and old blood boiling to the surface – what more could a hockey fan ask for?  At least, that’s how it was supposed to go. Instead, that’s not how this game went down and the Canucks found themselves up Schitt’s Creek, losing 1-0 to the Calgary Flames.
Continue past the jump for a recap of tonight’s loss.

Highlights

Quick Hits

[Canucks.com Recap] [Willis Desjardins Postgame] [Official Event Summary] [Faceoff Summary]
[War-On-Ice Stat Pack] [NaturalStatTrick Stat Pack]
  • This was a fairly boring game.  The Calgary Flames scored to take the lead early on.  From there the Canucks peppered the Flames goaltender in shots but none could get through rookie netminder Joni Ortio.
  • Henrik Sedin did score a goal but it was quickly waived off due to a high stick.  The Canucks had plenty of chances, including 4 crossbars/posts, but the Flames had the PDO.
  • Frank Corrado played his first NHL game this year after three call ups.  Despite playing with Sbisa he was quite impressive including some offensive flashes in the third period.  On the night he was +12 in ES Corsi (+10.70% in Corsi Rel), which was third among defencemen, and right behind Chris Tanev and Alex Edler.
  • With Corrado in the lineup, Yanick Weber was a scratch.  Linden Vey was also a scratch tonight to allow Power Forward Zack Kassian to prove he deserves top 6 time. Kassian didn’t exactly hold up his end of the deal, as he was one of only two Canucks with a negative Corsi at even strength.
  • Ryan Stanton was hurt in the third period and was seen leaving the bench to be checked out by the Canucks medical staff.  The defence corps vastly improved.
  • Bo Horvat had a good night, despite being on the ice for the only goal against, he did walk out Rogers arena with a +12.21 Corsi Rel, 2nd best on the night.  Known for his faceoff prowess Horvat won 4 and lost 3; good to see him in the positive as he has been regressing ever closer to 50%, down from over 60% to 52%.
  • Joni Ortio, the Flames goaltender, earned his first career NHL shutout and a career high in shots against with 36.  The Utica Comets have faced Adirondack 7 times (including tonight) and have won all seven of them, including 5 against Ortio.  Perhaps Willie Desjardins should have phoned up Comets’ coach Travis Green for some pre-scouting tips.
  • Now that Tom Sestito is not with the Canucks, they lost.  But Sestito with the Comets tonight?  They won.  Coincidence?  I think not.
  • As this game was on Hockey Night in Canada, Canucks viewers had the treat of listening to the expert insights of CBC’s panelists.  The highlights of the broadcast included pointing out that the Canucks were losing because they were behind in hits 16-4; not understanding variances within scoring goals, PDO, and the standings; and that Radim Vrbata makes the Sedins succeed, except for the fact the Sedins have succeeded with Burrows for years.
  • As a few people have pointed out on Twitter, the Canucks currently have 49 points after 40 games; last year at the same time the Canucks had 52 points. That’s certainly ominous, though falling off a cliff like last season isn’t likely.

Conclusion

The Canucks are currently packing up and will head to the Music City shortly for their next game, which will be on Tuesday with an early start of 5pm as Vancouver takes on the Nashville Predators.  The #Perds are a scary team this year as they are currently leading the Central Division, the toughest division in the NHL, and have been a top-10 team in Score-Adjusted Corsi all year, and are currently 2nd in Scoring-ChancesFor% as well.  If the Canucks want to make the playoffs, they’ll need to fight for every point, and this is shaping up to be a tough match-up.  The Canucks will need to show up with more finish than they did tonight if they hope to walk away with two points.

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