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MabusIncarnate

10/13 - Red Wings at Golden Knights - 10:30 PM EST

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37 minutes ago, NerveDamage said:

far across the land in a god forsaken wasteland...

 

Ha! This stuff reminded me the gladiator introduction of Ottawa Senators back in 2011 or 2012 play-offs. There are good, ok, and bad intros. This one is in its own land...

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This result was a bit of a surprise. Or rather Zetterberg was. I've stated that he'd lead the team on points this season if he stays healthy. But what he showed in this game was next level vision right up there with the best of them of all time.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad because of the state of big parts of the team, As of now, I'm all for it since we are on a roll, but is it possible to send Z down to the Griffins mid season if the team is failing and he is not?

The rational for this is simple, I stand by us either make the playoffs or have a chance at Dahlin. I don't want us finishing just outside. And I see that play out as a possibility, albeit an early and could change scenario.

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29 minutes ago, Jacksoni said:

This result was a bit of a surprise. Or rather Zetterberg was. I've stated that he'd lead the team on points this season if he stays healthy. But what he showed in this game was next level vision right up there with the best of them of all time.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad because of the state of big parts of the team, As of now, I'm all for it since we are on a roll, but is it possible to send Z down to the Griffins mid season if the team is failing and he is not?

The rational for this is simple, I stand by us either make the playoffs or have a chance at Dahlin. I don't want us finishing just outside. And I see that play out as a possibility, albeit an early and could change scenario.

That’s what the trade deadline is for. No way Z or any other professional athlete would be okay with this

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Why is anyone surprised?

The reason we didn’t make the playoffs last year was because of poor goaltending. The reason we made it the year before, the year before that and even before that was because we had decent goaltending. 

Now that the goaltending is good again, it’s no surprise we start winning again. We’re a playoff team as long as Howard/Mrazek make stops.

Newsflash: our defense has sucked since 2013. 

What kept on allowing us into the playoffs wasn’t Johan Franzen or Pavel Datsyuk or 32 year old Kronwall.

It was having above average goaltending. 

Last year we had poor goaltending, the same s*** defense and the same old slightly above average offense. 

As long as you have 2 out of 3 things (offense, defense or goaltending) you can be a playoff team. Of course in order to actually win the Stanley Cup you need to be REALLY good at 2-3 of those things. In Pittsburgh’s case they have an elite offense, great defense and decent goaltending. Hence Stanley Cup.

If Howard continues to be great and Mrazek does good, we’ll probably end up being 7th or 8th seed as per usual. 

Once those two start sucking we’ll be 12th seed.

Edited by kickazz

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1 hour ago, kickazz said:

Why is anyone surprised?

The reason we didn’t make the playoffs last year was because of poor goaltending. The reason we made it the year before, the year before that and even before that was because we had decent goaltending. 

Now that the goaltending is good again, it’s no surprise we start winning again. We’re a playoff team as long as Howard/Mrazek make stops.

Newsflash: our defense has sucked since 2013. 

What kept on allowing us into the playoffs wasn’t Johan Franzen or Pavel Datsyuk or 32 year old Kronwall.

It was having above average goaltending. 

Last year we had poor goaltending, the same s*** defense and the same old slightly above average offense. 

As long as you have 2 out of 3 things (offense, defense or goaltending) you can be a playoff team. Of course in order to actually win the Stanley Cup you need to be REALLY good at 2-3 of those things. In Pittsburgh’s case they have an elite offense, great defense and decent goaltending. Hence Stanley Cup.

If Howard continues to be great and Mrazek does good, we’ll probably end up being 7th or 8th seed as per usual. 

Once those two start sucking we’ll be 12th seed.

I think that's essentializing too much. Mrazek wasn't good, but I thought the crappy PP, replacing Datsyuk with Nielsen, Kronwall+E's descline, underperforming Larkin+Helm+Abby+etc were more of an impact.

Also, the year before last you must be forgetting that 2nd half after Mrazek's great stretch when both Howard and Mrazek were no good and it seemed neither wanted the starting role going into the playoffs. So it wasn't really we went from having good goaltending to having poor goaltanding. Both years had stretches of great goaltending. 

This good start is great to see, but this happened last year as well. Definitely don't want to be a downer, I don't think we should call this a change yet, since the teams we've beat so far haven't been among the league's best (Ott was Karlsson-less).

Then again, I think if Larkin keeps proving himself a capable 2C that gets 2 top lines going (like when Datsyuk was here) and if Daley, Frk, Mantha keep having this positive effect on the PP, and yes good goaltending then the holes from last year could be filled and this success could be sustainable.  

Edited by PavelValerievichDatsyuk

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36 minutes ago, PavelValerievichDatsyuk said:

I think that's essentializing too much. Mrazek wasn't good, but I thought the crappy PP, replacing Datsyuk with Nielsen, Kronwall+E's descline, underperforming Larkin+Helm+Abby+etc were more of an impact.

Also, the year before last you must be forgetting that 2nd half after Mrazek's great stretch when both Howard and Mrazek were no good and it seemed neither wanted the starting role going into the playoffs. So it wasn't really we went from having good goaltending to having poor goaltanding. Both years had stretches of great goaltending. 

This good start is great to see, but this happened last year as well. Definitely don't want to be a downer, I don't think we should call this a change yet, since the teams we've beat so far haven't been among the league's best (Ott was Karlsson-less).

Then again, I think if Larkin keeps proving himself a capable 2C that gets 2 top lines going (like when Datsyuk was here) and if Daley, Frk, Mantha keep having this positive effect on the PP, and yes good goaltending then the holes from last year could be filled and this success could be sustainable.  

Datsyuk was injured and plus the games he game back at least the first 10 or so we either lost or he was ineffective. I don't think Nielsen replacement of Datsyuk was a huge changer. I know people like to think that because it's Datsyuk but he really wasn't all that effective in his last year, Maybe once he got his groove back at one point he was really helpful but I'm not sure how much different it is than having Nielsen last year. Ericsson hasn't been good for years now and while Kronwall declined, guys like Smith, Jensen, Green were additional improvements for the core which probably evened things out anyways. I know our PP was bad but if you look at the actual conversion rate and trends between 2014 to last season it was a difference of 3% (18% in 2016 vs 15% in 2017). Yet we still got into playoffs the 2016 (2015-2016) season. Which makes me wonder if there was an additional element to what allowed us to get in; that element to me was great stretch of goaltending by Mrazek. 

The difference between the goaltending of 2016 and 2017 was that last year, Mrazek simply couldn't get it going at all. He had decent games, but then really bad games and when the better goalie (Howard) did play, it was only like 20 some games. Whereas while both Mrazek and Howard may have faltered at the end of the 2016 season, Mrazek went thru an unsustainable stretch from December to February where he was outputting some of the best goaltending we've seen in decades. And that might have been enough to get us an advantage in the standings to allow us to get in eventually. (We backed in, thanks to the Senators).

A lot of times during the games you hear Ken Daniels say things like "Early and mid season games are really important because there's a correlation to getting into playoffs" or something like that. I've never actually looked into it but if that's the case, it may explain why having a Vezina like stretch from Mrazek in 2016 was why we ended up getting into the playoffs ultimately. 

My point is last season our goal tending just couldn't get it going. Howard was great but barely played and of the games he played he lost almost half of them. Whereas in the previous seasons, when the goaltenders got it going. They really got it going for months at a time. Until they faltered. By which point though, we probably had enough cushion in the standings to sustain a playoff spot that was still in reach even if we were hovering between 8th, or 9th or 10th spot. 

 

Edited by kickazz

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2 hours ago, kickazz said:

Simply put if we have good goaltending, we'll probably make the playoffs regardless of how bad the PP or defense is. I think it's safe to say that Carey Price would agree with me as well. 

But our pk is 90% as it stands, regardless of how *bad* it is. If nothing else, its currently effective. Same goes for our 22% pp

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3 hours ago, kickazz said:

Datsyuk was injured and plus the games he game back at least the first 10 or so we either lost or he was ineffective. I don't think Nielsen replacement of Datsyuk was a huge changer. I know people like to think that because it's Datsyuk but he really wasn't all that effective in his last year, Maybe once he got his groove back at one point he was really helpful but I'm not sure how much different it is than having Nielsen last year. Ericsson hasn't been good for years now and while Kronwall declined, guys like Smith, Jensen, Green were additional improvements for the core which probably evened things out anyways. I know our PP was bad but if you look at the actual conversion rate and trends between 2014 to last season it was a difference of 3% (18% in 2016 vs 15% in 2017). Yet we still got into playoffs the 2016 (2015-2016) season. Which makes me wonder if there was an additional element to what allowed us to get in; that element to me was great stretch of goaltending by Mrazek. 

The difference between the goaltending of 2016 and 2017 was that last year, Mrazek simply couldn't get it going at all. He had decent games, but then really bad games and when the better goalie (Howard) did play, it was only like 20 some games. Whereas while both Mrazek and Howard may have faltered at the end of the 2016 season, Mrazek went thru an unsustainable stretch from December to February where he was outputting some of the best goaltending we've seen in decades. And that might have been enough to get us an advantage in the standings to allow us to get in eventually. (We backed in, thanks to the Senators).

A lot of times during the games you hear Ken Daniels say things like "Early and mid season games are really important because there's a correlation to getting into playoffs" or something like that. I've never actually looked into it but if that's the case, it may explain why having a Vezina like stretch from Mrazek in 2016 was why we ended up getting into the playoffs ultimately. 

My point is last season our goal tending just couldn't get it going. Howard was great but barely played and of the games he played he lost almost half of them. Whereas in the previous seasons, when the goaltenders got it going. They really got it going for months at a time. Until they faltered. By which point though, we probably had enough cushion in the standings to sustain a playoff spot that was still in reach even if we were hovering between 8th, or 9th or 10th spot. 

I just can't see the drop out of the playoff as only due to goaltending.

Side note: Saying Smith and Jensen were improvements to the core to counteract concurrently with Kronwall's decline is suspect. Jensen only played 27 games last year and Kronwall's big drop off happened probably 3 years ago. Maybe you could say that Jensen replace Smith when he was traded or maybe a replacement for Quincey late in the season, but that's about it. And Smith's been playing full time since 2013. You could count him as replacing/an improvement over White, but his development while here was never much of a steep trajectory.

But anyway were talking about the drop off last year not a larger curve. I didn't mention it  before, but also losing Dk's partner in Q (who was very solid the couple years before) - and essentially replacing him with Oulette/Marchenko? last year - was also a significant hit to an already weak D. Plus Smith only played 33 games due to injury. Ericsson and Kronwall played 50 something games to injuries and were nagged by their injuries when they did play. Due to these factors and a subpar year from DK (also Marchenko playing himself off the team), I think the D was probably one of the bigger contributors to missing the playoffs.

Anyway, my point is that explaining the change as just due to subpar goaltending is too simplistic. Though Mrazek wasn't good, goaltending never looked high on the list of the team's problems to me. And as I said before I don't think it was a complete switch from the year before when both goalies struggled off an on.

Agreed that early mid is important. I think that often because team's lose moral if they're in the basement. Also, team's will trade for help if the team looks promising (or will go with youth if things look bad).

Edited by PavelValerievichDatsyuk

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Team better rest up this weekend. Got three games in five days against Tampa, Toronto, and Washington. Gonna be a test. 

Man, it’s weird mentioning Toronto as a good team. Although the Wings have always seemed to struggle or make things hard on themselves against them, even when they sucked.

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2 hours ago, PavelValerievichDatsyuk said:

I just can't see the drop out of the playoff as only due to goaltending.

Side note: Saying Smith and Jensen were improvements to the core to counteract concurrently with Kronwall's decline is suspect. Jensen only played 27 games last year and Kronwall's big drop off happened probably 3 years ago. Maybe you could say that Jensen replace Smith when he was traded or maybe a replacement for Quincey late in the season, but that's about it. And Smith's been playing full time since 2013. You could count him as replacing/an improvement over White, but his development while here was never much of a steep trajectory.

But anyway were talking about the drop off last year not a larger curve. I didn't mention it  before, but also losing Dk's partner in Q (who was very solid the couple years before) - and essentially replacing him with Oulette/Marchenko? last year - was also a significant hit to an already weak D. Plus Smith only played 33 games due to injury. Ericsson and Kronwall played 50 something games to injuries and were nagged by their injuries when they did play. Due to these factors and a subpar year from DK (also Marchenko playing himself off the team), I think the D was probably one of the bigger contributors to missing the playoffs.

Anyway, my point is that explaining the change as just due to subpar goaltending is too simplistic. Though Mrazek wasn't good, goaltending never looked high on the list of the team's problems to me. And as I said before I don't think it was a complete switch from the year before when both goalies struggled off an on.

Agreed that early mid is important. I think that often because team's lose moral if they're in the basement. Also, team's will trade for help if the team looks promising (or will go with youth if things look bad).

But our goaltending had a huge drop off. Petr Mrazek went from having a 2.33 GAA and .921 % to .898 % and 3.04 GAA. That is a huge, huge difference in performance. Played around 50 games in both seasons. But then looking at Jimmy Howards numbers he actually did better. Howard had 37 games .906% 2.80 GAA two years ago and last year had 26 games .927 %, 2.10 GAA. Both goalies had the same defense in front of them. 

Another point to look at is our PK between the two season's were nearly identical. So can't be that. 

Looking at offense, both years we produced nearly identical amount of offense. (211 vs 207 goals for). PP was worse but by only 3% conversion (18% vs 15%). Maybe the extra 3% could have help bring us a bit closer to playoffs but I'm not sure if it would have gotten us in. 

So the glaring issue for the defense last year seems to have been their production rather than their actual defense. Looking at two seasons ago the defense scored a total of 140 points combined, whereas last year they scored 93. 

Looking specifically at the top dogs. Kronwall's numbers seems like he was actually worse 2 seasons ago than last season. Defensive advanced stats are worse. -21 two seasons ago, -7 last season. But his production was certainly worse last year. But that's not defense. That's offense.

People who did worse defensively: Dekseyser did worse last year. Losing Quincey f***ed him hard. Green did slightly worse but then again, he was used more in a defensive role last year than the year before (where he spent 70% of the time on offensive zone faceoffs). 

You could argue that defense was "worse" last year but not by much. The weakest link was certainly Petr Mrazek. His GAA dropped by 1. That's pretty significant for a goalie. With the same defense in front of him, Jimmy Howard performed much better. In fact better than he did 2 years ago. 

There's no denying that if Mrazek was as good as he was in 2015-16 season (overall in the course of the season as an average of his numbers) this team would have been higher in the standings. Because offensively our end product wasnt worse. Sure Larkin, Abdelkader, Sheahan did worse but that slack was picked up by Zetterberg, Mantha, Vanek. Overall the offense produced identically between the two years. 

So what I see between the two seasons is: 

Overall offense = identical

PK = identical

PP = worse (slightly? ish?)

Defense = worse (slightly)

Goaltending = worse (significantly) 

Of course the subjective bias is, do you consider a 3.04 GAA really bad or not. I do. 

My conclusion is if Mrazek/Howard play consistently and have around a 2-2.5 GAA this year. We squeak into the playoffs or miss by only a tiny bit. Of course if Larkin and Mantha continue to perform as they have been then even better. But that may actually be offset by our defense. Our defense has been abysmal thus far. Then  again it's only been 5 games. 

 

Edited by kickazz

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7 minutes ago, kickazz said:

But our goaltending had a huge drop off. Petr Mrazek went from having a 2.33 GAA and .921 % to .898 GAA and 3.04 %. That is a huge, huge difference in performance. Played around 50 games in both seasons. But then looking at Jimmy Howards numbers he actually did better. Howard had 37 games .906% 2.80 GAA two years ago and last year had 26 games .927 %, 2.10 GAA. Both goalies had the same defense in front of them. 

Another point to look at is our PK between the two season's were nearly identical. So can't be that. 

Looking at offense, both years we produced nearly identical amount of offense. (211 vs 207 goals for). PP was worse but by only 3% conversion (18% vs 15%). Maybe the extra 3% could have help bring us a bit closer to playoffs but I'm not sure if it would have gotten us in. 

So the glaring issue for the defense last year seems to have been their production rather than their actual defense. Looking at two seasons ago the defense scored a total of 140 points combined, whereas last year they scored 93. 

Looking specifically at the top dogs. Kronwall's numbers seems like he was actually worse 2 seasons ago than last season. Defensive advanced stats are worse. -21 two seasons ago, -7 last season. But his production was certainly worse last year. But that's not defense. That's offense.

People who did worse defensively: Dekseyser did worse last year. Losing Quincey f***ed him hard. Green did slightly worse but then again, he was used more in a defensive role last year than the year before (where he spent 70% of the time on offensive zone faceoffs). 

You could argue that defense was "worse" last year but not by much. The weakest link was certainly Petr Mrazek. His GAA dropped by 1. That's pretty significant for a goalie. With the same defense in front of him Jimmy Howard performed much better. In fact better than he did 2 years ago. 

 

Don’t forget the Coreau experiment either though. Mrazek was bad, but he was horrible. Played games he never should have. Howard dropped off towards the end of the season too when he and Mrazek alternated starts.

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2 hours ago, kickazz said:

But our goaltending had a huge drop off. Petr Mrazek went from having a 2.33 GAA and .921 % to .898 % and 3.04 GAA. That is a huge, huge difference in performance. Played around 50 games in both seasons. But then looking at Jimmy Howards numbers he actually did better. Howard had 37 games .906% 2.80 GAA two years ago and last year had 26 games .927 %, 2.10 GAA. Both goalies had the same defense in front of them. 

Looking at offense, both years we produced nearly identical amount of offense. (211 vs 207 goals for). PP was worse but by only 3% conversion (18% vs 15%). Maybe the extra 3% could have help bring us a bit closer to playoffs but I'm not sure if it would have gotten us in. 

So the glaring issue for the defense last year seems to have been their production rather than their actual defense. Looking at two seasons ago the defense scored a total of 140 points combined, whereas last year they scored 93. 

Looking specifically at the top dogs. Kronwall's numbers seems like he was actually worse 2 seasons ago than last season. Defensive advanced stats are worse. -21 two seasons ago, -7 last season. But his production was certainly worse last year. But that's not defense. That's offense.

People who did worse defensively: Dekseyser did worse last year. Losing Quincey f***ed him hard. Green did slightly worse but then again, he was used more in a defensive role last year than the year before (where he spent 70% of the time on offensive zone faceoffs). 

You could argue that defense was "worse" last year but not by much. The weakest link was certainly Petr Mrazek. His GAA dropped by 1. That's pretty significant for a goalie. With the same defense in front of him, Jimmy Howard performed much better. In fact better than he did 2 years ago. 

There's no denying that if Mrazek was as good as he was in 2015-16 season (overall in the course of the season as an average of his numbers) this team would have been higher in the standings. Because offensively our end product wasnt worse. Sure Larkin, Abdelkader, Sheahan did worse but that slack was picked up by Zetterberg, Mantha, Vanek. Overall the offense produced identically between the two years. 

So what I see between the two seasons is: 

Overall offense = identical

PK = identical

PP = worse (slightly? ish?)

Defense = worse (slightly)

Goaltending = worse (significantly) 

Again, I'm not arguing that goaltending wasn't worse, but there was definitely other factors and, i think, greater factors.

My final pitch on how the Defence was significantly worse than the previous year:

- Got rid of Quincey, who was a top 4 guy for us when he left.

- Smith only played 33 games.

- Marchenko waived after 30sum games

so that's 3 guys from the previous year's team that were gone or (smith) played less than half the season. Already it's not the same group

- Kronwall played less games and was noticeably worse. halved his point total (26 pt. turned to 13)

- Ericsson played only 51 games. Struggled from his wrist injury.

So only Green, DK, from the year before played close to a full year.

And so we saw around quarter seasons from newbies who didn't play the year before: Sproul (27gp), Russo(19gp), all who showed different levels of struggle and weren't great. Lashoff and Renouf also got brief stints.

And for all the talk of Howard being great last year (which he was) he still had a losing record (10-11-1). That suggests to me that a good goalie wouldn't be enough to compensate for a struggling team.

And in the later half of the year he was 5-7-1. How much of that is his injury and how much is the team hitting struggles, injuries?  

As for "PP = worse (slightly? ish?)"  (15-16) 18.80 to 15.08 is a significant drop. In 15-16 we were 13th in the league and last year we 27th.

Anyway, agree to disagree. Hopefully Daley continues to be a good upgrade, Dk continues to rebound from last year, we stay away from D injuries , Larkin continues to fill the 2C role that I think was lacking last year, and the good goaltending continues.

Edited by PavelValerievichDatsyuk

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2 hours ago, chaps80 said:

Team better rest up this weekend. Got three games in five days against Tampa, Toronto, and Washington. Gonna be a test. 

Man, it’s weird mentioning Toronto as a good team. Although the Wings have always seemed to struggle or make things hard on themselves against them, even when they sucked.

Yeah, next week will be a major test and should tell us a lot about this Wings team.

Right now the top three Atlantic seeds are Leafs, Bolts, Wings, in that order. All have eight points through five games, but the Leafs and Bolts have four ROW and we have three. So the divisional stakes are already extra-heightened. It's super-early days, I get that. But this stuff does matter.

Caps got blown the f*** out in Philly tonight, on national television; they're going to be ornery for at least the next week. So that'll be interesting.

Bolts edged the Blues tonight. Bolts are scary. I'm hoping their roster turnover (losing Boyle, Bishop, Drouin -- all thorns in our sides) + the growth of Larkin & Mantha changes up the power dynamic between the Bolts and Wings, but I'm not holding my breath.

Leafs aren't really a Great Team, probably not a truly serious contender yet. But, as Claude Julien put it: If you try to beat them by sitting back and being opportunistic (see: Red Wings), they will eat you alive. I watched the Leafs-Habs game tonight. Matthews had two goals, including the OT winner. The Leafs wouldn't be nearly as good as they are if they didn't have Matthews, but they do have Matthews and he is God-tier.

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35 minutes ago, PavelValerievichDatsyuk said:

Again, I'm not arguing that goaltending wasn't worse, but there was definitely other factors and, i think, greater factors.

My final pitch on how the Defence was significantly worse than the previous year:

- Got rid of Quincey, who was a top 4 guy for us when he left.

- Smith only played 33 games.

- Marchenko waived after 30sum games

so that's 3 guys from the previous year's team that were gone or (smith) played less than half the season. Already it's not the same group

- Kronwall played less games and was noticeably worse. halved his point total (26 pt. turned to 13)

- Ericsson played only 51 games. Struggled from his wrist injury.

So only Green, DK, from the year before played close to a full year.

And so we saw around quarter seasons from newbies who didn't play the year before: Sproul (27gp), Russo(19gp), all who showed different levels of struggle and weren't great. Lashoff and Renouf also got brief stints.

And for all the talk of Howard being great last year (which he was) he still had a losing record (10-11-1). That suggests to me that a good goalie wouldn't be enough to compensate for a struggling team.

And in the later half of the year he was 5-7-1. How much of that is his injury and how much is the team hitting struggles, injuries?  

As for "PP = worse (slightly? ish?)"  (15-16) 18.80 to 15.08 is a significant drop. In 15-16 we were 13th in the league and last year we 27th.

Anyway, agree to disagree. Hopefully Daley continues to be a good upgrade, Dk continues to rebound from last year, we stay away from D injuries , Larkin continues to fill the 2C role that I think was lacking last year, and the good goaltending continues.

Right but a lot of what you're saying doesn't quantify. Like yeah those players missed game or we had new faces etc. What does that mean though? Smith played 33 games but then we had Jensen and the Newbies. Did the newbies quantifiably replace what Smith would have brought in anyways? Does losing Quincey actually impact the defense? Maybe it did because DK did end up playing worse. 

I mean just because certain played didn't play games doesn't necessarily equate to the defense being worse because of them not playing. It's not like Smith, Marchenko are better than what we already have. And like I already said for Kronwall he may have played a fewer games overall than the year before and his point total was cut in half, but that offense was made up by others (end result of the GF for the team was about the same). But defensively his +/- was actually better. So I don't see how the situation with him was worse last year than the year before. Sure, he looked slower, even looked like he was out of position at times, but I'm not sure if that necessarily means he hampered the team moreso than the year before. One could argue that he hampered the team when he was healthier the year before. 

Like I've already said, there may be a few things slightly worse than the year before, and things do add up. But Mrazek was the weakest link between his two years. There's no denying that. You are as strong as your weakest link after all. The same applies to us wanting to upgrade on defense. The current fan and management mindset is that if you upgrade the defense, this team automatically becomes a cup contender. Which is probably true. So it's not fat-fetched to assume that if the 50 games played by a goalie was more consistent, we would have ended up going from 14th seed to 8th, 9th, 10th seed. I think the best example to back my theory up is the season Carey Price got injured. Montreal was the best team in the league for the longest time. As soon as he got injured they became a non-playoff team. 

We saw this with Giguiere and handful of other goalies over the years too. 

Edited by kickazz

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4 hours ago, kickazz said:

Like I've already said, there may be a few things slightly worse than the year before, and things do add up. But Mrazek was the weakest link between his two years. There's no denying that. You are as strong as your weakest link after all. The same applies to us wanting to upgrade on defense. The current fan and management mindset is that if you upgrade the defense, this team automatically becomes a cup contender. Which is probably true. So it's not fat-fetched to assume that if the 50 games played by a goalie was more consistent, we would have ended up going from 14th seed to 8th, 9th, 10th seed. I think the best example to back my theory up is the season Carey Price got injured. Montreal was the best team in the league for the longest time. As soon as he got injured they became a non-playoff team. 

We saw this with Giguiere and handful of other goalies over the years too. 

The blame still goes around for me. There's plenty of weak links between the years. Even beyond what we've already talked about. Larkin being significantly worse (13 pt. less production) struggles in center position. Dekeyser (+2 vs -22). Nielsen replacing Dats and playing significantly on the 3rd line. Sheahan's disappearance. New PP coach.

And again, PP going from 13th to 27th is not slighty worse. One could just as easily been call that our weakest link. Or one of the other areas.

It's not far-fetched to think that if any of these factors was better we could have squeezed into the playoffs.

Edited by PavelValerievichDatsyuk

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18 minutes ago, brett said:

vegas might be looking for a goalie. fluery to IR

trade mrazek

clears a lot of room for lots of possibilities 

I dont think Vegas really cares if they win or not this year. If they tool Mrazek it would only be if we gave him to them for nothing, and I highly doubt Holland is looking to dump Mrazek for nothing. 

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16 hours ago, PavelValerievichDatsyuk said:

The blame still goes around for me. There's plenty of weak links between the years. Even beyond what we've already talked about. Larkin being significantly worse (13 pt. less production) struggles in center position. Dekeyser (+2 vs -22). Nielsen replacing Dats and playing significantly on the 3rd line. Sheahan's disappearance. New PP coach.

And again, PP going from 13th to 27th is not slighty worse. One could just as easily been call that our weakest link. Or one of the other areas.

It's not far-fetched to think that if any of these factors was better we could have squeezed into the playoffs.

It's 13th to 27th but the actual quantity is only 3% conversion. That's precisely what I'm getting at. "Kronwall was injured, Ericsson's wrist, PP was bad" Are all just narrative words we've said. Even I said it last season at times. But look at the end result doesn't seem to be much different in a lot of these cases. Even if Larkin is worse how did that actually impact the team overall? Like I said the goals for was basically the same between the seasons. Where Larkin slacked, someone else obviously picked up. 

The fact is the end results in overall team performance offensively and defensively between 2015/16 and 2015/17 was basically the same. Individuals may have done worse but it seems as though someone else was picking up their slack (Zetterberg, Mantha, Vanek to mention a few) to negate the effect overall. Goals for 207 vs 211. Doesn't really explain how offense was any different. We scored the same amount of goals basically. I think there's just an assumption that somehow our offense was worse because Dylan Larkin didn't do well or Sheahan didn't do well, while ignoring that Zetterberg put up 18 more points than the previous season and AA did better and Mantha and Vanek individually were new faces that added more offense. 

 

Edited by kickazz

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2 hours ago, kickazz said:

It's 13th to 27th but the actual quantity is only 3% conversion. That's precisely what I'm getting at. "Kronwall was injured, Ericsson's wrist, PP was bad" Are all just narrative words we've said. Even I said it last season at times. But look at the end result doesn't seem to be much different in a lot of these cases. Even if Larkin is worse how did that actually impact the team overall? Like I said the goals for was basically the same between the seasons. Where Larkin slacked, someone else obviously picked up. 

The fact is the end results in overall team performance offensively and defensively between 2015/16 and 2015/17 was basically the same. Individuals may have done worse but it seems as though someone else was picking up their slack (Zetterberg, Mantha, Vanek to mention a few) to negate the effect overall. Goals for 207 vs 211. Doesn't really explain how offense was any different. We scored the same amount of goals basically. I think there's just an assumption that somehow our offense was worse because Dylan Larkin didn't do well or Sheahan didn't do well, while ignoring that Zetterberg put up 18 more points than the previous season and AA did better and Mantha and Vanek individually were new faces that added more offense. 

Last year, the best PP% and the 2nd worst was only separated by 10% ( 24.3%-14.1.%) (Avs were extra bad with 12.1) so the spectrum is not very wide for this stat. 3% change is a big thing especially when you were only middle of the pack the year before. Not sure why you're challenging this. It was a big storyline talked about a lot throughout the year.

Not a huge deal, but those aren't the scoring stats I see:

2016-17: 198 goals for vs. 209

http://www.nhl.com/stats/team?aggregate=0&gameType=2&report=teamsummary&teamId=17&reportType=season&seasonFrom=20152016&seasonTo=20162017&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=ppPctg

https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/DET/2017.html

Anyway, my main argument has been there's a number of aspects you can point to - not claiming that lower production was the main cause. That was my whole initial point: I don't think you can't essentialize it and put the blame one area or spot. 

I was talking about Larkin, Sheahan, DK etc being worse than the previous year generally as example of players other than Mrazmataz who were significantly worse - I did list some lowered production numbers, but I think Larkin and DK struggled just as much on the defensive side.  You can't look at Lark's +11 turning to -28 as another example of that. Or look at Corsi to see it went down about 3 points. 2 points for DK. And we lost our highest Corsi guy in Datsyuk.

https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/DET/2016.html

I feel like I've said my piece on this so cheers and agree to disagree.

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