Yeah, looking at the numbers again (after some rest), it seems like the third d-man pairing suffered the least dropoff out of the three, which can maybe be explained by less playing time, therefore putting more pressure on the first two pairings to carry the game—whether defensively or offensively?

Also, looking at DK’s numbers, he played nearly half the game in Vancouver and Carolina, both games where the ’Hawks were struggling to come from behind for most of the match, so that might explain some of the weirdness.

but do coaches usually dictate which d-man out of a pairing stays on the ice the longest? Like for shift changes and things like that, if one d-man might get caught out longer on average. I’ve noticed a few times (not necessarily just on this road trip) that goals get scored against us when we have an unconventional d-man pairing out on the ice, for instance Keith and Sopel, or Hjalmarsson and Seabs, which makes me think they were the result of incomplete shift changes/one d-man getting caught out longer than he should have.

Efffff, how to look at this without rewatch each and every goal …

of Doug Funny and an otter?

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE! This may be an epic project for the offseason, to be honest.

…the Hawks looked like they responded better to the aggressive forecheck…finally. It stands to reason that this strategy should create opporunities for the Hawks, and I thought I saw some of that Saturday.

Semi-related- Kane is showing glimpses of being a real pain in the ass forechecker himself, on top of everything else. Just imagine what this kid could achieve if he wasn’t such a lazy bastard.

It seems like when the opposing goalie has a tremendous game and makes amazing save after save, our guys wind up having bad defensive games and our net minders do not have the top shelf game we need from them. That goes to the whole “momentum” thing which was recently analyzed to death. No statistics to back that, just my impression.

about our goalie situation. Niemi seems to be able to pull one out of his pocket here and there, but I still don’t trust that he can do it on a daily basis, if needed. Same with Huet, and there’s no denying he’s had a pretty bad January. On the flip side, we faced some top-tier goalies during this trip, and they did what they were supposed to do against the league’s top team.

how to get a shot quality model for Huet and Niemi. I see them on BtN but it doesn’t seem like one of those things you can just plug in with a goaltender’s name and get a graph spit out. It would definitely help, although I suspect our goalies tend to see less dangerous shots on average.

i use voice recognition software to type

Yeah, I was referring to the PK% staying the same over the two road trips, not the actual kill rate. We seem to kill penalties better at home anyway, and we don’t really log a lot of PIM to begin with.

Can you use CORSI as a fair metric to use when comparing goalies to defensemen?

I guess it depends on how much value you place on CORSI ratings. It’s nearly impossible to isolate a defensemen in the absence of his supporting cast. If a poor goalie or Dion Phadouche is paired with you, your +/- is going to significantly suffer and so are these types of advanced ratings. CORSI is a little more reliable than the BTN ratings, but even still, it doesn’t take into account turnovers, breakaways, and other things that a defenseman is responsible for, and most importantly, CORSI doesn’t take into account quality of shots or competition. On the flipside, neither are goalie screens, deflections, etc that aren’t necessarily any fault of an individual defenseman. They’re fine to use as a guideline, but not the be-all-end-all. They can help support an argument, but they’re not going to define one. If you follow baseball, they’re the hockey equivalent of the defensive range metric UZR/150. Haven’t checked lately,. but I think Bickell had the highest BTN rating among Hawks this year…granted in limited time but still. Matt Walker’s (-0.08) BTN rating was higher than Campbell’s(-0.44) last season.

Defense simply has the least amount of quantifiable data regarding a players effectiveness. Very few advanced stats that are often charted privately by team officials are made available to the public…and you know, it’s hockey, so even if you find say a given player’s turnovers, it’s subjective to whomever is charting them. These are your CORSI leaders from last year…two of them seem to fail the eye test.

   1. David Moss CGY +23.8
   2. Pavel Datsyuk DET +23
   3. Henrik Zetterberg DET +20.1
   4. Alexander Ovechkin WSH +19
   5. Mikael Samuelsson DET +18.9

Goalies can be easier to isolate but still advanced metrics like this are team dependent. For example, Phoenix has somehow improved from 23rd to 7th in shots against this season, and some of that is attributed to adding more defensive minded forwards like Pyatt and Fiddler and losing Gretzky’s system, but it also doesn’t hurt to have Ilya Bryzgalov and his +14.7 GVT rating, a few ticks behind Kiprusoff for 3rd in the west despite having Aucoin and Vandermeer and some of their other pylons in front of him.

I just think that some of the numbers are outliers. The eye test tells me things sometimes that the numbers don’t, but gobs of numbers, yum yum.

the copywrite symbol is kina cool mistake tho

has a better system for power rankings. They have a formula based on points earned out of total possible points….

“Just heard Bolland was skating between Sharp and Hossa in practice today and Ladd left practice early. Could be a ding as easily as a trade, but you never know with all the rumors flying around lately.”

This isn’t directed at you necessarily, but to whoever else who may take what you say with more than a grain of salt.

1. Besides Sassone’s post, I’ve not seen any other source for this McKee to the Hawks rumor. And he merely states there’s a rumor, then added that McKee was scratched. As far as I’m concerned, scratching a player doesn’t mean he’s headed to the trading block. It sounds more to me like he’s just musing out loud— he said there were rumors, but lo and behold not once did he say he had the information firsthand. So where are these rumors supposed to come from?

2. Ladd left practice early due to a “lower body injury” according to Q, though both he and Bolland will be playing on Wednesday. That’s from this tweet.

3. I’ve seen people go wild over “what if” tweets and blog posts— hell, on my own Twitter stream I laughed about Ladd probably going to Atlanta for Kovalchuk, a clear mockery of the rumor-mongering going about, and it got RTed 5min later as a rumor. SIGH.

In conclusion: Dear readers, if you cannot tell the difference between a serious statement and a sarcastic one, it might be a good idea to get the hell out of the interwebs.

here