HF Habs: 2020 Montreal Canadiens Off-Season Thread part 3

[Deebs]

as backups, I could see guys like Crawford, Bishop or Talbot have better seasons than Allen.

Doubtful

 

[Pompeius Magnus]

I believe the talk was both parties were interested in revisiting it after the season. We should definitely pass on Kovy, he's finished as an NHL'er

I mean, it would be better than nothing I guess. There has to be something more out there though.

 

[1909]

I honestly don’t think really québécois hab fans care is the coach speaks French.
It’s a political platform for the separatist to play on
Those guys couldn’t name 5 habs

Man. You really don't know what you are talking about. Stick to hockey topics.

 

[1909]

as backups, I could see guys like Crawford, Bishop or Talbot have better seasons than Allen.

Where is your crystal ball ? Crawford and Bishop will probably stay with their team and still be, if healthy, #1. Talbot is an average goalie at best.

 

[Habsfan2992]

What happened to the Kovalchuk handshake deal he's not totally done ..still an upgrade on what we have and he loves it in Montreal just asking is all

 

[ECWHSWI]

Where is your crystal ball ? Crawford and Bishop will probably stay with their team and still be, if healthy, #1. Talbot is an average goalie at best.

i'M using the same as the guy who said NO.

 

[HabsWhiteKnightLOL]

What happened to the Kovalchuk handshake deal he's not totally done ..still an upgrade on what we have and he loves it in Montreal just asking is all

Hes totally done

 

[Habsfan2992]

Hes totally done

Why do you say that

 

[Zorba]

Man. You really don't know what you are talking about. Stick to hockey topics.

Lol. Ok man. In the habs glory years tell me how many pure French Canadian coaches they had. Cmon. look it up man
On my since the mid 80s did the habs go full québécois. It’s called political pressure. Same reason my folks moves us to BC

 

[Galaxydoggystyle]

Why do you say that

Because hes barely a top 6 player and is no where near being a game breaking player anymore.We NEED a game breaking forward or at least 2 top 6 forwards with size to even remotely be better then this past season. Enough with has beens and bottom players we have been getting those for the last 8 years enough is enough already.

 

[DramaticGloveSave]

I’d be cool with Kovalchuk as a placeholder for Caufield...

would be cool with Hall as well though.

 

[Zorba]

I’d be cool with Kovalchuk as a placeholder for Caufield...

would be cool with Hall as well though.

Stop with Kovalchuk. He’s done

 

[Treb]

i'M using the same as the guy who said NO.

There is no Bishop.

 

[Weber Fan]

They have us linked to...

Tyson Barrie
Mikael Granlund
Vladislav Namestnimov

Top free agent defensemen: Pietrangelo on the market
Top free agent forwards: Hall on the market

 

[Archijerej]

There are three questions here

-Would any of these goalies want to sign here and be a backup to Price?
-Would the goalies that would sign here be better than Allen?
-Would we be able to sign said goalie to a cheaper deal than Allen?

I personally would have waited for Free Agency to sign a goalie but those are the questions I think that surround the matter.

And would any of them be willing to sign for one year.

 

[mynamejeff420]

Remember what was said about Chiarot? Don't you think it sounds the same about Edmundson? A good 4/5 guy? I know of Edmundson but have not watched him closely enough for a large sample size to know. Same with Chiarot. I bet you most don't know cause who watches middle of the line-up players from all teams?

You say you watched Edmundson and he sucks defensively? How much have you watched him, How many games a year?

The Canes are my second team so I watched most of their games this year, so I feel like I have a sufficient sample size of my "eye test" on him. I'm pretty confident in my assessment of Edmundson sucking defensively, because I saw him suck a ton defensively this year.

Chiarot was also not that good this year imo, especially defensively. I think he benefitted a lot from spending a large percentage of his minutes with the Tatar/Danault/Gallagher line, so he looked better than he was. That line has a knack for bailing out the defensemen they play with, and as we saw in the playoffs, he was exposed defensively when he didn't have that safety net with him. I don't think Chiarot is a good example of proof that analytics are wrong because I don't think he was that great. Even if he was great, however, there's still the Alzner example, so at best the Habs are 1/2 on the "bad analytics" defenseman turning out okay.

 

[mynamejeff420]

Edmundson is a good example of the "advanced" stats people ignoring context.

They will look up God knows which stats to argue that teams are bad when Edmundson is on the ice, ignoring the fact that part of the benefit of having Edmundson on the ice for 18 minutes a game is that the rest of the team will play better in the other 42 minutes.

I would argue that a reason for a team playing better without a player on the ice is because that player is bad, and the team is benefitting from Edmundson being on the bench (so a bad player is not playing). It's also why all of Edmundson's regular partners played better without him, because he's not that good and dragging them down. I'm not digging for obscure stats to suggest that Edmundson is bad, I'm using pretty basic ones like goals against, shot attempts (Corsi) against, and expected goals against. I'm also not ignoring context, as I cited RAPM results, which have contextual factors like teammates, competition, usage, zone starts, etc. baked into them. It's also not like Edmundson was fed a dose of hard minutes in Carolina, he only started ~11% of his shifts in the defensive zone and was 5th in terms of quality of competition. The time he spent on the bench was not "easy" minutes like you suggest.

Bergevin has explicitly said that Edmundson has been brought in to be Petry's partner. So just that there helps the team, as it pushes Romanov, Kulak, Mete, Juulsen, to the third pairing, where their relative effectiveness will be greater. It may also help the three younger guys better transition to the NHL . Whenever a team adds a player, it may get more benefit from other players being pushed down the depth chart than from the added player himself.

Pushing Kulak down the lineup doesn't benefit Petry, considering that's the partner with which he's had the most success over the last 2 years. Not just "success" though, that pairing has the highest xGF% of any regular defense pairing over the last 2 years. It's not like Kulak was floundering next to Petry, that pairing had success. Best case scenario is Edmundson replicates the performance that Kulak had, but every other scenario involves him being worse with Petry than Kulak was (considering you can't get better than #1).

I agree with the concept that adding a better player to the lineup makes the lower lines/pairings better, as the guys playing out of their depths play in more appropriate roles. But Kulak wasn't out of his depth next to Petry, that pairing wasn't an issue.

The other thing is that Edmundson is a good PKer, whereas the Habs are not good PKers. They were 19th in the league last year, that's bad. Having Edmundson play on the PK will improve the PK, improve the team, and improve the Habs at 5on5 and at 5on4 because the other D will be more rested.

The Habs PK certainly does need some work, but Edmundson was not good on the PK this year. The Canes had much more success on the PK with him on the bench this year, despite him being on the second PK unit (so he had easier matchups).

Defensemen are not like forwards. There are only three defense pairings. That means that it's very, very hard for a team to carry a defender like Victor Mete who is a 5on5 specialist. Every defenseman needs to be able to contribute to either the PK, the PP, or both.

80% of the game is played at 5v5, it's so much worse to have a PK specialist on D than a 5v5 specialist. It's way better to have a player that can contribute to 80% of the game than one that you need to shelter for 80% of the game so he can be effective for 20% of the game. I don't even think it's a given that Mete can't be effective on the PP or the PK, he's never been given a shot. He looked good in his short stint on the PP in the playoffs, why not give him a longer leash to see if he can contribute there?

Bonus: Other players are less likely to ram into Price if Edmundson is on the ice.

I won't argue against the idea that he may dissuade players from running Price, but one thing he is not very good at is limiting net front shots against.

I would rather have a player that can limit dangerous shots against (making Price's job easier) than a player who sucks at that but is physically intimidating. A player that quantifiably makes Price's job easier is much more valuable to the team imo.

Plus it's not like there aren't good physical defensemen out there who can dissuade players from crashing the net and play good defense. Those skills aren't mutually exclusive. It's not that hard to find a physically intimidating player who can play well defensively. Edmundson is not that player, but they exist.

 

[mynamejeff420]

Habs had Weber, Chiarot and Petry to protect in the final minutes of a 1 goal game or on the PK. Adding a guy like Edmundson makes them much better than throwing in Kulak and Mete who couldn't box out a happy meal. He also makes going to the net much harder and helps stop the cycle. All major issues we had last year. For what we needed in that aspect of the game, he checks all the boxes. Now just hope Romanov can be a transitional force and be more of a PMD sooner than later and Norlinder makes the jump soon as well to address that lacking aspect of the Habs game. Posters shouldn't conflate the two and get pissed Edmundson isn't a PMD, he's not. He is what he is and he's very good at that.

Edmundson was terrible at limiting net front shots last season. He does not make going to the net harder. He made going to the net easier (hence all the net front shots allowed when he was on the ice).

 

[Sterling Archer]

Edmundson was terrible at limiting net front shots last season. He does not make going to the net harder. He made going to the net easier (hence all the net front shots allowed when he was on the ice).

View attachment 369895

Now do Mete and Kulak. If they have better numbers it’ll be proof positive that metrics aren’t all mighty tool they’re made out to be just yet.

 

[Habs Halifax]

The Canes are my second team so I watched most of their games this year, so I feel like I have a sufficient sample size of my "eye test" on him. I'm pretty confident in my assessment of Edmundson sucking defensively, because I saw him suck a ton defensively this year.

Chiarot was also not that good this year imo, especially defensively. I think he benefitted a lot from spending a large percentage of his minutes with the Tatar/Danault/Gallagher line, so he looked better than he was. That line has a knack for bailing out the defensemen they play with, and as we saw in the playoffs, he was exposed defensively when he didn't have that safety net with him. I don't think Chiarot is a good example of proof that analytics are wrong because I don't think he was that great. Even if he was great, however, there's still the Alzner example, so at best the Habs are 1/2 on the "bad analytics" defenseman turning out okay.

We disagree Chiarot was not that good this year so I question how you see Edmundson's game too.

 

[DAChampion]

Edmundson was terrible at limiting net front shots last season. He does not make going to the net harder. He made going to the net easier (hence all the net front shots allowed when he was on the ice).

View attachment 369895

These heat maps are often linked as absolute proof of whatever but they're actually completely useless from a statistical point of view. They're an example of what Richard Feynmann referred to as "cargo cult science".

They're not properly normalized, they don't include context, and they don't show uncertainties. The figures don't say what bandwidth is used to construct the kernel density estimate.

You're not even showing the right heat map. You're showing Carolina's heat map with and without Edmundson on the ice. What you'd actually want to show is the difference between the two.

 

[mynamejeff420]

You missed the point.

In general you're coming off as a complete troll with your exaggerated misuse of not-remotely-advanced stats to push contrarians viewpoints.

If you just want to stick to stats, here's a second-year undergraduate concept that is more advanced than anything the so called advanced stats people use: The Bayesian Information Criterion. Colloquially translated it means that if you're looking at a hundred different stats you're bound to find one that supports your viewpoint, and you keep doing that. Another translation is that you can support any argument by applying a completely irrelevant model with a million parameters. In many of your posts you refer to untold numbers of stats, many of which you don't explain how they're defined, which means they have no value.

It's not like I'm digging in the bottom of the barrel to find obscure, cherry picked stats to prove a point, I'm looking at pretty basic ones, like Goals and Expected Goals (both for and against). If a player is on the ice for a lot of Goals For (GF), they're probably doing something right. If a player is on the ice for a lot of Goals Against (GA), they're probably doing something wrong. Same goes for Expected Goals (xG). From there, you'd want to adjust for context, so you can look at something like RAPM. The simplistic explanation of RAPM is that it takes a metric (like GF) and "isolates" it to a player's individual impact, taking things like teammates, competition, usage, zone starts, team strength, etc. into account (ie contextual factors). The full write-up on it is here if you're curious. Feel free to ask about any other stats or terms I've used that you feel I haven't explained adequately enough, or ones you don't understand.

Circling back to your "points", no, Byron is not better than Joe Pavelski. You'll notice Pavelski just had 19 points in 27 playoff games, and he's always been a playoff warrior. That is something that is common among high-talent players that aren't necessarily regular season warriors - they can raise their scoring in the playoffs. Meanwhile Byron cannot. You'll notice that Phil Danault said that playing with Byron and Lehkonen was a nightmare situation offensively.

I think Pavelski's playoff production this year had a little bit more to do with him nearly doubling his on-ice shooting percentage (7.27% in the regular season 13.13% in the playoffs), though that's not to say that he isn't a good player (or even that he's someone who elevates their game in the playoffs). I think he was a little unlucky in the regular season, shooting percentage wise. I also don't think Byron is a better player than Joe Pavelski, I just wanted to point out that Joe "top 6 forward" Pavelski and Paul "4th liner" Byron produced at similar rates at 5v5 over the last 3 years, so maybe people are underrating Byron (who, by the way, had back to back 20 goal seasons in 16/17 and 17/18, and was on pace for 22 goals in 18/19 before the injury). In my opinion, a reliable 20 goal scorer (despite not getting PP time) is a valuable asset to a team's top 6, especially when said team has issues with scoring goals. That's all I'm trying to say. Not that Paul Byron is better than Joe Pavelski, but that people are underrating the guy that scores at a higher rate than Joe Pavelski.

As for Danault calling playing with Byron and Lehkonen a "nightmare situation", I don't think that's really accurate. He expressed disinterest in playing in a "shutdown" role, which it appears the 3rd line would be, a shutdown line. I think it has a lot more to do with the usage of the line than the wingers sucking offensively.

Which brings us to your Danault worship. No, the Habs are not better served by have ng Danault as a 1st line center. There's the obvious issue that he can't play on the power play, and the Habs were awful there this year. Trying to win games 2-1 is also completely useless when being behind 2-1 or 3-1 in the third period. But the actual issue is that it screws up the lineup, and having Danault on the third lineup contributes to the rest of the lineup playing badly, as it screws up the structure of the team. Having Suzuki on the first line would yield two separate improvements to the team: Suzuki would be a better 1st like center than Danault, and Danault would be a better third line center than Suzuki. Suzuki, like Pavelski, also has better playoff potential than Danault.

While I won't try and pretend that Danault is some secret PP god, him "not being able to play on the PP" isn't really accurate imo. The only forward on the Habs with a higher primary assist rate on the powerplay over the last 2 seasons is Jonathan Drouin. I think the coaching staff feels that they're better served by having Danault save his energy for tough 5v5 matchups and PK time, so they don't play him on the PP. If he got regular PP time I'm sure he'd put up the point totals people expect out of a #1C, because he puts up #1C caliber point totals at 5v5 (he was 9th among Cs in 5v5 points this year).

A player playing on the first line is doing so at 5v5 (that's where lines 1/2/3/4 are deployed. So a "first line" player doesn't necessarily have to play on the powerplay, as long as they're playing up to snuff at 5v5. Danault not being a PP option doesn't mean he sucks at 5v5 (in fact, he's great at 5v5).

Nick Suzuki played with a variety of linemates this season, but was mainly playing with players who many would consider to be "top 6 forwards". When he was on the ice, the Habs scored 1.91 GF/60 at 5v5, and got 43.42% of the goals, or had a GF% of 43.42. When Phillip Danault was on the ice, the Habs scored 3.59 GF/60 and had a GF% of 60.21. If you're concerned about trying to win games 2-1 when you're behind 2-1 or 3-1, then Danault is a much better option for the 1C spot than Suzuki. Danault produced at 5v5 this year, Suzuki didn't. Danault was the stellar two-way C this year, Suzuki was the defense only C. The Habs top line was one of the best lines in the league this year, in part thanks to Danault's contributions. Having him play on the top line is not an issue, or else the line wouldn't be putting up a near 60 GF% with them on the ice.

 

[mynamejeff420]

These heat maps are often linked as absolute proof of whatever but they're actually completely useless from a statistical point of view. They're an example of what Richard Feynmann referred to as "cargo cult science".

They're not properly normalized, they don't include context, and they don't show uncertainties. The figures don't say what bandwidth is used to construct the kernel density estimate.

You're not even showing the right heat map. You're showing Carolina's heat map with and without Edmundson on the ice. What you'd actually want to show is the difference between the two.

Fair enough, you're absolutely right, context is important.

This is Edmundson's isolated impact (so contextual factors are taken into account), and as you can see, he still had a problem with preventing net front shots.

 

[mynamejeff420]

We disagree Chiarot was not that good this year so I question how you see Edmundson's game too.

I mean Chiarot was fine but I think he's best suited as a third pairing defenseman. He was overmatched in a top pairing role. Also he was awful in the playoffs. He also (based on my eye test) struggled defensively this year (which is reflected in his Goals and Expected Goals Against rates, both unadjusted and adjusted for context). Maybe I undersold him a little bit in my prior post, but I hardly call a player that was best suited to be a third pairing D in Winnipeg turning out to be a third pairing D in Montreal an example of a guy disproving analytics.

 

[Habs Halifax]

I mean Chiarot was fine but I think he's best suited as a third pairing defenseman. He was overmatched in a top pairing role. Also he was awful in the playoffs. He also (based on my eye test) struggled defensively this year (which is reflected in his Goals and Expected Goals Against rates, both unadjusted and adjusted for context). Maybe I undersold him a little bit in my prior post, but I hardly call a player that was best suited to be a third pairing D in Winnipeg turning out to be a third pairing D in Montreal an example of a guy disproving analytics.

Nah. Chiarot is not just some bottom pairing guy. If you think that about him, we are not going to be on the same page with Edmundson. Let me guess, you like Ghost type D man?

Are you sure you are not Dubas?