Walker has better underlying numbers than Spence, he actually has a positive CF% Rel, but his xGF% Rel is negative. Again, it is a small sample size, but that sample was pretty bad relatively. It wasn't like he came out and looked like the best player on the blue line, so it's not overly shocking that they are easing him in.
Walker has had better underlying numbers, that is for sure. Again, the Kings are straddling a development/competing path and it makes decisions difficult to understand sometimes.
For the umpteenth time, those numbers don't mean anything at all. You are attaching importance to them, they have none of their own.
Hockey is not a numerically quantifiable sport. The raw data describes general situations that just don't have the affect on the game folks try to portray. They are a collection of digits over time averaged out to determine a figure, but the average has absolutely no bearing on the current form.
What you do on ice depends on situations. You make different decisions during different situations based on need - dumping a puck deep to get a badly needed change when your team is on the back foot instead of carrying it in for a futile, risky shot attempt checks different statistical boxes that when tabulated at the end of a game, month, season doesn't tell you anything about whether it was the right or wrong decision. Yet your various C%s change, and folks want to read something into that number that is completely devoid of context.
Having the 15th best PP means nothing. So what. It includes PPs from weeks and months ago that have nothing whatsoever to do with what is happening here and now. What an individual players numbers average out to doesn't tell you anything worth knowing if you are trying to justify an opinion.
Points per game, points per minute, expected points per shift following a PP in the second period on the road in the third of four during inclimate weather, its all the same.
What matters are trends, and a teams ability to sustain the good ones and improve the poor ones. That's winning hockey, the ability to progress into a team that limits their struggles. This team cannot sustain anything, they are all over the spectrum but hitting the same notes in both directions.
Spence played well. Better than Walker. He should be the one playing if everything else is equal.
