Do you have a site that breaks down quality of competition just in regards to the opposition's D pairs? I'm not aware of any, but the info I can find shows that Kyrou faced the 4th most difficult quality of competition among all Blues forwards this year (but again, this includes opposition D and forwards). I find quality of competition data to be pretty hard to find without spending money.
Kyrou played the 2nd most 5 on 5 minutes among Blues forwards when the Blues had a 1 goal lead. He also played the 2nd most 5 on 5 minutes when we were leading by any margin and the most 5 on 5 minutes when the game is tied. I don't agree with your claim that we're picking literally anyone but Kyrou when the game is close.
I also don't agree with your claim about offensive players not being exposed to minuses.
You don't get a minus if you're on the PK when the other team scores a PP goal against you. You do however get a plus when you are on the ice when your team scores a shorthanded goal. So being on the PK offers no minus exposure, but it does offer the opportunity to improve your +/-. You can be on the ice for 1000 goals against and 1 goal for while killing penalties and you would be a +1.
Conversely, you don't get a plus for being on the ice for a PP goal, but yo do get a minus if the other team scores a shorty. Kyrou went -3 on the PP (25 goals for, 3 against).
Everyone on the ice still gets a plus or minus for empty net goals. League wide, way more goals are scored against an empty net than the team who pulled the goalie scores. Being part of the 6 man group trying to tie a game is a much greater opportunity to pick up minuses than being part of a 5 man group trying to hold the lead. Kyrou went -5 when we had the goalie pulled and was even in the 3 minutes he was on the ice while the other team had their goalie pulled.
There is tons of exposure to minuses offensive guys face that defensive guys don't.
I had processed this and just had some confusion.
Granted it’d anecdotal; but I’ve watched every game this season and enjoy the various ways we deploy our group.
After reading your reply I doubted the entire season I watched.
I went to grab just one random close game to see: (literally the first one I picked due to 1 goal win from middle of season against competitive peer).
Kyrou is off the ice the last 5 min of the game, as expected, short handed icetime is 0, as expected. It appears Calgary couldn’t decide what to do with their bottom group but we still kept Kyrou away from Weeger most of the game.
If I go find Quinn Hughes, cale makar, etc games and check out Kyrou’s usage, anytime we can, we start Kyrou after their shift - like as they’re going off he’s going on.
If the other team has really scary guys like Quinn Hughes, or Weeger - that means we cannot play with risk, or they’ll transition and score. This isn’t Kyrou specific, this is just how it is. It’s a super long season and not everything is black and white, but we, and most teams I’ve watched try to deploy similar talents similar ways. We gameplan for their offensive threats and we’re using other folks and or direct play to handle them. We’re trying to use our higher risk guys when we can handle the pushback of failure. Hockey is a game of mistakes.
I feel it’s really easy to see what everybody wants by looking at what teams do at home versus away, what teams do when they need a goal and need a save. They’re showing you their preference. You can see where teams are placing bets and where teams are scared of exposure, or when teams are rolling. I look at this every game. It’s essentially my seasons narrative. In my view Kyrou was deployed with a heavy offensive bias - couple early mishaps didn’t help of course. But I liked his season a lot.
I’ll see if I can develop a tool to help. It’s silly we cannot see the difference in home and away deployment in a simple graphic - especially when last change is a bit of a lump in an otherwise even playing field. Or icetime versus a specific opponent - I got a real big challenge at work right now but that won’t be all offseason. I feel it would quite clearly show you when a forward’s usage was biased towards specific outcomes. I think the dialog on this issue touches a core of why I like the sport and team building - would be something worth building when I can get some free time.