Devils 2021 offseason (news, notes and speculation) - part V

[billingtons ghost]

In all fairness, I believe there was a 2 week stretch where it seemed like he was turning the puck over every time he touched it. I think that probably skewed his turnover numbers. I think he started, and finished the season pretty solidly turnover wise. I could be wrong since I havent dug into those numbers, but that's my recollection.

Here's a pretty graph, so people will read it.
2020-21 NHL Most Giveaway Leaders | StatMuse

 

[billingtons ghost]

Zone starts and faceoffs have been shown to have a minimal impact on the game. Hughes allowed chances against at an amazing rate. That's great defense. This isn't a hard thing to understand.

Ridiculous. You mean: "the people who were on the ice with Jack Hughes did not allow chances at an amazing rate" - at least type the sentence so it makes sense.

He was sheltered, pure and simple - because that is what you do with a 19 year old.

Can we please get past this silliness?

He got ragdolled. He got knocked off the puck. He isn't strong enough to go into the areas that guys like ROR and Bergeron can go. Let's please stop with doing a poor job of analyzing statistics, and just taking correllations to mean cause and effect?

You constantly weaken your own arguments by doing so.

There will definitely a time when Jack has man-strength and when he will be a defensive STUD for all of the reasons you point out above, AND that he will have corrected all of the deficiencies I pointed out above. Until that time, he's a great young player who has a long way to go.

 

[Hisch13r]

In all fairness, I believe there was a 2 week stretch where it seemed like he was turning the puck over every time he touched it. I think that probably skewed his turnover numbers. I think he started, and finished the season pretty solidly turnover wise. I could be wrong since I havent dug into those numbers, but that's my recollection.

It was the post Covid stretch where everyone was awful. Outside of that he was phenomenal

 

[billingtons ghost]

It was the post Covid stretch where everyone was awful. Outside of that he was phenomenal

I'll agree with you that he had some ups and downs - but I don't think you don't pile up 70+ giveaways in a three week stretch. It's not a condemnation - you're going to have giveaways when you touch the puck that much - unless you really are a stud 2-way center like Bergeron, ROR etc...

 

[Bcap88]

Speaking of zone starts and giveaways I looked at Crosby’s and his are pretty shocking

 

[Hisch13r]

Speaking of zone starts and giveaways I looked at Crosby’s and his are pretty shocking

Damn I guess Sid is mediocre at defense. If only his legs and ass were even bigger and he really had his man strength then maybe he could play great defense. At least he is good on faceoffs to keep him from sucking

 

[Hisch13r]

Ridiculous. You mean: "the people who were on the ice with Jack Hughes did not allow chances at an amazing rate" - at least type the sentence so it makes sense.

He was sheltered, pure and simple - because that is what you do with a 19 year old.

Can we please get past this silliness?

He got ragdolled. He got knocked off the puck. He isn't strong enough to go into the areas that guys like ROR and Bergeron can go. Let's please stop with doing a poor job of analyzing statistics, and just taking correllations to mean cause and effect?

You constantly weaken your own arguments by doing so.

There will definitely a time when Jack has man-strength and when he will be a defensive STUD for all of the reasons you point out above, AND that he will have corrected all of the deficiencies I pointed out above. Until that time, he's a great young player who has a long way to go.

Yes like believing it wasn't very lucky that Smith-Tennyson allowed no goals to start the year despite getting caved in all the time. lol I'm never getting over that one

 

[MadDevil]

Damn I guess Sid is mediocre at defense. If only his legs and ass were even bigger and he really had his man strength then maybe he could play great defense. At least he is good on faceoffs to keep him from sucking

Still better than Malkin. That liability started over 68% in the offensive zone!

 

[Guttersniped]

Totally off topic but does anyone have a link to anywhere that shows what RFA’s this year are offer sheet eligible ?
I can’t find anything except sites that list all classes of RFA’s.
From what I’ve been able to find out so far , Svechnikov Pettersson Makar Garland are the only ones I could find (that would be worth offering on ).
Garland and Svechnikov are the only ones that even have a slightly remote chance of not being matched immediately by their teams (if they even sign any offer sheets in the first place) .
Pettersson may be pissed off enough with Benning that he might sign one but again it would be matched right away.

You can find this out on Cap Friendly, if browse Free Agents there section called Contract Filters and in that there is a tab for “Expiry Status” and you set it to “10.2(c)”.

Browse - CapFriendly - NHL Salary Caps

This is from the Cap Friendly FAQ if you were wondering what a 10.2(c) is exactly. (And who doesn’t?)

What is a 10.2(c) player?
A player becomes a free agent when their contract expires on July 1 after the last League Year of their contract. A player who does not meet the UFA requirements or the Group 2 RFA requirements displayed in the table above, and has been issued a qualifying offer, is designated a 10.2(c) player. The player is only eligible to negotiate and sign a contract with the club that holds their signing rights. They are ineligible to negotiate a contract (offer sheet) with any other club. They are also ineligible for arbitration. If the player does not receive a qualifying offer by June 25th at 5:00pm ET, they immediately become a UFA.

Edit: Whoops, I thought you said who isn’t RFA eligible but you can use this to see who can’t be offer sheeted. (Hey, it’s late.)

Edit part 2: “Any free agent player who is designated as a Group 1 or 10.2.c Restricted Free Agent or an Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) [Groups 3, 5 or 6], are not eligible to receive an Offer Sheet.” So it sounds like this list is the RFAs who can’t get an offer sheet, the other RFAs, if qualified, can.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Jack Hughes was 5th in the league in takeaways/60 last year, just behind Mark Stone who was 3rd. Sharangovich was 24th, tied with Marchand and ahead of Bergeron, O'Reilly, and Barkov.

Do you know who was #1 in takeaways/60? Mikhail Maltsev.

Giveaways and takeaways are not 100% useless but they're pretty close to it.

 

[JimEIV]

Crosby has career 59.9 CF%
Malkin 60.1%

Crosby has never been under 57% in his career

That's nearly 2000 NHL games worth of data.

You have the puck that much and everything else is just ancillary issues

 

[devilsblood]

Jack Hughes was 5th in the league in takeaways/60 last year, just behind Mark Stone who was 3rd. Sharangovich was 24th, tied with Marchand and ahead of Bergeron, O'Reilly, and Barkov.

Do you know who was #1 in takeaways/60? Mikhail Maltsev.

Giveaways and takeaways are not 100% useless but they're pretty close to it.

I wouldn't say they are useless(Though I would like to see what constitutes a takeaway), and I do think that stat helps the Maltsev has potential argument, which I do stand behind.

 

[goonybird]

Speaking of zone starts and giveaways I looked at Crosby’s and his are pretty shocking

shocking in the sense that it proves most of these numbers are useless or?

 

[Triumph]

Somehow you make nonsensical jump to "playing in your own end all night".

ROR is pinned in his end all night? Stone, Marchand et al cannot possess the puck?

If you can only start in the opponents end, because you are a liability, if you cannot win a faceoff, if you need matchups to be effective, If you aren't an option on the PK. - you are NOT a 'stud defensive center'. End of story. I'm not going to waste any more breath on this because any possible argument you have is completely without legs.

You named one center out of the three players mentioned here - I do love all the goalpost shifting. Hughes can't win a faceoff, neither could Patrik Elias, one of the greatest defensive centers of his day. Bobby Holik, great faceoff man, not an option on the PK here in NJ; one of the best defensive centers of his day. Do you think Hughes couldn't play on the PK? Of course he could.

It's just semantics. Also god - you guys and your zone starts, it's so cute that you found a stat from 10 years ago that doesn't mean what you think it means, and it always has to be explained to you what it means, and then you just dig in farther.

 

[Triumph]

I wouldn't say they are useless(Though I would like to see what constitutes a takeaway), and I do think that stat helps the Maltsev has potential argument, which I do stand behind.

Giveaways and takeaways are useless stats. Recorded totally differently home and away, recorded differently all over the league. Ciphers.

 

[AfroThunder396]

Same with hits. I remember a few years ago when NYI had like 7 of the top 10 hitters in the league because their in house stat guy was recording every bump and shove he saw as a "hit".

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

It’s pretty cool that the debate is now whether Jack is merely pretty good defensively or very good. A massive jump from whether he was horrendous or just bad like most young centers are.

 

[JimEIV]

It’s pretty cool that the debate is now whether Jack is merely pretty good defensively or very good. A massive jump from whether he was horrendous or just bad like most young centers are.

Pretty wild how semantics and wordsmithing has redefined what defense is....I have completely stayed out of this debate but I do find it amusing.

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

Pretty wild how semantics and wordsmithing has redefined what defense is....I have completely stayed out of this debate but I do find it amusing.

It’s just hard to separate defense and offense into clean categories. There are different ways of preventing the opposition from getting scoring chances. I think Jack is just okay in the actual dzone but he just isn’t there that often because he excels in other areas.

 

[JimEIV]

It’s just hard to separate defense and offense into clean categories. There are different ways of preventing the opposition from getting scoring chances. I think Jack is just okay in the actual dzone but he just isn’t there that often because he excels in other areas.

Defense is definitely a lot of things.

But I think when most people think defense the first thing that comes to mind is their own zone and second play without the puck and away from the puck...Defense is certainly more than that...but in my opinion that is "traditional" defense.

I am making no judgement right now on Hughes Defensive ability or lack thereof. Defense for a forward is definitely a maturation process and I think young forwards should be give a benefit doubt during that process. 117 games is no time to judge from my perspective.

 

[TrufleShufle]

You know what they say, "the best defense, is being good at defense."

 

[devilsblood]

It also piles up when people make gigantic strawman arguments, and it gets even worse when that argument is put with a legitimate statement (Hughes was a stud defensive center last year).

1)I've seen posts that include the player card which gives Johnnson a 90% rating for defense or something crazy like that, we also just had a debate where a poster was railing against Johnsson being left unprotected. Did I exaggerate a bit? sure, but it's not a strawman.

I understand you like to point out strawman arguments but it is misplaced here.

2)We agree my Hughes statement was not a strawman, so let's dig into that a bit.

Hughes was the overall leader in 5v5 toi. He does get a lot of minutes, and likewise he was the team leader in terms of toi when the Devils are leading. But his ratio of toi when leading vs when trailing is relatively low. 6 minutes per game when trailing, vs 3:45 when leading. Compare that to a guy who is used as a defensive center like McLeod 4:39 when trailing vs 3:06 when trailing. Jesper Boqvist get's an even tougher split 4:07 when trailing, vs 3:38 when leading. I think we'd all agree that playing with a lead does make for lesser possession results then when trailing, so this usage does skew the stats.

Compound those splits by the fact that Hughes gets 71% offensive zone faceoff split when protecting a lead, vs McLeod getting 18%. Boqvist get's 27%. Some want to say that this has minimal effect, I question what "minimal" means, but when the spread is this wide I think it's more then minimal.

McLeod also saw 42% of his ice time vs Elite Comp. Boqvist saw 35% vs elite comp. Hughes was at 29%. Not surprisingly each of these guys put up significantly better cf% against "grit" players then they did against elite comp, but Hughes played 45% of his minutes against "grit" level guys while McLeod and Boqvist played 31% of their minutes against grit level players.


So we see all this usage that helps buoy Hughes's #s. And in most of those cases I say he deserves it. It makes sense that he'd play more when trailing then everyone else. It makes sense McLeod and Boqvist are not getting offensive zone starts, and it makes sense that opposition are putting their defensive lines out there vs Hughes, much like we put our defensive lines out there vs the opposition's best offensive players.

Also not surprising he plays no PK minutes. Granted Boqvist did not either, while McLeod was amongst our fwd leaders but was not very heavily leaned on either, ranking 3rd amongst fwds at the end of the season.

And I'm also not saying Hughes is a bad defensive player. I think he is surprisingly good actually. His puck retrieval is excellent, he's an enthusiastic back checker, and his puck control dominance does play a key role in keeping the opposition off the puck. But his usage is just too protected for me to say he is a "stud" defensively.

 

[devilsblood]

Giveaways and takeaways are useless stats. Recorded totally differently home and away, recorded differently all over the league. Ciphers.

Like most stats there is static that needs to be considered, but it can still be useful.

For instance we could just look at how the Devils fare on their home ice relative to each other.

 

[devilsblood]

As per Johnsson, I fell into the trap of looking at his overall 5v5 stats and thought the underlyings suggest he played better then the point totals suggest.

Then when digging through the deeper underlyings and I noticed he played just 2:25 per game when leading. Take Studs and Tyce off the table and this is the lowest toi amongst fwd's on the team. Less then Goose even. Conversely he played 5:07 minutes of toi when trailing. More then a 2-1 ratio, while Boqvist was very near a 1-1 ratio.

Johnsson's cf% when leading was 42%. 55% when trailing.

He also played 41% of his minutes vs grit level players, and 32% vs Elite.

Surprisingly protected minutes going on here, especially the lead vs trailing split.

 

[Buggsy]

I truly don't get the offence = defence argument.

Defence is your ability to stop the opponent's offence. I.E Puck pursuit and retrieval, limiting high danger chances, bend but not break.

Offence is your ability to maintain possession and attack. I.E. score points, maintain possession in the offensive zone and create high danger chances.

Just because you maintain possession for a long time, thus limiting your opponent's offence, it does not make you a good defensive player. It is a net positive in the possession game and by virtue of having the puck, it should tilt the ice in your team's favour but it by no means makes you good defensively.

They are completely different skills used at completely different times .