I love Dom's modeling and betting along with him is a good way to make money. But I routinely think that his analysis of his modeling is quite extreme. While most of his analysis here could be accurate, I think that most the written narrative is more of a worst-case-scenario than it is the most likely.
The most egregious example of this comes from his analysis on ROR who he appears to believe is washed as a Selke caliber player. After discussing his great offensive numbers last year, he digs in to possession stats to reach the conclusion that "what remains feels like a shade of his former self." That is resoundingly different than what my eye test told me and I think the lack of a competent LW on his line was the overwhelmingly biggest cause of that line's poor expected metrics. If ROR is suddenly a below average defensive center, then this article is 100% correct. His model has ROR as a 25 goal, 46 assist player who no longer provides top end defense. I will be stunned if that's how this season goes. I just don't see an 8 point offensive regression
and similar defensive metrics now that he isn't being asked to drag around a 3rd liner all season.
All in all, he has forward group ranked 15th in the NHL with each individual line ranked as follows:
1st: 13th
2nd: 18th best
3rd: 6th best
4th: 8th best
I think that the 1st line is top 10 based on my view that ROR isn't facing major regression and we are going to have him consistently between two legit 1st line talents for the first time in at least 2 years. Even if we see the middling performance out of Schenn and Tarasenko that he expects and the 2nd line is slightly below average, I think that the offense is still top 10 overall if the 1st line is top 10. I have a hard time saying that a top 10 1st line, average 2nd line and incredible bottom 6 translates to simply an average offense.
It is hard to parse out his view of the defense. He has Krug/Parayko as our top pair and Scandella/Faulk as the 2nd pair. Based on that, he views the top pair as an average top pair and then the 2nd pair as near-league-worst because of expected regression from Faulk (agreed) and because Scandella "looked like he had returned to form in 2019-20 only to see a significant drop back to reality in 2020-21. He’s only as good as his partner, and that’s probably not worthy of a top-four role." I think that is extremely fair, but if Scandella/Faulk is the 2nd pair and turns out to be a disaster, you can bet your salary that Berube will revert back to Scandella/Parayko. I think it is reasonable to expect that Scandella can be serviceable if he is with a healthy Parayko. I'm not sure if our 3rd pair will be Mikkola/Walman like he suggests, but I'm confident that they won't remain together if they are the 2nd worst pairing in the league as he predicts. With Bortz and Perunovich in the organization, I think there is enough depth there to make an adequate 3rd pairing.
I don't think the pessimism is unwarranted, but I also think there is a lot of reason to believe that the expected regression his model puts on most our roster doesn't come to fruition. But if ROR, Schenn, Tarasenko, Faulk and Binner are all noticeably worse than last year then this team is for sure going to struggle.
if you think we are really legit Stanley Cup Contender or you just like to gamble and hope we have good luck.
