Player Discussion Elias Pettersson - A Forward Who Scores

[Nick Lang]

It’s way too expensive for sure, I tried it a couple of times and that was it.

Yeah, for something like what you're dealing with I'm sure any relief, even temporary is a godsend.

I'm not sure how your stuff works where you are, aren't you in the UK, but here general Medicare is paid through taxes but not this pseudo science.

 

[LordBacon]

Ohh shit what have I done

Uhh I love Petey.

 

[bossram]

I think your conclusion is suspect because one of the premises it relies on is demonstrably false as shown by all of those quotes. A central tenet of your argument is that because he looks slow he must have an injury to explain that. However, this premise is actually false because he's looked slow before and didn't have an injury that caused that.


We aren't talking about your opinion on whether "he'll be fine" and that you didn't want to trade him. And in fact, I think he will come out of this slump just as he did the last one. The point is whether he was slow and not skating fast during his last slump and clearly people think this was the case. Frankly, I don't think anyone at that time would have made an argument to the contrary.


Ya, I don't actually disagree with you on that. I also don't think he is being lazy.

I mean, it's not demonstrably false. I think the evidence is pretty significant that his skating is laboured. The NHL Edge data backs this up.

Is your evidence....quotes from other HFboarders?

Again, I searched my post history and I never actually mentioned Petey's skating during his previous slump. Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe everyone else was wrong. People were saying he was lazy then, and perhaps that was the reason for his poor skating previously. He does not appear to be playing "lazy" during this stretch.

Nice, another strawman from you!

It's not really. The argument from you is basically that this injury, which appears to be physically limiting, should not be physically limiting him to this extent. That was an accurate summary by the other poster.

He didn't have a leg injury to explain being slow in 2021 nor does he have any sort of injury to explain the decline in his shot power this season, and yet people want to blame that on some phantom injury, too.

A lower body injury would affect shooting mechanics, significantly so.

Again, whether it would render his shot this ineffectual, I'm not sure.

 

[Regal]

ixG should be a (rough) measure of shot quality though. Relative to pre-2022/23, his average shot quality over the last 40 games is higher than it was historically because he’s taking fewer shots to generate a similar number of ixG. He’s down a bit in shot quality relative to the Kuzmenko-era, but that’s already reflected in the drop ixG.

If you look at just high danger chances, the same is the case - Pettersson generated about 1 per game pre 22/23 but has been at 1.15 per game the last 40 games, so that doesn’t explain it either.

I believe expected goals is mostly about location, so I’m not surprised there isn’t a significant difference there because he’s often scored because of the strength of his release rather than getting great chances, which I think is why he regularly beats his expected goals. If his release is significantly worse, which visually is the case, his shooting percentage would naturally go down.

I’m also curious how missed shots play into this as well. Pettersson used to miss high all the time because he was trying to pick the corner, and we haven’t been seeing that as much either it seems because he hasn’t been able to take those kinds of shots

 

[mriswith]

That's poor logic though. One issue is a medical issue, and one is a PR issue. Very clearly different people and different expertise are involved and to assume that because one is poor the other is poor is illogical.

That's how losing credibility works. They massively bungled how they handled Mik's injury. Either they didn't understand the injury, or they were extremely incompetent in how they handled it. If they make exactly the same mistake with EP that they did with Mik, then that will have affected how they handled their PR.

They don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore after Mik.

You've made a similar appeal to authority argument repeatedly with Boudreau that's aged poorly:

He actually specifically references confidence as to why he thinks Pettersson is slumping, and why he thought Pettersson slumped two years ago. He notably doesn’t make reference to any injury, and you can bet that if he was injured last time and that that injury was the reason for Pettersson’s slump, that Boudreau would have shared that and speculated that since Boudreau is obviously a big fan of Pettersson and this would help to excuse his play.

So ya, I think Boudreau probably has a way better idea as to why Pettersson is slumping than you do.

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I just can't believe someone would favour unsubstantiated speculation of Pettersson being injured this slump, and last slump, over his former coach basically speaking exactly on this subject.

Boudreau doesn't have inside information on whether he's injured or not. Pettersson's linemates are not hidden secrets that only Boudreau can evaluate.

I'm sure Boudreau is right and his confidence is low right now.

I will also be very surprised if he isn't injured right now and I don't buy the narrative at all that it's 100% an emotional issue. There is literally no one in the entire league close to his calibre and expectations who gets two 4th line anchors as their permanent wingers.

The idea that he was injured and it was effecting his play during his slump was, to you and in your words, beyond belief.

This is NOT a straw man, those are your exact words.

I wouldn't bank on appealing to mgmt's authority as aging any better that what you did here

For sure he was working through it in the off season. Presumably he was trying not to exasperate the patellar tendinitis and was doing physiotherapy focused on strengthening the surrounding muscles. That's what my physiotherapy recommended for my patellar tendinitis.

But that doesn't mean the injury is "significant", and when you listen to the interview Pettersson very clearly doesn't think it is:

Petey: i don't know exactly how to explain it, but its like a nagging injury, don't want to go around it easy, but we figured out a way to work around it

Reporter: is part of that maybe some rest in camp

Petey: we'll see, I don't feel any pain right now or after so its....its not a big thing, the knee is fine

If the injury was "significant", in Pettersson's eyes, he wouldn't say it wasn't "a big thing", unless you think he was lying for whatever reason.

The actual quote is "It's like a nagging injury that doesn't want to go away, but we figured out a way to work around it and we're good. I don't feel any pain in it right now, it's not a big deal it's fine." After describing how he had to change his offseason training to work around his knee.

An injury that starts in January, is still ongoing, makes him train around it during the offseason and continue working around it now, is a significant injury. If he says at that moment it's fine, that doesn't negate everything else he's said about it.

I'll pretend for a minute that I agree with what you clearly think to be true, that he is not currently injured, which I don't. The facts that have been laid out clearly show he had a significant injury during his entire slump last year.

I believe my initial point on Garland wasthat he never looked, relatively speaking, anywhere near as bad as Pettersson has looked, and that's the main reason why I didn't think the comparison was great. And I stand by that. But this is a pretty minor point and I don't really care much to debate it further since we don't fundamentally disagree on the point that linemates matter.

I brought up Garland. I was talking to strat about how once a player has been screwed around with enough, you can't instantly fix the player by putting them with better linemates.

Once in a slump it can take players a long time to work back out of it even when the conditions that first caused the slump have changed. Garland looked night and day in his first half season here vs his second season.

There are a ton of other external factors though, like the pressures surrounding the negotiation of his new contract, Tochett's defensive system, Kuzmenko as a linemate cratering. I agree that confidence/mental issues probably weren't the sole first factors though.

Then that means that those are the issues that cause it to start, and confidence is secondary, as I have been saying.

This is a total strawman though. It doesn't reflect my opinion accurately at all, and frankly, its pretty frustrating that we could have this indepth of a debate and you could, whether intentionally or unintentionally, so incorrectly frame my argument. Literally just earlierin the day you posted I said I didn't know the severity of Pettersson's injury and that only Pettersson knows how severe the injury is. Never have I stated that I was certain on this, and my general argument, which I think I have been relatively consistent on, is that I thought and think, that on a balance of probabilities, an injury is not the predominant or primary factor in why Pettersson is playing so poorly.

"An injury is not the predominant or primary factor in why EP played so poorly last season" would be a new stance from you. You have been clear that you do not believe his injury has had any significant effect on his play going back to January last year.

You started this entire argument with me six months ago because I said during the playoffs that I would be surprised if he wasn't injured.

If you now think the injury was a factor, just not the "predominant or primary factor" then we no longer have anything to argue about.

I have never cared to rank the order of importance for the different reasons for his slump. I frankly don't care. From the very beginning my argument has been entirely about the people who refuse to acknowledge any external factors as contributing and insist it's 100% related to some aspect of his mental state, which is verifiably wrong. And your main issue very consistently was with my opinion last year that he had some sort of injury.

That's the position you've disagreed with and been arguing with me about going back six months now. Are you trying to claim that every time you started arguing with me after I posted "I think he's injured" you actually agreed with me? I'm supposed to believe that? Or that at some point during this argument, your opinion changed but you neglected to inform me that you'd changed your view and kept arguing with me over... something you essentially agree on?

My issue was you conclusively ruling out confidence or mental health as being the cause of the slump. I think that's what I initially took issue with. The bolded, I think, is just another strawman unless I am missing an argument I previously made? I don't recall weighing in on what was the most plausible cause of his slump but perhaps I am wrong.

I conclusively ruled out confidence as having started the slump because losing confidence doesn't happen randomly in the middle of a career year, something else goes wrong first. I have always said I'm sure it's a factor now. As for mental health, I did not rule that out. I'll quote myself since this has gone on long enough that I don't need to rewrite my opinion yet again:

And then is there a personal mental health issue? Maybe, particularly late in the season or looking at it carrying over to this year. But for this or any other variant of "he decided not to try harder" to be the only contributing factor to a colossal dropoff mid-career-season during a contract year is beyond belief outside of some catastrophic event or mental breakdown.

This isn't "conclusively ruling out mental health", it's always possible he randomly had a mental breakdown out of nowhere. Maybe it's the biggest issue now, who knows. But given what we now know for a fact, it's clearly not the most likely reason his slump started back in January.

Again, this is just a big strawman that you are creating for whatever reason.
The whole idea that I have always rejected that he's injured is just total bullshit.
On May 3rd you and I literally were discussing whether Pettersson was injured:

It's not a strawman. The entire reason this argument started six months ago was because you took issue with me saying during the playoffs that I would be surprised if he wasn't injured. That started this entire exchange. That was enough for you to start this entire thing that you are so dug in on now. I said over and over and over again that I took issue with the idea it's 100% mental and I believed he had some sort of injury, and those are the posts that you repeatedly argued with me over again and again.

You have been consistent in your opinion that injuries have never been a significant factor in his play. You clearly doubted he was injured last year and when the news came out that he was injured, you continued to believe that it never had a significant impact on his play. The fact that I thought he was injured despite your Boudreau quote was literally beyond belief to you.

Meanwhile my opinion hasn't changed, the only thing different is that everything I was saying that you were calling unsubstantiated has been substantiated. This is what I posted six months ago:

I'm not arguing with people who just think Pettersson is slumping, we all know that. I have a problem with the narrative being pushed that it's 100% about his emotional state and that's the only thing effecting his performance. It's objectively not true and that's something that the people pushing this narrative will never acknowledge.

You called this statement "out of touch" and said you side with the Boudreau quote about it being all about confidence. Your position can be clearly inferred. But sure, complain about strawmen. Your opinion was very clear at the time.

No one would blame you for changing it given the new information that came out should you choose to do so but for some reason you'd rather continue this argument again and again instead.