I was thinking about the Faulk - Pietrangelo pairing earlier and decided to dig into the advanced stats to see if Ranksu and other's critiques were supported by the data. Turns out there is actually a very legit argument that the Faulk - Pietrangelo pairing is our strongest 5v5.
The Blues have 8 D pairings that have played over 100mins together 5v5. I am choosing 100mins kind of at random, but it seems like a reasonable sample size. I would have a hard time giving serious consideration of our "best pairing 5v5" to a pairing with less than 100mins together. This does not include a couple pairings that have only played a couple games together (ex. Colt and Dunn have only played ~77 mins together, Mikkola - Bortz only ~60). All data is taken from naturalstattrick -
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| TOI | CF% | GF | GA | GF% | xGF% | HDCF% | OZS% | oiSV% | oiSH% | PDO |
Bouw - Colt | 500:55 | 44.98 | 15 | 14 | 51.72 | 39.42 | 38.51 | 37.97 | 94.09 | 7.39 | 1.015 |
Bouw - Faulk | 355:31 | 44.54 | 9 | 16 | 36.00 | 46.07 | 43.69 | 49.11 | 90.80 | 6.38 | .972 |
Faulk - AP | 278:12 | 55.72 | 15 | 15 | 50.00 | 56.66 | 57.29 | 53.75 | 88.19 | 9.09 | .973 |
AP - Colt | 251:52 | 51.59 | 11 | 12 | 47.83 | 54.28 | 48.19 | 45.31 | 90.55 | 7.69 | .982 |
Dunn - Faulk | 212:43 | 54.31 | 8 | 8 | 50.00 | 49.92 | 47.30 | 64.91 | 93.10 | 6.35 | .995 |
Dunn - Bort | 209:10 | 48.89 | 10 | 5 | 66.67 | 46.65 | 51.32 | 58.11 | 95.41 | 9.62 | 1.050 |
Dunn - AP | 197:46 | 61.47 | 15 | 7 | 68.18 | 60.01 | 60.94 | 61.76 | 91.36 | 12.00 | 1.034 |
Gunnar - AP | 149:55 | 44.92 | 7 | 7 | 50.00 | 37.86 | 35.59 | 43.64 | 91.03 | 10.77 | 1.018 |
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So what conclusions can we draw?
Well, Bouw and Colt play a ton together clearly take a lot of the toughest defensive matchups (nothing ground breaking here). They have the lowest % of offensive zone starts, and give up a lot of shots and scoring chances. Interesting that they also have a very high on ice save %, yet they have by far the worst high danger CF% and give up the most HD chances against. There is a also a fairly large difference between their GF% and xGF%, all of which suggests they may be getting a little lucky. Its important to note here that this pairing has only been on the ice for 14 goals against at 5v5 - given the amount of TOI for this pairing and the matchups they draw every night, 14 is fantastic.
Bouw and Faulk played a fair amount together, and the results were not good. This does match the eye test IMO for this pairing. Worth noting that this pairing had the lowest PDO and the xGF% is way higher than the actual GF%. Back luck seems to play a factor here, but the xGF% was still one of the lowest of all pairings.
Faulk and AP pairing actually has pretty stellar underlying metrics. They do get a fair amount of offensive zone starts, but their CF%, xGF%, and HDCF% are all still very high. What stands out to me here is the PDO (2nd lowest of all pairings), on ice SV% (by far the lowest of all pairings), and the GF% (they are a minus 7 at 36%). It seems pretty clear looking at these numbers that these 2 have been unlucky. I think we can reasonably expect a reversion to the mean if we keep these 2 together. Seriously, the offensive metrics are probably the best of any pairing, taking into account game situation/matchups.
Dunn - Faulk pairing had surprisingly decent underlying metrics. I remember reading a lot of complaining about those 2, but the data suggests they might not have been as horrible as some thought. Still, the offensive zone start % is extremely high for this pairing at nearly 65%, so take their "decent" offensive metrics with a rather large grain of salt
AP - Colt pairing is interesting to compare to Faulk - AP. Both pairings played a similar amount of minutes together, and has similar GF% and xGF%. Faulk - AP significantly better underlying offensive shooting metrics (CF% and HDCF% to be exact). AP- Colt had lower offensive metrics, but started more in the dzone and still had OK offensive metrics. The biggest differences between the two pairings are in high danger shots, zone starts, and on ice save %.
One other thing to note, yeah Dunn has good offensive metrics, but he is also very sheltered. He also tends to get thrown out in offensive situations with the team down a goal late in a game, so best to take his numbers with a grains of salt, particularly the Dunn - AP pairing.