The main thing is the difference in quality of players lost. I'm one of the biggest Grant fans you'll find, but pretending losing him for half the season is remotely comparable to losing Zegras is absurd. And that's basically what it comes down to. If you analyze the situations instead of just posting the charts:
-One significant injury last season had no equivalent this season. Stolarz was replaced by Dostal, who
performed slightly better. If anything that injury hurt the Gulls.
-While it's not directly equivalent, Vaakanainen last year and Gudas and Mintyukov this year can all be grouped together under the category of "nobody is arguing that this year's defense wasn't better". If you want to argue that a healthy Vaaks was the sole difference between last season being a tank defense and a functional NHL defense, go for it, but barring that? It's not the debate. Nobody who bemoans the injuries this season is talking about the defense (they might get to them after listing all the forwards). The exception is Drysdale, since even with the improved depth, top pairing RD became a whole
thing. This was especially true of injury discussions before he was traded.
-But it turns out losing Drysdale each season was a wash. Same with Henrique, as you've stipulated. (If anything Drysdale hit harder this year, because specifically 'guys who can play top pairing RD' depth was slim.
Fowler-Kulikov, Fowler-Harrington, and Fowler-Klingberg all had better GA/60
and GF/60 than
Fowler-LaCombe and Fowler-Zellweger. To be fair they also all had better GA/60 than this season's Fowler-Drysdale, though the sample size is an issue. But the real difference in the defense this year was that the other two pairings also had NHL players on them.)
-Terry's minor injuries were a wash. His regression this year, while not an injury, certainly had an impact on the top six Cronin could utilize. Was it babygeddon? Is he just in his own head? Who knows? But what you can't really argue it was is coaching, since you've repeatedly cited how he was playing hero puck last year under Eakins too.
-Lundestrom and Jones' injuries were somewhat worse this year, each missed more time and Lundy also missed camp.
-The most significant forward injuries were Grant last year and Zegras this year. These two players are not on the same level, and Zegras missed more time (36 games vs 51).
-McGinn also missed significant time this season, but he still played more games as a Duck than he did last season, so another wash.
-Outside of purely missed games, last season we had a guy who missed some time due to injury, and then was less effective the rest of the year because he clearly wasn't fully healthy. That was Carrick. This season, we had a guy in the same situation: McTavish. There was also Killorn, who missed two notable stretches and was pretty terrible in between them (which, as we found out when he had surgery, was because he was playing hurt). Once again, these players are not on the same level.
-Carlsson, both by injury and by design, was often unavailable this season. He wasn't on the team last year, so sure, he was an improvement to this year's roster. But that's the point, improved talent doesn't help when you can't deploy it effectively. Additionally, his line chemistry seemed to be negatively affected by his load management, he didn't look quite the same after his last injury, and oh yeah, he was an 18-19 year old rookie who you'd have preferred to be playing in Sweden this year. Not exactly the fully fledged first line center that 'Cronin had so much more top six talent' implies.
-Who else would you like to discuss as a major loss last season? Comtois? Klingberg?
Kirkland?
-(I actually will get to Comtois later.)
-Timing also matters. Last season we lost Grant and Lundestrom at the same time. That wasn't great, we had to grab Megna off waivers for the bottom six. This season we were often missing Zegras and either Carlsson or McTavish at the same time, and occasionally missing all three at once and playing Bo freaking Groulx in the top six. Again, not the same.
You point out last season's injuries like they were equally crippling because of the limited top six depth, but the only significant top six injury last season (Rico) is a loss that even you acknowledge as equivalent to this year. So let's talk more about those 54 more games from top six talents that you cite. 54 doesn't actually look like that big a number when there's 82 games in a season and there's two extra players on your top six list.
456/6: 76 games per player
510/8: 63.75 games per player
Looks like last year's top six was pretty healthy, actually. This year's, not so much. Now consider things like developing line chemistry, getting back up to speed, and lingering injury impacts. How many games were McTavish or Killorn ineffective because they were playing hurt? That doesn't show up on a chart. But we watched the games, we know it happened. Once you factor that in, it defies all logic to claim last season's top six was more adversely affected by injury than this season's.
But they still scored 30 more points than last year's top six, you say. Yep, they sure did that. But again, this is your framing: we had eight top six guys this season. So functionally, we added two more guys to the top six and they provided a total of 30 more points. 15 points per extra top six guy. That sounds like a solid argument about improved talent depth to you? 15 point players don't belong in the top six, so something must be wrong with either your framing or the players.
(Spoiler: something was wrong with the players.)
But you can look at it a different way, too. You can see if 30 more points might be exactly what you'd expect out of those 54 extra games. And sure enough...
289/456: 0.63 ppg
319/510: 0.62 ppg
I dunno, the rates look pretty similar. Kind of like if you add two extra guys to your data set, the counting stats will naturally go up. Wouldn't you expect a better rate, too, from all this improved talent? But it doesn't look like there was a measurable improvement in anything but available bodies, and those available bodies were statistically getting hurt or otherwise hindered by injury more often this year. Was it absorbed well enough that adding two more guys could still provide an increase in the counting stats? Sure. Is it making the point you think it is when you say we had two more top six players and they were only able to provide 30 more points? No, not really. And all of that's accepting the eight person top six framing to begin with. It's actually a flawed premise, but I'll get to that in a minute.
This brings us to the issue of the bottom six. You said Verbeek's comments about bottom six scoring make no sense, but the bottom six is very relevant to any team's talent depth and it's frankly kind of weird to argue otherwise. Depth scoring is important in general (ask Toronto about relying solely on your stars to carry you). It surely can make a difference in those tight one goal games, where you need any edge you can get. And who replaces your top six players when they go down?
You cited points to indicate the top six's talent, so let's do it for the bottom six.
This season we played three 4Cs: Carrick (11 points), Groulx (2 points), and Meyers (2 points).
Last season, Grant alone had 18 points and that's with him missing half the season. Megna had 8. An unhealthy Carrick had 7. Who else changed in the bottom six? We more or less swapped Comtois out for Johnston. And much as many of us rightfully dragged Comtois, nobody's taking Johnston over him when the subject is producing points. Lundestrom and Jones this season had more injury and less total production. McGinn put up his same 3 points both years. A healthy Carrick and improved Leason were the only upgrades in this year's bottom six, everything else was either a wash or a drastic downgrade.
An additional point: a surprising number of bottom six players saw stretches of top six time last season when you consider the lack of top six injuries. (Vatrano spending significant time on the third line was probably a factor in this. Why would a team so desperately bare of top six talent put him on the third line?) Comtois got top six time, and when he could be bothered to try he even looked like he could belong there. Grant got top six time, and was generally in Grantzlaf mode for it. Silfverberg got top six time, and still looked like a guy who at least had top six hockey sense even if he didn't have functioning hips. Jones and Leason looked at least decent with McTavish, whether as a fourth or second line. Lundestrom was available but never needed to see the top six, because there were so many options and so few injuries. That was last year's forward depth.
This year's? Leason was much more effective than last season. Lundestrom and Silfverberg looked good with McTavish. Jones didn't look as good as at the end of last year, but had his strong points. And after that it comes to a screeching halt. Carrick was good in the bottom six, but he got one game at 2C as a reward for his play at 4C and there's a reason that never happened again. The rest of the bottom six options weren't even productive
in the bottom six, let alone able to move up if needed.
(To fully acknowledge the facts, McGinn also got a tryout in the top six last season, where he wasn't useful at all. But the point is that last season's bottom six had more players who
could be effective in the top six, and who
were effective in the bottom six. Talent depth.)
So, going back to the flaws in the eight person top six framing: if you want to make a valid comparison on the subject of depth, you can't do it by just adding extra players to one side and saying look, the numbers are higher. Including any two of Silfverberg, Comtois, and Grant in last season's top eight puts their point production over this year's top eight. (And remember, this is with Grant and Comtois' injuries. Last season's bottom six absorbed injuries and still produced more than this season's, exactly the opposite of the way you say it should've gone.) The only top eight configuration that makes last year's top eight forwards look worse than this year's is if you use Jones and Leason, who were on the second line with McTavish for a stretch. And even that's close, 28 points versus 30. This is how you properly compare depth between rosters, by comparing the guys who actually played in the same situations. Not by comparing the designated top six talents while ignoring the rest of the forwards entirely.
(Now, if you add any of those two guys to last year's top eight, you also get last year's top eight having more games played and a lower scoring rate than this year's improved top eight. Which... circles right back around to the point that yeah we had better forwards this year but they were hurt too much to take advantage of it.)
Back to last year's bottom six handling the loss of Grant and Comtois. And Lundestrom. And Jones. This season's bottom six also saw losses (Lundestrom, Jones, McGinn, and Carrick), but could not absorb them at all. There were two,
two, occasions after the deadline where the fourth line had more than one over-5-point player: the time McTavish got demoted, and the time Leason played center. (Despite two healthy bottom six centers being available, what does
that tell you about the quality of the depth.)
In fact, last season there was only one sub-5-point forward on the roster who wasn't either a late season college signing or an actual AHLer. (And that was McGinn, who technically scored a lot more last season, it just wasn't with the Ducks.) This season there were four (including the injured McGinn) and the GP difference is just depressing. This bottom of the roster depth absolutely matters when it comes to absorbing injuries. You know it does, since you cite the bottom of the defensive roster being properly pushed down to the AHL. Where's the forward depth to push these guys who weren't producing down to the AHL? It wasn't there.
The lack of supporting depth meant this season's forward group was more susceptible to a few key injuries bringing the whole offense crashing down. And that's exactly what happened.
