Its not early anymore - First Third Review

[major major]

I'll give you part of your argument in Bob's defense but he has let in a bunch of softies too. Any way you look at it Bob ain't worth 5.625 mill this season so far.

It's plainly visible that Bob is letting in goals he would not have last year. Some are softies, others are tough ones he would have stopped when he was standing on his head last year.

It also happens to be observable in his save percentage.

 

[major major]

Taking a Snap shot of stats for the team from today:

Top 5 Goals:
Joey - 10 G (Projects to 30)
Arty - 7 G (Projects to 21)
Cam - 6 G (Projects to 18)
Foligno - 6 G (Projects to 18)
RJ - 6 G (Projects to 18)

Top 5 Assists:
Wiz - 16 A (Projects to 49)
Dubi - 10 A (Projects to 30)
Joey - 9 A (Projects to 27)
RJ / Tyutin / Letestu - 8 A (Projects to 24)

Top 5 Points
Joey - 19 (Projects to 58)
Wiz - 18 (Projects to 55)
Dubi - 15 (Projects to 46)
RJ - 14 (Projects to 43)
Foligno - 13 (Projects to 39)

This leads me to a couple conclusions:
1. Joey is doing quite well this year with offensive contributions. He is a -5 which means he's no Datsyuk for shutting guys down but he is still a 53.1% FO man.
2. RJ is doing better than the last two years. He's still not breaking 20g but he is improved.
3. Foligno and Dubi are performing consistent to their careers.
4. Overall, those are low numbers for offense; this trends out to 200 GF total at the end of the year. That's really weak, especially in the open East.
5. Notable absences from points stats: Gaborik, Tyutin, and Johnson. These guys are being paid to put points up and for some reason they are not. To a lesser extent there are guys underachieving as well - Arty, Letestu, Nikitin, Calvert (injury impacts), Prout, Jenner (rookie but should do better than 9 pts).

The team is going to struggle so long as they can't gather points. There are times they sustain a good forecheck but they need to cash in on opportunities. If they could it would impact the way the defense is being played and would improve the entire outcome. I'm not saying the boneheaded mistakes are okay, but with improved results on potting chances (projected 2244 shots total at avg 7.6% shot) it would lift the whole team.

Compare our statistics to the St. Louis Blues. Their top 5 goal scorers project to 65, 39, 26, 20 and 20. Top 5 Assists project to 59, 59, 49, 46 and 43. Their 5 Pts project to 100, 82, 72, 62, 59. Our top person doesn't crack their top 5 (yes Steen's numbers are odd this year but the trend is accurate). This team isn't first in their division and is 5th in the west (rather than comparing to Pitt). They have 8 players that project to score more than 50 pts. They project to 2483 shots this year with a 9.5 shooting %. This shows we are NOT a Horton away from competing. A Horton (say 60 pts) and healthy Gabby (say 65 pts) would help a lot to make us a playoff team, but we are not there yet.

We need to fix the system and fix our lines so we do produce at these levels and I believe the rest will fall in line.

On goaltending - bah we'll discuss that later.

I agree with the general thrust, but excuse this nitpicking:

1) Considering St. Louis as the baseline for competitive is not realistic, they're fourth in goals in the entire league.

2) You're just multiplying by 3. But to take into account guys like Dubinsky who had missed time because of injury it's better to multiply the rate of assists per game by total games he can play. This gives him 36 assists and 54 points in 76 games.

 

[cslebn]

I agree with the general thrust, but excuse this nitpicking:

1) Considering St. Louis as the baseline for competitive is not realistic, they're fourth in goals in the entire league.

2) You're just multiplying by 3. But to take into account guys like Dubinsky who had missed time because of injury it's better to multiply the rate of assists per game by total games he can play. This gives him 36 assists and 54 points in 76 games.

My multiplier was actually 82 (total games) / 27 (team games played). I allowed that to include injury factor (for instance Dubi played 21, so his numbers go down intentionally to track his injury). Yeah St Louis was a random grab for a similar team we seek to emulate. I thought they'd be better than Pitt or Boston. Oops.