News & Notes XLV: Simply Having A Wonderful Canesmastime

[hblueridgegal]

Saw this over on Reddit. Nice to see him get a little love from the goat. I am sure his agent is happy with this endorsement.

McDavid: Tough to say with how many great players there are in the league, but players are always the best judges of talent from my perspective. For me, I would say it's Martin Necas. He's so fast, so skilled, and tough to defend.

 

[Svechhammer]

I think they still split the players up between two teams and fill the rest of the roster with wealthy beer leaguers willing to pay for a fantasy camp. I know somebody who did that once. He indeed had a blast.

Isn't The alumni game a scrimmage against NC State?

 

[DaveG]

Isn't The alumni game a scrimmage against NC State?

Yeah I read that's a change in this year's format

 

[chaz4hockey]

Even in Florida it was too damn cold to go out this morning...44 with wind is just too damn cold for this old guy. So, after breakfast, some more analytic work. A Comparison between LY & TY with some summary data from '22-'23.

Goals are on track to be comparable to LY and higher than '22-'23. However, GA are on track to be 20 & 21 higher than each of the last 2 years respectively. Certainly, a good part of that is goaltending but also due to our smaller sized D not moving players from out front we are giving up front grade A goals.

Interestingly, we are projecting to shoot over a hundred less shots than LY and almost 240 less compared to '22-'23 but hit around 180 times more while blocking around the same number of shots.

Player wise, TT has been exceeded by JR and Carrier-Robinson have met Noesen-Fast's productivity (projecting 26G 32A 58P versus 20G 36A 56P). Pre-injury, Ghost was on track to exceed Skjei's scoring with Charfield and Orlov around the same. However, Burns has taken a big drop off (limited PP time this year of course versus last) with 8G 20A 28P projection versus LY's !0G 33A 43P).

Jarvis has taken a big step back from LY and looking at this NHL edge data I'm concluding that he is playing injured (shot speed is down markedly versus '22-'23 and pre-shoulder injury of LY). We of course miss Guentzel and Canes need another scoring winger on the top 6.

I'm still working on the player data and will publish Aho, Jarvis, Necas, KK, Drury, Blake, Burns, Orlov, Walker and for comparison's sake, Skjei and Peace sometime over the weekend.

 

[MinJaBen]

Even in Florida it was too damn cold to go out this morning...44 with wind is just too damn cold for this old guy. So, after breakfast, some more analytic work. A Comparison between LY & TY with some summary data from '22-'23.

Goals are on track to be comparable to LY and higher than '22-'23. However, GA are on track to be 20 & 21 higher than each of the last 2 years respectively. Certainly, a good part of that is goaltending but also due to our smaller sized D not moving players from out front we are giving up front grade A goals.

Interestingly, we are projecting to shoot over a hundred less shots than LY and almost 240 less compared to '22-'23 but hit around 180 times more while blocking around the same number of shots.

Player wise, TT has been exceeded by JR and Carrier-Robinson have met Noesen-Fast's productivity (projecting 26G 32A 58P versus 20G 36A 56P). Pre-injury, Ghost was on track to exceed Skjei's scoring with Charfield and Orlov around the same. However, Burns has taken a big drop off (limited PP time this year of course versus last) with 8G 20A 28P projection versus LY's !0G 33A 43P).

Jarvis has taken a big step back from LY and looking at this NHL edge data I'm concluding that he is playing injured (shot speed is down markedly versus '22-'23 and pre-shoulder injury of LY). We of course miss Guentzel and Canes need another scoring winger on the top 6.

I'm still working on the player data and will publish Aho, Jarvis, Necas, KK, Drury, Blake, Burns, Orlov, Walker and for comparison's sake, Skjei and Peace sometime over the weekend.

View attachment 958226

View attachment 958227

Alright, I'll bite....what in the data suggests that the difference in goals from this year to last year is due to the "smaller sized D not moving players" instead of "the bigger D and forwards not catching players before they make a nice play" just like last night when we had two "medium" sized defenders get burned and our biggest player (Staal) was not able to catch up to Point before he got the shot off?

 

[chaz4hockey]

Alright, I'll bite....what in the data suggests that the difference in goals from this year to last year is due to the "smaller sized D not moving players" instead of "the bigger D and forwards not catching players before they make a nice play" just like last night when we had two "medium" sized defenders get burned and our biggest player (Staal) was not able to catch up to Point before he got the shot off?

Well, if you believe our current D setup is sufficient against bigger teams such as Tampa, Florida, etc., that clearly is a take. You of course are cherry picking as I did note Goaltending too (and you using one game/one play as an example is not representative....although it was somewhat representative.....goalie could have made the stop and the Smith-Walker combo are not guys that can take space and move players out of the front).

FWIW: there has been more than enough sample size of goals being scored out front against us this year for me to make that as one of the conclusions on why our Goals against has climbed.

What I see in games against big D teams (is that despite our speed they are able to cut off the Canes from center of the ice/high danger goal scoring areas (btw: a better rested Tampa team did same to us the first game of the year....I was there and the inability of Canes to get into key areas was startling). Another recent example is the Florida game (I was there and had a good view of the overall play versus narrow TV view). We got a couple of lucky goals but after the first 15 minutes (when Florida stemmed our early momentum) it was very difficult for the Canes to get off good shots against Vasy (We won't see another Slavin goal by the Canes in my lifetime).

 

[MinJaBen]

Well, if you believe our current D setup is sufficient against bigger teams such as Tampa, Florida, etc., that clearly is a take. You of course are cherry picking as I did note Goaltending too (and you using one game/one play as an example is not representative....although it was somewhat representative.....goalie could have made the stop and the Smith-Walker combo are not guys that can take space and move players out of the front).

FWIW: there has been more than enough sample size of goals being scored out front against us this year for me to make that as one of the conclusions on why our Goals against has climbed.

What I see in games against big D teams (is that despite our speed they are able to cut off the Canes from center of the ice/high danger goal scoring areas (btw: a better rested Tampa team did same to us the first game of the year....I was there and the inability of Canes to get into key areas was startling). Another recent example is the Florida game (I was there and had a good view of the overall play versus narrow TV view). We got a couple of lucky goals but after the first 15 minutes (when Florida stemmed our early momentum) it was very difficult for the Canes to get off good shots against Vasy (We won't see another Slavin goal by the Canes in my lifetime).

I get what you are saying, and I don't necessarily think you are wrong, but your cause and effect with goals that you intimated was from the D size, so I wanted to see the hard data that you drew that conclusion from. If there is no hard data and it is just an opinion as to the cause for more goals from the front, that is fine. But if there is actual data that links size to the goals, I would love to see that, too.

 

[chaz4hockey]

I get what you are saying, and I don't necessarily think you are wrong, but your cause and effect with goals that you intimated was from the D size, so I wanted to see the hard data that you drew that conclusion from. If there is no hard data and it is just an opinion as to the cause for more goals from the front, that is fine. But if there is actual data that links size to the goals, I would love to see that, too.

Fair point...observed data. Tough to make definitive conclusion without comparing every goal over last two years. As you realize, we don't have a physical set of defensemen (Burns, our biggest defenseman has only 8 hits with Slavin at 12...only Orlov hits <55>.....a big reason why Burns has compiled such a long consecutive game streak) and I believe that is a negative come playoff time and ice narrows.

One additional area worth a look is to see which teams Canes have had difficulty scoring against y/y to validate the fact that teams with larger defensemen are Canes' kryptonite.

Edit: there is a graphic on each individual's player's chart that shows where the shots and goals came from. I wonder if there is a team compilation of that both for and against?

 

[chaz4hockey]

Found a good y/y comparison but they don't show shots & goals against locations (only for). I'm sure Tulsky/team get the more refined data.....anyway, this is still good to see. We match up pretty well with LY although our in-zone defending % has gone up slightly:

 

[robbieberns]

I think something we didn’t anticipate as much as we should’ve is how the downgrade on defense compared to previous years is the impact it has on the game of our top forwards. Having essentially two top pairing big guy box out defenseman sharing difficult minutes meant that the likes of Aho had to do a lot less of the dirty work and they could almost take it easy and expect pucks to get coughed up and transitioned towards them with more ease and frequency.

 

[chaz4hockey]

I think something we didn’t anticipate as much as we should’ve is how the downgrade on defense compared to previous years is the impact it has on the game of our top forwards. Having essentially two top pairing big guy box out defenseman sharing difficult minutes meant that the likes of Aho had to do a lot less of the dirty work and they could almost take it easy and expect pucks to get coughed up and transitioned towards them with more ease and frequency.

You might be right but I'm not seeing that in the stats (slightly less distance this year; slightly more defense zone coverage). Distance covered and zone time are very comparable Yr/Yr (left side is this year).

 

[robbieberns]

You might be right but I'm not seeing that in the stats (slightly less distance this year; slightly more defense zone coverage). Distance covered and zone time are very comparable Yr/Yr (left side is this year).

View attachment 958310

View attachment 958311

Maybe there’s a mental block with some of the guys feeling like they don’t have the freedom to play unleashed because they know they don’t have who they used to have behind them? The same way defenses can play worse in front of a goalie they don’t trust?

 

[cptjeff]

Isn't The alumni game a scrimmage against NC State?

I hadn't seen that, so I was guessing. That's a fun approach.

 

[chaz4hockey]

 

[cptjeff]

Taking out the cheap seats for us poors and replacing them with more amenities for the big spenders. Uh, yay?

 

[AD Skinner]

Taking out the cheap seats for us poors and replacing them with more amenities for the big spenders. Uh, yay?

Livin in america

 

[chaz4hockey]

Taking out the cheap seats for us poors and replacing them with more amenities for the big spenders. Uh, yay?

We went to the Cane-Panthers road game. Cats arena has a similar vibe to what Canes/Centennial are planning with wider concourses, live music playing in between periods, exclusive club at mid-ice downstairs, clubs at both goal ends upstairs (nothing private there....you can walk around the arena and through those "clubs" to get to your seats), specialty food (they had a coffee shop with hot chocolate, cakes, etc on the second floor that was very good), etc. Only area that doesn't look to mirror what we saw at Florida is wider/more numerous bathrooms/stalls (btw: Cats has the bathrooms continually cleaned and they are clean even post-game....Bathrooms by us on 2nd level is dirty before game start and often runs out of soap and towels)