Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
I stopped paying attention after this point because it is demonstrably wrong.
Player Discussion: Patrik Laine IVever: a new hope? (Laine out of PAP, trade request still stands)
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Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
Each and every single Cup winner for the past decade had question marks about guys and had teams playing different styles. While the most consistently reliable winning team is one that prioritize offense but doesn't skimp on defense, there have been plenty of winners that have tilted more in the direction of either of those two. Colorado just now was strongly offense-biased, for example, while the Blues were strongly defense-biased. Tampa Bay started out offense-biased and found itself obliged to adjust a tad.
Frankly, if there truly was only "one true way" to win, you wouldn't see the regular phenomenon of folks looking at the Cup winning team and deciding "so-and-so team construction method is so hot right now" and keep chasing that particular lightning in a bottle.
I'll tell you a secret. That was all in the 2020/21 season, this one wasn't involved. Hmm, and I'm also wondering why the players were so complimentary of the dressing room this season, even though Laine was part of it?
Besides, you're writing about Panarin here, but again. He was 27-28 when was here. One came to Chicago when he was 24. By then he was in the KHL, whose games I watched quite a bit. And I can assure you his play without the puck, defense, were not ideal at all.
Moving on. Yes, Bjorkie is a hard-working player. But how many important goals/points did he scote in important games when we were fighting for the PO?
Regarding Torts style. We couldn't play like that forever. First, play based on playing without the puck, hard fights has no future. Yes, it may be successful for a while, but opponents don't sleep. That's why, in my opinion, we are now in the development phase. Right now we have to work with young players, make sure who will help us and who won't.
I don't agree with Peeke and Boqvist, as both are still too young to draw conclusions. Nobody is going to trade Gavrikov's and especially Merzlikins, and you know it.
Bjorkstrand is also only paid 5.4mil, hes not paid like a superstar who is supposed to score 50. Hes a huge value contract and you need those guys in your lineup too if you want to win. Sure he has cold spells but hes still a useful player when hes not scoring and his effort level can be contagious
That's the wrong way.
You can't win a game without winning the scoring race. So a goal for is more valuable than a goal against. Because the game is decided on who wins the scoring race, it automatically puts more value on goal scored. If you are trying to win a hockey game, your first focus has to be on scoring more than the other team. The way you achieve it is not set in stone. Oilers just went far in playoffs with putrid defense and goaltending. Sure, they didn't win the cup but they got a lot closer to it than a dozen better defensive teams. Colorado was offensively stronger than Tampa. Panthers defense is mediocre but they won the presidents trophy.
jepjepjoo
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- Dec 31, 2002
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Jenner with Laine GF/60 3.25 GA/60 2.86 (462:07)
Jenner without Laine GF/60 2.6 GA/60 3.47 (414:37)
Nyquist with Laine GF/60 3.25 GA/60 4.10 (350:48)
Nyquist without Laine GF/60 3.22 GA/60 4.26 (746:16)
Voracek with Laine GF/60 3.04 GA/60 2.36 (355:36)
Voracek without Laine GF/60 2.42 GA/60 3.02 (694:28)
All the players you mentioned, had better results with Laine than without:
Voracek +0.62 GF/60, -0.66 GA/60
Nyquist +0.03 GF/60 -0.16 GA/60
Jenner +0.65 GF/60 -0.61 GA/60
CBJ had a better result with Laine than without:
with Laine 27-24-5 0.527%
without Laine 10-14-2 0.423%
Laine was by far the best 5v5 scorer:*
pts/60 5v5
Laine 2.53
Domi 2.29
Roslovic 2.24
Jenner 2.05
Bjorkstrand 1.75
Voracek 1.66
Nyquist 1.64
Sillinger 1.53
Kuraly 1.28
5v5 GF/GA Laine was one of 4 players that were positive or even.*
*atleast 500min played.
Thanks for the great stats.
P.S. you have the Ukrainian flag the other way around. Blue is on top, yellow on the bottom. This is the flag of Ružomberok, Slovakia.
Súhlasím. Preto ani nechcem, aby ho vymenili. Ale tu to bolo iné, viď diskusia.
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Thank you @jepjepjoo! Like Reagan said, facts are stubborn things. Yet some guys just decide to ignore facts.
So with Laine CBJ was borderline playoff team, without Laine CBJ was not even close. I did not have the stats before, but that was just what I did guess.
Uh oh, all these decimals leads me to a bad place….you ‘Lazy Laine’ guys think I’m bad now…
To put it simply, those “numbers” and “facts” don’t take into account the different USAGE of each individual player or all the different line matchups that occur throughout the year, both intentionally and by chance. There’s also different factors of “luck” and “chance” and the fact that 1 player makes up roughly just 20% of a team on the ice.
Or are you honestly saying you believe that Laine makes these players (and the team) better defensively while he is on the ice?? Is that what the numbers show??
Also, showing the with/without records of a player who has the cap hit that Laine has now and moving forward, to prove some point about him, is laughable.
If it's about winning for you, why you are bashing Laine who is all about winning and the same time praise Bjork who was losing his game badly last season? That doesn't make any sense.
Please see stats from post by @jepjepjoo and either dispute them if you can or otherwise pretty please shut it up when your imagination and reality don't match.
CBJ with Laine was barely on playoff pace. CBJ without Laine was way off the pace. He was one of the rare guys with positive goal differential.
Ps. I love Bjork and I am sure he will have a strong bounce back season. But 21-22 was simply not good for him, considering WINNING, which really is the most important thing.
Oh, pretty please.
So now 5-on-5 numbers are about the usage. And for example Jenner's usage was drastically different with Laine than that when Laine was injured? I tell you secret: it wasn't. Sorry, but I am not sorry.
jepjepjoo
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- Dec 31, 2002
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Thanks for the great stats.
P.S. you have the Ukrainian flag the other way around. Blue is on top, yellow on the bottom. This is the flag of Ružomberok, Slovakia.
Súhlasím. Preto ani nechcem, aby ho vymenili. Ale tu to bolo iné, viď diskusia.
I put it that way around, back in February, because I thought political statements were against the rules.
What!?!
See, we have completely different ideas of “reality” and what the “value” of these goals actually are. The value of each goal scored is EQUAL, it doesn’t matter which net it goes in.
The mindset of the players also has to be EQUAL. It’s like people automatically go to some overly defensive mindset that restricts all offensive creativity and aggression, just by saying you have to FOCUS on defense. Whatever amount of “aggression” or “focus” is directed towards producing offense has to be MATCHED defensively, simple as that.
The REALITY is that the best players in the league are CAPABLE of focusing on BOTH aspects, and if you want to get PAID like 1 of these players, you should be looked at to do the same.
Of course you have to have defense. It depends on your offense how much you need it. The game can only be won by having more goals on the board than the opponent and there are many different ways of getting to that result, not just "one way". If you score 10 and opponent scores 8, you still get the points. The wins.
There has to be a balance that results in your team scoring more goals than the other team. Every game starts at 0-0. Somebody has to score to win, you can not win it by choosing defense first.
Laine is capable of backchecking and breaking up plays. I don't have much complaints for his defensive side of the game. He needs to get better at avoiding giveaways when he has the puck in the defensive zone and making more secure plays but not at the expense of the creativity. There are many star forwards in the league who are less responsible defensively.
I understand. But many people or organisations did it because they didn't know it. And they still do it now.
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
On principle, I completely agree. In practice, I think you've historically been a little inclined to overvalue the defensive side compared to the offensive. (This coming from someone who enjoys the hell out of good defensive play...)
Well, Laine played the whole year on the first line and for the large majority of games that line played best-on-best, so he was playing against the toughest competition, it's not like some other line was eating the difficult minutes to let Laine feast on easier opposition. I haven't seen the numbers for full season, but most games I watched & stat watched, that was the case - his most common opponents were usually the 1st line & 1st pair.
The numbers simply show the team was better at outscoring the opposition with Laine on the ice. Did he make them better defensively? I dunno, it depends what you're looking at. Interestingly enough, most guys also seemed to get scored on less with Laine than without. I don't think that really reflected in expected goals, I have no explanation, maybe it was sheer luck. He did do a good job of breaking up plays in transition and played very responsibly in getting back to D-zone, often resulting in a good backcheck. Maybe him & his line did a good job of preventing on the rush changes and the shot share numbers were ugly simply because when they failed to manage to break up the play early on, they got hemmed in for a lot of shots against. Just guessing.
I think Laine was greatly helped by Jenner, who did a great job playing with him, but it goes the other way as well - it was Laine who drove the offense and I'm not convinced if you replace Laine with any other player in the team that Jenner's line would've done better in terms of results and I think Jenner's very good point totals were in large part thanks to offense provided by Laine.
You laugh at all the "facts" provided by anyone else, yet you don't seem to really provide any of your own. I see you have a very strong opinion on the matter but I don't see much in the way of providing any sort of argument for it.
I'm sure everyone can agree the team needs to do a lot better defensively as a whole, but I don't really see Laine as the problem last season. Most of the value you get from Laine comes from his offense, I don't think that will change but I didn't see anything lazy about the way he played defense last year, if anything for a guy with his offensive skillset, he was always very responsible about making an effort and getting back. And he practically never cheats for offense. Looking at the roster, this team actually played better than they were supposed to on the first year of retool/rebuild/whatever it is Jarmo is doing, so it seems a bit odd to label them as complete failures.
Viqsi
"that chick from Ohio"
Expected goals models are great tools, but they lack for example shooter quality factor (most of then do, that is). They tend to have "shot quality", but that name is misleading and has nothing to do with the actual quality of the shot (accuracy, velocity & quick/hidden release), but just that from where the shot was taken etc. That's why xGF tends to be all over the place for the best shooters.
Also there are a lot of details missing from xGA as your last fraction of a second backcheck might do all the difference between a sure goal and a missed opportunity. Though xGA should generally be better than xGF, as for eg. quality of shooting evens out.
In reality there are "99% goals" and like "0.1% goals", and I am afraid xGA/xGF do not count those as such.
Still a great stat and a great indication what tends to happen, but in the end of the day only the real stats, real goals for and against is what matters. In sample sizes large enough (1+ seasons), "luck" doesn't really matter.
A lot of models will use the actual Goals For results to assess a player's offensive contribution, and then switch to xGA to assess a player's defensive contribution. An elite shooter like Laine will outperform his xGF but can't really do that much to outperform his xGA on any consistent basis. Pretty much everyone will see their GA and xGA deviate from each other based on goalie play. So I like this way of modeling.
And Laine's xGA was worst on the club and 2nd worst among league forwards. There were a few guys like Nyquist who had far worse GA but that discrepancy seems to be mostly driven by goaltending.
I don't think of Laine as a guy that doesn't try defensively. He's a good backchecker. But he's also frequently a one-and-done rush player. As opposed to a cycle line that will get pucks deep and work them around over the course of 30+ seconds (think Crosby's line, Bergeron's line, etc...), Laine and his linemates will go in on the rush, make a shot attempt, and then not get the puck back, possibly for the entirety of the shift. It's the other team's turn to try and score for most of their TOI. I'm pretty sure Laine didn't make the team better defensively.
That makes a lot of sense, though I gotta say I lost a lot of faith in xG models last season when I actually both watched & stat-watched a lot of games - in the past I used to do only one or the other mostly. But if looking at defensive impact like that, I do agree for the most part.
That said, no model is going to convince me Laine's defensive impact is anywhere near the worst for forwards in the league. The way I see it, I honestly think his defensive play in the neutral zone and backchecking were good, sometimes even very good this last season, I even saw little sparks of Barkov every once in a while
In the D-zone he has mostly good positioning and he's smart about playing it safe and not chasing plays. I think his reads high up in the zone are pretty good, maybe because they seem easier to translate from his offensive game. On the negative side, that "play it safe" style can lead to overly passive play which does nothing to break the cycle of the opposing team. And when he ends up chasing the play in the D-zone, or has to play down low, then he's downright bad and you're basically screwed. I think his defensive reads are no good that way.
Still, I don't think overall that adds to anything close to league worst even when looking at defensive impact only. In the end what matters most is the combined off/def impact which results in outscoring (or not) the opposition. In that department he's been mostly good, though looking only at his CBJ tenure it's been 50/50. 20-21 was a huge disappointment, somehow I thought against all odds him & Torts were actually going to be a great fit (I know?
) and was expecting a beast mode season. Especially after that season opener as a Jet. At least he delivered this season, though I would've liked to see 82 games of it.That makes a lot of sense, though I gotta say I lost a lot of faith in xG models last season when I actually both watched & stat-watched a lot of games - in the past I used to do only one or the other mostly. But if looking at defensive impact like that, I do agree for the most part.
That said, no model is going to convince me Laine's defensive impact is anywhere near the worst for forwards in the league. The way I see it, I honestly think his defensive play in the neutral zone and backchecking were good, sometimes even very good this last season, I even saw little sparks of Barkov every once in a while
On the negative side, that "play it safe" style can lead to overly passive play which does nothing to break the cycle of the opposing team. And when he ends up chasing the play in the D-zone, or has to play down low, then he's downright bad and you're basically screwed. I think his defensive reads are no good that way.
Still, I don't think overall that adds to anything close to league worst even when looking at defensive impact only. In the end what matters most is the combined off/def impact which results in outscoring (or not) the opposition. In that department he's been mostly good, though looking only at his CBJ tenure it's been 50/50. 20-21 was a huge disappointment, somehow I thought against all odds him & Torts were actually going to be a great fit (I know?
Some of the models use xG for both ends of the ice and that really misses Laine's offensive value.
On the defensive side, I don't disagree in some ways. Laine does some nice things when the other team has the puck. But the other team still has the puck most of the time with him on the ice (to an extreme degree relative to other players) and that is the core of the issue. You either have the puck or you don't. If you don't have it the other team will usually score more, even if you are playing your ass off.
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