Player Discussion Patrik Laine: Part 2 - Healthy Living Edition

[Estimated_Prophet]

Is he an egregious defensive liability though? How many goals has his line conceded in the past 10 games, maybe one in the Oilers game?

Not saying he's a defensive wizard or anything, but he's "surviving" his 5on5 minutes. The main issue is not that the 2nd line is leaking goals against, but the fact that they're not really producing anything either. They're just there. Not a whole lot of pluses or minuses either way.

For Team Finland he was a net positive player even though the team, quite frankly, didn't do too well in that tournament. Again, it wasn't his line leaking goals. While players like Aho and Rantanen ended up on the negative side, Barkov and Laine were our only positive players.

You are using stats to provide you opinion which is entirely ridiculous. The fact that you are insinuating that he was a better defensive player than Aho (an elite two way forward) at the recent tournament is absolute evidence that such methodologies are absurd and should not be used by the layman to prop up such narratives.

Most posters on this board know that he is a bum defensively and he has been benched by every coach that has had him for his lazy approach to defence. MSL just recently spoke to the fact that he does not trust him defensively and that he needs to get better both in practice and in game.

I don't know how anyone can watch him play and claim that he is not a terrible 200 ft player and still claim to have a credible opinion on the matter. Does this mean that he will always be a poor defender? Anything is possible but if you have followed him at all since before he was drafted, he is a lone wolf who does not take direction or criticism well and has always believed that he knows best.

We quite literally won't need him at all if Demidov can get up to speed quickly as he is just taking Caufield's spot on the PP and despite the success of his shot he has turned the puck over a ton and completed close to zero seam passes on the PP despite many attempts to do so early in his tenure.

 

[Fuonki]

Is he an egregious defensive liability though? How many goals has his line conceded in the past 10 games, maybe one in the Oilers game?

If you really want to analyze a player's defensive prowess it goes much much deeper than looking at a simplistic "how many goals did his line concede?" graph. When Laine is on the ice the team is conceding significantly more scoring chances against than without him as you can see from the graph. Essentially everyone performs worse with Laine than without Laine, with Hutson especially suffering significantly from sharing minutes with Laine for reasons that a coaching staff might want to analyze further.

Laine when drafted was seen by at least one Finnish commentator as being the most defensively responsible forward since Koivu. I couldn't understand that for a long time (Barkov was there in between) but it makes sense. He is not great at defending (sometimes even bad) but he does genuinely try. He is not defensively talented but he makes the responsible moves.

This is just hilarious revisionism. If you look up some of the articles written about his rookie year almost each of them mentions how his defensive play has improved in Winnipeg, as in Finland he was very well known as a player who takes a lot of liberties on the defensive end of the ice. The conversation around him always oriented towards him being a sort of a budget Ovechkin - a player with a ridiculous shot and who can also do well in transition play with his size and stickhandling. Now with all the injuries he's become very slow and lost a lot of that transition play that helped him succeed at 5v5.

 

[BullLund]

You are using stats to provide you opinion which is entirely ridiculous. The fact that you are insinuating that he was a better defensive player than Aho (an elite two way forward) at the recent tournament is absolute evidence that such methodologies are absurd and should not be used by the layman to prop up such narratives.

Most posters on this board know that he is a bum defensively and he has been benched by every coach that has had him for his lazy approach to defence. MSL just recently spoke to the fact that he does not trust him defensively and that he needs to get better both in practice and in game.

I don't know how anyone can watch him play and claim that he is not a terrible 200 ft player and still claim to have a credible opinion on the matter. Does this mean that he will always be a poor defender? Anything is possible but if you have followed him at all since before he was drafted, he is a lone wolf who does not take direction or criticism well and has always believed that he knows best.

We quite literally won't need him at all if Demidov can get up to speed quickly as he is just taking Caufield's spot on the PP and despite the success of his shot he has turned the puck over a ton and completed close to zero seam passes on the PP despite many attempts to do so early in his tenure.

I never said he was better, I'm just saying that in that company, he performed well. Against the best players in the world. He's known as someone who turns up for the big games. And also someone who might take the foot off the gas in less meaningful matches, especially back to backs.

I've followed him since draft and he was fine defensively on Columbus. Not a liability by any stretch of imagination. Just go look up the stats for the two seasons when he was healthy and acclimated to the system.

He was often benched for other reasons, such as mouthing off to an assistant coach.

View attachment 994613
If you really want to analyze a player's defensive prowess it goes much much deeper than looking at a simplistic "how many goals did his line concede?" graph. When Laine is on the ice the team is conceding significantly more scoring chances against than without him as you can see from the graph. Essentially everyone performs worse with Laine than without Laine, with Hutson especially suffering significantly from sharing minutes with Laine for reasons that a coaching staff might want to analyze further.

This is just hilarious revisionism. If you look up some of the articles written about his rookie year almost each of them mentions how his defensive play has improved in Winnipeg, as in Finland he was very well known as a player who takes a lot of liberties on the defensive end of the ice. The conversation around him always oriented towards him being a sort of a budget Ovechkin - a player with a ridiculous shot and who can also do well in transition play with his size and stickhandling. Now with all the injuries he's become very slow and lost a lot of that transition play that helped him succeed at 5v5.

No doubt he had a terrible stretch before the Four Nations tournament as the whole team was gassed, especially him. But I'm pretty sure these stats are improving recently.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Is he an egregious defensive liability thoug

For a while he was. Yes.

Haven’t looked since Four Nations on the stats but his play does appear to have improved at even strength. And with Dach going down that line has been discombobulated so it’s not all on Laine.

Again though l, he’s improving and a summer of conditioning should help. We’ll have a better idea of who he really is next year.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

You are using stats to provide you opinion which is entirely ridiculous.

How do we know that Wayne Gretzky is better than Tie Domi? Statistics.

I’m not sure why you keep saying stats are useless in an argument. They’re not. But… you have to be looking at the right stats and they need to be put in context.

Btw, the stats back up what you’re saying. Laine has been bad defensively this season.

The fact that you are insinuating that he was a better defensive player than Aho (an elite two way forward) at the recent tournament is absolute evidence that such methodologies are absurd and should not be used by the layman to prop up such narratives.

Most posters on this board know that he is a bum defensively and he has been benched by every coach that has had him for his lazy approach to defence. MSL just recently spoke to the fact that he does not trust him defensively and that he needs to get better both in practice and in game.

I don't know how anyone can watch him play and claim that he is not a terrible 200 ft player and still claim to have a credible opinion on the matter. Does this mean that he will always be a poor defender? Anything is possible but if you have followed him at all since before he was drafted, he is a lone wolf who does not take direction or criticism well and has always believed that he knows best.

We quite literally won't need him at all if Demidov can get up to speed quickly as he is just taking Caufield's spot on the PP and despite the success of his shot he has turned the puck over a ton and completed close to zero seam passes on the PP despite many attempts to do so early in his tenure.

If Demidov pans out, that’s great. But it is awesome having a cheat code on the PP. I’m Willing to put up with his deficiencies if he keeps doing that. Moreover, Demidov might even turn him into a threat at 5 on 5.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Btw,

My new nickname for Laine is: Cheat Code

 

[BullLund]

We quite literally won't need him at all if Demidov can get up to speed quickly as he is just taking Caufield's spot on the PP and despite the success of his shot he has turned the puck over a ton and completed close to zero seam passes on the PP despite many attempts to do so early in his tenure.

Also I do think it's genuinely delusional to say that you can somehow replace Laine and get the same effect on PP. Colefield had been in that spot previously yet where was the success? The reason why they have success is because there's multiple shooters on the first unit including an elite shooter in Laine.

Demidov is not really projected to be a shooter on that level. He seems to be more of a playmaker with great hands.

 

[BullLund]

For a while he was. Yes.

Haven’t looked since Four Nations on the stats but his play does appear to have improved at even strength. And with Dach going down that line has been discombobulated so it’s not all on Laine.

Again though l, he’s improving and a summer of conditioning should help. We’ll have a better idea of who he really is next year.

Well I'm not going to zero in on a terrible stretch when the whole team was playing badly due to one of the toughest schedules in NHL which will especially effect a dude playing through knee injury who's been inactive for ages and lacks conditioning.

If he goes on to have that same type of stretch again, then yeah, there might be fire to that smoke. But for now I'll give him a pass.

This whole story about him being a tire fire defensively, it just wasn't true in Columbus. Their main disappointment in him was the fact that he didn't solve their PP woes. 5on5 he did just fine. If he manages to get anywhere close to that form while keeping up the PP production, yeah, that's a guy you'll want on your team. But he still has a long way to prove it.

 

[Vapaatunnus]

How do we know that Wayne Gretzky is better than Tie Domi? Statistics.

I’m not sure why you keep saying stats are useless in an argument. They’re not. But… you have to be looking at the right stats and they need to be put in context.

Btw, the stats back up what you’re saying. Laine has been bad defensively this season.

If Demidov pans out, that’s great. But it is awesome having a cheat code on the PP. I’m Willing to put up with his deficiencies if he keeps doing that. Moreover, Demidov might even turn him into a threat at 5 on 5.

"Laine has been bad defensively this season."

If you can't skate you can't defend either

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Well I'm not going to zero in on a terrible stretch when the whole team was playing badly due to one of the toughest schedules in NHL which will especially effect a dude playing through knee injury who's been inactive for ages and lacks conditioning.

That was when the team was playing really well.

If he goes on to have that same type of stretch again, then yeah, there might be fire to that smoke. But for now I'll give him a pass.

That’s fine. I am too. He was coming off a long layoff. You can’t expect him to be at his best.

This whole story about him being a tire fire defensively, it just wasn't true in Columbus. Their main disappointment in him was the fact that he didn't solve their PP woes. 5on5 he did just fine. If he manages to get anywhere close to that form while keeping up the PP production, yeah, that's a guy you'll want on your team. But he still has a long way to prove it.

I can’t speak about his time in Columbus. The only time I’ve really watched a Jackets game is when they play us.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

"Laine has been bad defensively this season."

If you can't skate you can't defend either

That’s true.

 

[DAChampion]

View attachment 994613
If you really want to analyze a player's defensive prowess it goes much much deeper than looking at a simplistic "how many goals did his line concede?" graph. When Laine is on the ice the team is conceding significantly more scoring chances against than without him as you can see from the graph. Essentially everyone performs worse with Laine than without Laine, with Hutson especially suffering significantly from sharing minutes with Laine for reasons that a coaching staff might want to analyze further.

That's not what this overly complicated graph shows.

First, some issues with the graph:
- There are no errors bars
- How the players do without Laine is the independent variable, not how the players do with Laine, as the former is a larger and more representative sample.

Now, what the graph shows is that Guhle, Hutson, Matheson, Dach have better defensive numbers without Laine, and Carrier, Savard, Xhekaj, and Newhook have better defensive numbers with Laine.

For example, Savard's "expected goals allowed per 60 minutes" is 2.85 without Laine, and 2.35 with Laine. Assuming that such a thing can be measured (lol), and since there's no error bar we should assume that the measurement is infinitely precise (lol).

In other words, if your aim is to simp advanced stats, you've just argued that Laine is defensively neutral.

PS Lastly, xGA/60 is not "much deeper" (as you call it) than goals allowed. Normalizing per 60 minutes is valid, but it's not advanced, a 7 year old can figure that out. Replacing goals with shots weighted by shot quality is the other change, and is of subjective value. There is no objective metric for "expected goals".

 

[Fuonki]

No doubt he had a terrible stretch before the Four Nations tournament as the whole team was gassed, especially him. But I'm pretty sure these stats are improving recently.

These stats are accumulated from throughout the season. Yes, he has been slightly better in the past 10 games but that's mostly just because earlier on in the season he was genuinely one of the worst players in the league at 5v5

 

[417]

I think people confuse constructive criticism with complaint. And I think some people are being overly defensive.

I promise you I understand the difference.

I'm talking to the folks, whether fans or media, who constantly rag on the guy for his effort or lack thereof (which is usually related to whether he's scoring goals or not, go figure) for being sick, etc.

I mean you got folks talking about potentially buying him out this summer.

It’s accurate to say he’s been poor 5 on 5. That doesn’t mean he sucks or shouldn’t have made th deal. And it’s to be expected after the layoff.

Hence....not to mention, he was playing with a guy who at center was coming off an even longer layoff.

But nobody is going to complain about the production. His PP more than makes up for it. It was a great trade. And there’s lots of room for him to improve.

I hope not lol but you still have folks over-analyzing his game and expecting him to be a player he's never shown to be. He's never going to be a Selke candidate or appear to be "trying hard" out there. It's just not his game.

At a certain point, you have to reconcile with the kind of player he is and stop expecting him to morph into something he's never shown to be.

He's on the team for a specific purpose and he does that very well.

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

I hope I'm not showing my old age with this one

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

At a certain point, you have to reconcile with the kind of player he is and stop expecting him to morph into something he's never shown to be.

He's on the team for a specific purpose and he does that very well.

He can be better , his skating was much better in CBJ before the injuries + the most recent one with us.

I agree with you that people are a little hard on him considering his situation and return from injury , he's done great for us.

I just think there's a little more juice in there and we might have to wait for next season to see it

 

[BullLund]

These stats are accumulated from throughout the season. Yes, he has been slightly better in the past 10 games but that's mostly just because earlier on in the season he was genuinely one of the worst players in the league at 5v5

Those stats indicate that he's not having a positive impact to scoring 5v5 but the defensive impact is pretty negligible.

He was trash for that stretch but I feel like too many people are making up their mind on him as a player solely because of that one stretch of bad gameplay.

Now, if he goes on another 10 game streak of skating aimlessly and contributing to nothing, to end the season, then I agree there's enough evidence to suggest that this is where he is currently at as a player. But we've seen even the best players in the league go on some really terrible runs. It all evens out at the end of the day. Once he has played enough games, we'll see what the general trend is for him.

 

[Fuonki]

That's not what this overly complicated graph shows.

First, some issues with the graph:
- There are no errors bars
- How the players do without Laine is the independent variable, not how the players do with Laine, as the former is a larger and more representative sample.

Now, what the graph shows is that Guhle, Hutson, Matheson, Dach have better defensive numbers without Laine, and Carrier, Savard, Xhekaj, and Newhook have better defensive numbers with Laine.

The only way to effectively look at a player's defensive ability is to look at how many (and how high quality) chances his team concedes with him on the ice, and then compare with him off the ice. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that since you have to account for a large amount of factors that I won't repeat here.

You must be seriously blind if you think that the image showcases Laine being "defensively neutral" whatever that even means. If you look at where all the black lines connect that's where you'll find how the team generally performs with Laine on the ice. Yes, Newhook, Xhekaj, Carrier and Savard for whatever reason have slightly better xGA statistics with Laine on the ice at the cost of their offensive numbers being completely caved in, which is the bigger problem. Nobody is expecting Laine to play great defense, but everyone is expecting Laine to not be a total void when it comes to producing 5v5 offence. Caufield is just as terrible defensively but nobody is giving him shit because he makes it up by producing great offensive numbers that are also reflected on the scoreboard.

In other words, if your aim is to simp advanced stats

Grow up.

PS Lastly, xGA/60 is not "much deeper" (as you call it) than goals allowed. Normalizing per 60 minutes is valid, but it's not advanced, a 7 year old can figure that out. Replacing goals with shots weighted by shot quality is the other change, and is of subjective value. There is no objective metric for "expected goals".

Removing by far the biggest impacting factor aka the goalie makes any statistic ten times more accurate. If Laine played in front of prime Hasek he obviously wouldn't get scored on as much, but how is that related to his own defensive skill at all? You don't obviously have to trust one individual xG model, there's probably more than a dozen completely free xG models out there on the internet that will all tell you the same exact story. Shot metrics are simply the single best predictor of future success, which is why every single NHL team has a data analysis team combing through the same data and why betting odds are based on the same data as wel.

If you think that's somehow more subjective than a layman's opinion based on nothing but a gut instinct you're just an internet troll.

 

[417]

He can be better , his skating was much better in CBJ before the injuries + the most recent one with us.

I agree with you that people are a little hard on him considering his situation and return from injury , he's done great for us.

I just think there's a little more juice in there and we might have to wait for next season to see it

Yeah i'm convinced he's going to need some kind of surgery over the offseason to clean that knee up, so certainly don't think his mobility is all there.

Which makes the questioning of his effort level even more bizarre.

Dude could have called his season and collected his cheque on IR, but I keep hearing how he doesn't love hockey...

 

[DAChampion]

You must be seriously blind if you think that the image showcases Laine being "defensively neutral" whatever that even means.

The overly complicated, poorly designed graph you showed shows 4 players with better defensive metrics with Laine, and 4 players with inferior defensive numbers with Laine. I'm reproducing it here so others can follow:

Carrier, Savard, Xhekaj, and Newhook have better defensive numbers with Laine.

Dach, Matheson, Hutson, Guhle have lesser defensive numbers with Laine.

There are no errors bars so we can't tell if the offsets are meaningful.

Again, of you're going to simp advanced stats, at least understand what the stats are claiming to say. This figure shows Laine as being defensively neutral. I'm not saying that his play on the ice is defensively neutral, but that is what the future is saying.

Removing by far the biggest impacting factor aka the goalie makes any statistic ten times more accurate. If Laine played in front of prime Hasek he obviously wouldn't get scored on as much, but how is that related to his own defensive skill at all? You don't obviously have to trust one individual xG model, there's probably more than a dozen completely free xG models out there on the internet that will all tell you the same exact story.

ong shots is not more accurate than counting goals, it is actually less accurate, but more precise.

Look at these bullseyes. Counting shots is what you see on the bottom left, counting goals is what you see on the top right.

Perhaps this xGF model is good, nobody knows as it's not referenced. It's a plot without an explanation. What is their xGF model? Doesn't say. Is it a good enough model to account for the fact Laine has a career 15% shooting percentage? Doesn't say.

If you think that's somehow more subjective than a layman's opinion based on nothing but a gut instinct you're just an internet troll.

I'm at a layman level when it comes to seeing the little things during the games, but when it comes to stats and data science I'm at a higher level than the person who made that plot. I'm comfortable pointing out it's poorly designed and poorly explained.

 

[DAChampion]

Those stats indicate that he's not having a positive impact to scoring 5v5 but the defensive impact is pretty negligible.

He was trash for that stretch but I feel like too many people are making up their mind on him as a player solely because of that one stretch of bad gameplay.

Now, if he goes on another 10 game streak of skating aimlessly and contributing to nothing, to end the season, then I agree there's enough evidence to suggest that this is where he is currently at as a player. But we've seen even the best players in the league go on some really terrible runs. It all evens out at the end of the day. Once he has played enough games, we'll see what the general trend is for him.

So these particular stats show that Laine is defensively neutral, is that a failure of the stats or of our eye test?

So these particular stats show that Laine is offensively terrible, is that a failure of the stats or of our eye test?

It could also be a conceptual error, that we shouldn't split offense and defense into independent categories.

 

[BullLund]

The overly complicated, poorly designed graph you showed shows 4 players with better defensive metrics with Laine, and 4 players with inferior defensive numbers with Laine. I'm reproducing it here so others can follow:

View attachment 994646

Carrier, Savard, Xhekaj, and Newhook have better defensive numbers with Laine.

Dach, Matheson, Hutson, Guhle have lesser defensive numbers with Laine.

There are no errors bars so we can't tell if the offsets are meaningful.

Again, of you're going to simp advanced stats, at least understand what the stats are claiming to say. This figure shows Laine as being defensively neutral. I'm not saying that his play on the ice is defensively neutral, but that is what the future is saying.


ong shots is not more accurate than counting goals, it is actually less accurate, but more precise.

Look at these bullseyes. Counting shots is what you see on the bottom left, counting goals is what you see on the top right.

Perhaps this xGF model is good, nobody knows as it's not referenced. It's a plot without an explanation. What is their xGF model? Doesn't say. Is it a good enough model to account for the fact Laine has a career 15% shooting percentage? Doesn't say.

I'm at a layman level when it comes to seeing the little things during the games, but when it comes to stats and data science I'm at a higher level than the person who made that plot. I'm comfortable pointing out it's poorly designed and poorly explained.

The whole thing started from me questioning how terrible Laine truly is defensively, anyway. These stats seem to indicate that he's more so a void offensively. When he's on the ice, nothing was happening.

That's not a good thing, either, but it doesn't necessarily show that he's leaking goals out there.

Now, there's a lot of other factors I'd take into account, for example, is he being "protected" by the coach and covered up for by the rest of the players, to the detriment of the team, only to achieve this level of mediocrity? Maybe. I feel like there'll be enough data by the end of the season to know.

Of course, I don't disregard the eye test. The coach clearly isn't convinced. He doesn't look great out there. Maybe he's surviving by luck and in the long term, the mistakes will start to cost him and the team. That's possible also.

I just feel like it's too early to tell. His history on Columbus was a little different from the prevailing narrative. He wasn't a bad 5on5 player. He wasn't a defensive disaster. He just didn't bring the firepower on PP that was expected. Constant injuries and concussions ruined his run there.

 

[Marioesque]

Interesting stat that Marinaro brought up. Apparently Laine has the highest average of blocked shots out of all the habs forwards.

Of course it means he's been a line that has had to defend a lot, but it also shows he has done that defending.

One of those things that "eye test" might have failed to highlight. I wouldn't have guessed it, and I'm a fan.