I thought Emberson showed some struggles lately that we haven't seen in awhile. Got torched by MacK, but like what defenceman doesn't, that's just what MacK does.
I don't necessarily disagree with you that EK doesn't make a tonne of space. But it's certainly doable at 50% retained. Would just need to include Evander Kane in the deal back and its essentially money in money out. Pittsburgh likely wouldn't have much problem taking him back for the rest of this season and the next. He'd be a good fit with either Crosby or Malkin for the next ~17 months and then they could deal him for a pick at the 2026 deadline.
We cannot trade the 2025 pick. There are no restrictions on the 2026 pick though. The Oilers can trade that whenever they want. It would nullify the conditions on the 2025 pick (top 12 protected) that are currently in place from the Sam O'Reilly draft trade. So the Flyers would then get that pick regardless of where the Oilers finished.
Okay good. I assumed we'd still have the 2026 to trade with or 2025 in the unlikely scenario the pick got protected cause our season tanks into bottom 12.
Just watched him struggle against the Pens. Maybe Nucks are overhyping this guy.
We wouldn’t.
Rasmus no chance. Calgary ownership are petty and would never help the Oil.
I struggle with these x stats in isolation to make conclusions about individual players. As an Oiler Emberson's zone starts this season are 58.4% d-zone, 41.6% o-zone. Deployment is one critical component of game management under coaching control. Against Colorado, Emberson had second highest PK toi with 5:07 minutes, that's 26% of his total toi. Notably his short-handed zone starts this season are 93.3% d-zone, 6.7% o-zone.
You need to ask a much more detailed question than that no. 4! Is there a D man that will be available that is the foil to Nurse, that we can make the cap work on somehow and that our competitors won't scoop up and at a price we can live with?
According to Gazzola the Oilers scoffed at the idea of even putting a claim in for him.
Half of that was covered when I said realistic, the other half I'll figure out later. Just trying to get a list of candidates together guy!
This confirmed?
I don't think any of those 3 needed much convincing to play defense (Knob previously coached 2 of those 3) and I'm not seeing anything close to what I'd call mistake free hockey from that bunch.
This is not a specific criticism of your post but in general I have major concerns about over valuing zone start numbers in terms of their impact on other stats. There are several factors that are most important for me in coming to this. First, the vast majority of shift stats are either on the fly or neutral zone starts. The second is that top offensive players create more ozone faceoffs. There is also the fact that bottom pairing defensemen are often used against 3rd and fourth liners in the defensive zone and those players tend not to generate a lot of shots or scoring opportunities even with offensive zone starts.
puckplusplus.com
I'd like the idea of going after EK if he had 1 year left on his contract but he doesn't. He's 34 and getting stuck with another 3 years of an expensive, aging player wouldn't be good even if Pittsburgh retains a whole bunch of his cap hit.
I appreciate your post and most definitely defer to your expert level understanding of math and statistics. And for taking time to share the article. I appreciate that hockey is not a strict, static game and that zone starts are a dynamic component of a moving game at high speed with tons of random, often non-repeatable events. I conflate several things in my post but narrowing to Emberson I find it difficult to conclude he was 'caved in' the Colorado game when considering several things:This is not a specific criticism of your post but in general I have major concerns about over valuing zone start numbers in terms of their impact on other stats. There are several factors that are most important for me in coming to this. First, the vast majority of shift stats are either on the fly or neutral zone starts. The second is that top offensive players create more ozone faceoffs. There is also the fact that bottom pairing defensemen are often used against 3rd and fourth liners in the defensive zone and those players tend not to generate a lot of shots or scoring opportunities even with offensive zone starts.
I looked around a bit and found the following article that articulates some of this:
How much do zone starts matter part II: A lot on their own, not that much in aggregate
In Part I of our review of zone starts, we looked at the how the traditional definition of zone starts varied from what most people would consider a “true” zone start, and found that when we applie…
In fact McCurdy did a significant study on this and his analysis showed that only 5% of the players in the league would have seen more than a 1% change in their possession numbers if zone starts were adjusted out of the picture.
Now zone starts can indicate a coaches belief in a player. But I think that to do so accurately does require some additional context.
By the way if you look at a guy Bouchard he has fantastic possession numbers that are often attributed to playing with Ekholm, McDavid and Leon and to positivce zone start stats. Yet if you take these three out of the picture his possession a stats since 2022-23 are about 10 points better than the teams numbers with out any of the four on the ice with similar zone starts. In fact in almost every combination possession improves with him on the ice vs not:
56 points is somehow bad from a defenseman? He's on a other 50 point pace on a really bad Pittsburgh team. Not that I want him but I think you're not giving him enough credit for his season last year.
