Brock Nelson’s disappointing individual offense so far.

Brock Nelson has turned some heads to start this season – particularly those of the media who don’t know any non-Tavares Islanders. 4 goals in 3 games (now 4 in 4) demands some respect after all. But there’s a big number next to that 4 goal, 3 assist stat line that is a bit more alarming: Brock is shooting 80% in those 4 games.

Now anyone with 4 goals in 3-4 games is going to have a fluky high shooting % (unless your name is Steven Stamkos, apparently). That’s not the issue. The issue is this: if you’ve scored 4 goals, and have an 80% shooting %, that means you’ve only taken FIVE SHOTS ON GOAL. And two of Nelson’s goals have come basically on deflections (one in mid-air off his knee), so he arguably deserves to be credited with LESS shots!

This is a surprise. Coming into this season, there were two interesting questions when it came to shot totals. The first involved Mikhail Grabovski, whose shots and shot attempts per 60 tanked last year with the Caps. That question has been answered with a resounding positive so far: Grabovski leads the Isles with over 20 shot attempts per 60 at even strength (for comparison, the last 7 years he’s been at 13.4, and last year he was at 8.448).

The second involved Nelson, who was actually THIRD in shot attempts (corsi) per 60 last year for the Isles at 14.6 attempts per 60, but was only 7th with an average rate of SOG/60 since a high % of his shots were blocked last year. Research tends to support the idea that the % of shots of a player that are blocked is very random, meaning we would’ve expected Nelson to “take a leap” as more of his shots wound up on net. And it also seemed possible, with better linemates certain and his rookie year behind him, that Nelson would take an actual leap and increase his shot totals.

As I mentioned above, that hasn’t happened, and it’s a potential worry. Ignoring the power play (which should net Nelson extra shots, but hasn’t really yet), at even strength, only Josh Bailey, notorious for refusing to shoot, is taking less shots per 60 amongst Isles forwards – Nelson’s shot attempts per 60 through 4 games is only 10.16 – a 30% decrease from last year!

This is important because shot volume is the real key to goal scoring, not shooting %. Shooting %, as you should know, is incredibly fluky (leading to big hot and cold streaks), and your best shooters, barring the rare exception like Steven Stamkos, put up large #s by taking LOTS and LOTS of shots – see John Tavares for example. If Nelson is going to be a 20 goal scorer, year in and year out, he’d need probably to take around 200 shots on goal per year, or a rate of 2.43 shots per game. And that’s to be a TWENTY goal scorer, not exactly a high bar. Right now he’s achieving a rate at half that number, and that needs to change.

Now unlike a Josh Bailey, last year suggests pretty strongly that Nelson has the talent to do better than this. And Nelson’s line (especially when Grabbo comes back) will play well enough that even without scoring, he’s a good player. But by increasing his shooting, he could become truly great. And with Grabbo – a high volume shooter – now out, Nelson’s shot will become increasing important.

He needs to make use of it more. A lot more.

2 Game Samples are fun to talk about. They Ultimately mean nothing.

I had a tweet get retweeted by a lot of Isles people on twitter yesterday.

For fun, #isles d-man corsi through 2 games: Leddy: +17 Boychuk: +10 Hickey: +9 Hamonic: +6 Reinhart: -4 Strait: -8

— garik16 (@garik16) October 12, 2014

Unfortunately, I don’t think people got the point of those first two words – “For Fun”.  Corsi is a useful stat because it strips out things out of players’ control you have in goal based metrics (your goalie’s save percentage, for instance) and because the larger sample size makes it more predictive than goal based metrics at an earlier point.  That earlier point is NOWHERE NEAR 2 games – at around 8-10 games corsi starts to give us a reasonable picture to look at, and around 20 games is where we really start to have a picture that we can talk about somewhat confidently (this doesn’t mean things can’t change after 20 games of course!  But the sample is meaningful).

All the #s in that tweet say are what happened with those guys on the ice so far.  So while Leddy and Boychuk have been on the Ice, the Isles have so far been successful; with Strait and Reinhart, not so much.  That doesn’t mean that’ll continue.  I suspect it will, or I wouldn’t even have tweeted it, but we shouldn’t go overboard.

Calvin de Haan may be back before we get an 8 game sample of Strait-Reinhart (although I suspect Reinhart is the casualty here, due to his waiver exempt status, so we’ll see more of Strait).  But let’s not conclude just yet the pair is a big failure.

Evaluating the Opening Night Lines and Pairs

The season begins for the Islanders on Friday, and we now know both the 23 man roster and the expected lines and D-Pairs for that game (barring injury).  Now these lines may not really mean anything – if the team starts out flat, I would be unsurprised if they change by the 2nd period (although D-Pairings tend to be more constant) Friday!  Barring a 2-0 start, there’s certainly a pretty good chance that by game 3 vs the Rangers, these lines are completely mixed up – it’s what Cappy does, and it’s what a lot of teams do early (Seriously, check out the line combo data set at ProgressiveHockey: http://www.progressivehockey.com/p/blog-page.html – you’ll see how commonly line combos are mixed up by teams and how few stay together for a decent period).

That said, we have line combos, hockey is coming up, so let’s take a look at them to see if they are likely to succeed, or if a remix is appropriate.  We’ll be focusing upon prior years possession #s when analyzing these lines.

Line 1:  Cory Conacher-John Tavares-Kyle Okposo
2013-2014: Cory Conacher +0.4% Relative corsi, John Tavares +0.9% Relative Corsi, Kyle Okposo +1.8% Relative Corsi

The Isles top line struggled to outpossess opponents, despite scoring dominance.  It was a surprise for John Tavares, who had always previously been a very plus possession player with some favorable minutes.  Tavares’ “new” line this year features Okposo (a barely plus possession player when away from Frans Nielsen for his career) and Cory Conacher, who’s basically always been scratch in possession in favorable minutes.

In short, Tavares has been given two guys who are at most slightly positive in possession to help him, which probably won’t result in a dominant possession line.  Still, if JT returns to normal, this should be a plus possession line, and of course any line with Tavares will be a threat to maximize that possession.

Line 2: Ryan Strome-Mikhail Grabovski-Brock Nelson
2013-2014: Ryan Strome +3.9% Relative Corsi, Mikhail Grabovski +3.8%, Brock Nelson +4.1%

By contrast, Line 2 is a combination of three players who put ups terrific possession numbers last year.  It’s not clear who is centering this line (Probably Grabovski, but Staple reported they were switching off in practice), but whoever it is, this is one line that should be dominant possession wise.  Neither of these three was given cushy minutes last year, and all three helped their teams to some level of dominance.  And now they’re all together.

Oh and all three guys could score 20 goals too (maybe 15 for Nelson).  But really, this strikes me as the best line the Isles’ are putting out on opening night.  I offhandly suggested they could pull a 60% corsi on twitter, which is almost certainly being silly – only 2 lines in hockey managed that last year (Bergeron for the Bruins and Kopitar-Williams for Kings), so to suggest these 3 could do it is probably a bit much – not to mention both rookies could regress a little.

Regardless, this is a combination of three seemingly plus possession players, and this should be a line that seriously outplays the opponents.  Course if one of line 1 or 3 struggles, I could see one of these three moved around to try and spread out the talent.

Line 3:  Josh Bailey-Frans Nielsen-Nikolay Kulemin
2013-2014:  Josh Bailey +4.1% Relative Corsi , Frans Nielsen +1.3%, Nikolay Kulemin – 2.1%

For Years, Frans Nielsen was a big plus possession player for the Isles.  Two years ago though, he was negative overall, due to a horrible start to the season, and last year he was positive, but no longer dominant.  So it’s quite possible that aging is taking its toll on the Danish God, despite his flukish scoring last year.

On the other hand, Frans’ play has been by far the best with Josh Bailey the last two years on the same line (50.8% Corsi the two years with Bailey, 44.9% without).  So this is probably a plus possession duo, despite what many Isles fans may think about Bailey.  The real wild card here is Nikolay Kulemin, who has been a negative possession player each of the last two years.  Some of that is the extreme burying, which he won’t face here, and some of it was his linemates, but at least some of that was his fault.  Can he return to the plus player he was before Carlyle?  I’m not as optimistic as some, but it will be very interesting to see.  And he can’t really complain too much about his linemates here.

Overall this is probably a plus possession line as well, at least as good as line 1 in possession.  But it’s likely got the greatest uncertainty of the three, due to the Kulemin factor.

Fourth line:  Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck
2013-2014: Matt Martin -5.6% Relative Corsi, Casey Cizikas -5.7%, Cal Clutterbuck – 1.2%

So far we’ve talked about 3 positive possession lines, which is pretty damn good.  Unfortunately, that trend ends here.  This line is basically the same 4th line as in previous years, with Clutterbuck replacing CMac, and the fourth line has simply been awful.  They’re constantly hemmed in their own zone, and there’s no reason to think it won’t happen again.  Hopefully the better D depth and goaltending, plus more limiting of their ice time (probably not with Cappy) can minimize the damage.

First Pair: Hickey-Hamonic
2013-2014: Hickey +1.7% Relative Corsi, Hamonic +1.3%

Unlike the lines above, we KNOW this pair is temporary, caused by the injuries to Visnovsky and de Haan.  That said, it is a pairing of plus possession players, which should work pretty well, and both guys get to play on-side.  The two guys have barely played together, so we don’t have much data on this, though the 100 minutes over the last two years is pretty damn positive.  I think this should be sneakily good first D-Pair to handle the toughs.

Second Pair: Leddy-Boychuk
2013-2014: Leddy +2.4% Relative Corsi, Boychuk +1.4%

Again, this is a pairing of plus possession players, although newcomers to the Isles.  Still this is a more uncertain pairing since Leddy has had some pretty strong sheltering the last two years while Boychuk was given some tougher minutes last year.  One would expect roughly 50% Offensive Zone starts, so Leddy might face some minor shock at not getting so many offensive zone faceoffs….except he’s good in the neutral zone and adjusting for zone starts still has him as positive.  Again, this should be a pretty solid D pair, even if not as strong as the expected 2nd pair of Hickey-Visnovsky.

Third Pair: Reinhart-Strait
2013-2014:  Reinhart: N/A, Strait: -5.8%

Let’s be clear here: Brian Strait was the worst Isles D-Man last year outside of Andrew MacDonald.  He’s probably not an NHL player.  Yet he’s on this 3rd pair with arguably our top defensive prospect.  It’s not something to look forward to.  And he’s probably playing off-side as well, since both he and Griffin are left handed shots.  Eeks.  To be fair, Strait was playing off-side a little I think with Andrew MacDonald, and that pairing was surprisingly just bad, instead of terrible (by contrast, Strait-Donovan was godawful).

Reinhart is almost certainly closer to AMac in style than Donovan, although he should presumably be better.  So perhaps he can make this pairing work.  That said, he’s not being given a pretty favorable partner to cover for him.  I wish him luck.

OVERALL:

In sum, the lines and pairs all have mostly pretty strong lines with 1 blech pair/line between them.  That’s pretty good, if maybe not the best that could’ve been chosen.  It should lead to a good start to this season, so hopefully Friday comes soon!

This is a cross-post from lighthousehockey. Please go there to comment on this post, it is posted here for completeness in the archive. I’ll put up a link to the LHH post when it is up.

Nick Leddy

Nick Leddy is the real prize of the D-Men acquired on saturday by the Islanders, for the simple reason that he’s under team control for a while – Leddy is in the last year of a bridge deal this year, with two more RFA years after that (and that generally means a long term contract is likely). So the Isles traded for 3+ years of Leddy, a 23 year old defenseman. So how good is he?

Well its a bit tricky to tell. Leddy has had fairly favorable zone starts (really favorable this last year) and thus his relative possession #s, once adjusted for them, are just a little bit positive over the last two years. Of course, this is just a little bit positive relative to a bunch of the best D-Men in the league, so that’s not really a huge negative. Some neutral zone numbers (see this great post here: http://www.japersrink.com/2014/9/18/6211821/its-all-relative-introduction-to-neutral-zone-scores-for-nhl) also suggest that his slightly positive relative #s are not the result of sheltering but in fact are reflective of true talent.

Potentially, more of an issue with evaluating Leddy’s possession #s, is that he’s spent a decent part of his time the last two years (720 minutes out of 1802) with Michael Rozsival. That pairing of course was pretty damn dominant (61.5% corsi) and Leddy wasn’t even close to that level without Rozsival. On the other hand, Rozsival wasn’t better without Leddy, so it’s likely this was more a case where the two players had great chemistry together rather than Leddy (or Rozsival) being carried by the other guys.

All of this is saying that the possession #s suggest leddy was at least not being a negative driver of possession, and may in fact be a pretty good one when compared to the rest of the league instead of to other Chicago D-Men. And he’s 23, so it’s not like he can’t improve – he’s 10 months younger than Matt Donovan and just two months older than Calvin de Haan.

Individually, Leddy is clearly a bigtime puck moving D-Man, with him having one of the higher rates at carrying the puck into the offensive zone of any D man in Corey Sznajder’s dataset (52% – comparable to Streit or Visnovsky 2013). The on-ice data bears this out (again http://www.japersrink.com/2014/9/18/6211821/its-all-relative-introduction-to-neutral-zone-scores-for-nhl) – with the Leddy and Rozsival pair being #1 in on-ice-controlled-entry%. He’s also a decent scorer, with 30 points each of the last three seasons (if you prorate the lockout season). Course Leddy was 2nd in PP TOI last season on Chicago and that Ice time may go down if the Isles use Visnovsky at PP1 and go with 4 forwards on the PP.

Long story short: Leddy adds a puck-moving D man to the Isles who can score some points, who is likely a plus possession (although not elite possession) player, and he has at least 3 years of team control left (and probably more). To put it shorter, he’s a clear 2nd pairing D. That’s pretty damn good, especially for what we gave up.

Johnny Boychuk.

Boychuk is a different story than Leddy – whereas Leddy was a trade of long term asset for long term asset, Boychuk is a trade of long term assets for a short term asset – Boychuk comes with 1 year of control, and he is going to get PAID next year. In short, Boychuk is extremely likely a rental – although unlike a trade deadline rental, the Isles will get a full year of Boychuk. The two second rounders given up for Boychuk is a pretty standard rate for a rental D Man (Regehr, Murray, AMac (2nd and a 3rd)), so it’s not an unfair deal (the conditional pick is irrelevant, since it’ll only come into play if the Isles trade Boychuk to an Eastern team, and they would only do that if they got something better than a 3rd back).

Boychuk is again a very different player from Leddy in how he plays – whereas Leddy is a playmaking D-man willing to carry the puck up the ice, Boychuk is a pure defensive D Man. And unlike many crease clearing d-men, Boychuk appears to be pretty decent – he makes the team better than when he’s not on the ice, even when he hasn’t played with Chara (this past year he was saddled a lot with Matt Bartkowski). He’s also by the way a right-handed D-Man, which makes him the 3rd one of those on the Isles (Hamonic, Carkner), so it would make a lot of sense for him to be playing on 3rd pair for the team (unless the team shifts Lubo to the left side, but that seems unlikely). And Boychuk is a pretty damn good third D-Man.

Again, he’s not a playmaking or offensive d man in the slightest. He dumped the puck in a ton last year for the Bruins, which may partly have been a team effect, but was also a real indicator of his tendencies. And that’s not horrible for a D-Man (D man entries aren’t the big driver of possession), and overall, he was a positive D Man in the incomplete data set we have in the neutral zone (again, see here: http://www.japersrink.com/2014/9/18/6211821/its-all-relative-introduction-to-neutral-zone-scores-for-nhl).

Conclusion:

In short, the Isles obtained two very solid D-Men on saturday, both of whom probably fit as 2nd pair D-Men. They may be very different types of D-Men, but both will be upgrades, so, yeah, Party on Garth.

More on Ryan Strome, Training Camp, and Roster Spots

I see I’ve gotten some minor pushback on the idea that training camp and preseason shouldn’t matter for Strome.  Some have argued: “Strome shouldn’t be simply guaranteed a spot!”  This argument misses the point – again, remember – how much can we learn from under 7 preseason games and some drills and what not going on in camp, as compared to 37 NHL and 37 AHL games?  The latter is clearly far far more impressive as a sample, and it is that which makes us pretty clear that Ryan Strome should make this team.

I also didn’t talk about the spots Ryan Strome could fill on this team.  See, hockey teams have available 12 forward spots and 6 defensive spots in the everyday lineup (in theory one could play 13 and 5 or 11 and 7, but let’s stick with what’s the overwhelming majority choice for deployment).  You’ll note that there is no position known as “bottom six forward” or “grinder.”  (or for that matter, “3rd pair defenseman”).  The reason for this is simple:  those terms don’t describe positions, they describe QUALITY of players.  A team doesn’t have only 6 spots for top 6 forwards – if they have 9 top 6-ers, they’re a great team, and can play ALL Nine.  If a team has 12 forwards who are better than grinders, it can play all 12.*

*You’ll note I’m not separating centers and wings for the reason that it does NOT apply to Ryan Strome – while Wingers may not be capable of playing Center, which is a harder position, centers can play winger.  Strome thus can certainly play in any of the 12 forward spots, and odds are he has to move to wing ANYHOW!  

This is why you didn’t see any grinders on the best olympic teams last year – grinders are simply another term for hockey players who aren’t good at hockey – and so many are forced to try and do other things to minimize the damage while they’re out on the ice.  Grinders exist because, with a salary cap and 30 different NHL teams, there simply aren’t enough non-grinder forwards to fill 12 forward spots on every team’s roster.

In short, Ryan Strome shouldn’t just be competing with Tavares, Okposo, Grabovski, Nielsen, Bailey, Kulemin, Grabner and Conacher – he’s should be competing for the spots of CMac, Martin, Cizikas, Clutterbuck, and Skille as well!   Some of these guys are amongst the very worst scorers in the NHL over the last few years (Martin, Clutterbuck), and several of those guys (Martin, Cizikas) have been shown to be massively out played while on the ice.  By contrast, Strome has shown to be a good scorer, with the potential to be an excellent one, and one who isn’t outplayed while on the ice!  So why should the lousy players get spots over him?!?!

Consider the case of Brock Nelson, who started last year on the 4th line.  The team wasn’t harmed by him on the 4th line – in fact the fourth line played far better with him, and as this became apparent, the team moved him up in the lines so that he got more ice time.  That’s how it should be for all players.

Ryan Strome is ready.  He ANNIHILATED the AHL last year.  He has nothing left to learn.  Make use of that talent, even if it’s on the fourth line – 10 minutes of Strome on the 4th line will give the Isles an advantage over other teams’ fourth lines, of course!  The same can be true of Lee and others on this team as well – there’s no point in playing lousy players on the fourth line just because you’ve done so before when you lacked the options, YOU HAVE THE OPTIONS.

Bayesian Analysis, Preseason, and Ryan Strome and Anders Lee.

Jonathan Willis wrote a post for Oilers Nation about how we should use Bayesian Analysis when it comes to preseason and training camp.  It’s a great post and I recommend you read it, but I want to expound upon it here quickly as it comes to the Isles.

“Bayesian Analysis” is a fancy name for a pretty simple and common sense concept.  If we know something about a player, a team, or anything really and then we acquire new knowledge about the player/team/thing, we shouldn’t just throw out our prior knowledge – even if the new knowledge contradicts our old understanding.  Instead we should evaluate how strong our prior understanding (our “prior”) was and how strong the new evidence is and combine the two to try and get a more complete picture.  If our prior is very strong, it should take very strong new evidence to change our mind to make us believe that our prior was wrong.  If our prior is weak, of course, it takes less strong evidence to change our minds.   You can do this with math (Willis demonstrates it in the post above), but it’s a really basic concept.

This is a pretty important thing to remember for preseason.  NHL Preseasons are VERY short.  We have only 7 games (two of which are split squad, so players can at most play in 6 of them) – of which players won’t play in every one of them.  We have a month of camp – which is not the same as game time obviously – for teams to look at players.  This is a very short time to evaluate over 40 players, 25-30 of which have a shot at making the roster.

In other words, the new information a team can obtain through preseason is never going to be very strong.  Even the best possible camp a player can have shouldn’t be considered that strong of evidence, as this is pretty much the definition of a “Small Sample Size.”  And so, if you have a strong prior at ALL about a player or group of players, training camp/preseason pretty much should NEVER change your mind.

——-

Let’s look at two potential NHL forwards to see an example of what I mean.

Anders Lee:  Anders Lee is a guy who has never been a pretty highly rated prospect.  He was drafted late in a draft as an overager, wasnt even ranked top 100 CSS pre-draft, and some experts (Corey Pronman) didn’t even have him in the Isles top 5 prospects – hell Pronman didn’t even have him top 10.  So our prior going into last year was basically not to have high expectations.  Then he had a good AHL season and an incredibly good 22 NHL games – both in traditional and fancystats.

So going into camp, what’s our projection of Lee as an NHL player?  We should think he probably is ready to be one, and we should think there’s a chance, although not necessarily the highest chance, that he’s a top 6-er.  So our prior here, in an atmosphere where there are a ton of bodies competing for 12 jobs, isn’t super strong that he deserves one of them (especially given his waiver status).  So Training camp and preseason performance should influence us, and the team, a little bit.  It shouldn’t matter more than 22 NHL Games of course – seriously, think about that for a second – but it may influence us a little.

Ryan Strome:  By contrast, Strome has been the Isles top or one of their top 2 prospects since his draft day.  He was drafted 5th overall, and had strong juniors #s.  He debuted in the AHL last year and managed to LEAD THE LEAGUE in POINTS in mid-December, forcing a call up – all at age 20 (by contrast, Lee was 23).  Strome finished the AHL with 1.32 points per game in 37 games.  He then played 37 NHL games, managed 18 points despite frequently being with lousy linemates, and had good overall fancystats with a +3% relative corsi while not being sheltered.

So going into camp, what’s our projection of Strome as an NHL player?  Well we should be pretty damn sure he’s already capable of being one and we should be pretty damn convinced he’s a top 6-er.  He could have the absolute worst camp ever, absent injuries, and our opinion on Strome should still remain pretty much the same: He should make the team.  This doesn’t mean he should necessarily play Center over other guys, but there’s no chance you should be persuaded that he doesn’t deserve one of 8 wing spots over any of the other guys.  Our prior is that strong.

——

In short, everything we know about Ryan Strome, makes the idea that he has anything to prove in training camp absolutely absurd.  He’s got the pedigree, 37 amazing AHL games, and 37 strong NHL games behind him.  What exactly in 6 (less actually) preseason games and a month of camp should be able to change our minds about him?  How exactly can you believe, from anything in camp, that the team would be stronger for Strome off the team?

Only by forgetting what we know about Strome – about any players – prior to camp, can you make that argument.  And that’s obviously stupid (hey if Tavares had a bad camp, leave him off!).  Shouldn’t it be for the team as well?

Context is Important – But its just as Important not to OVEREMPHASIZE it.

One of the most frequent complaints “anti-analytics” people make about so-called advanced stats is that these stats fail to adjust for context – some players have harder minutes than others.  This complaint is of course bunk, and a complete straw man – analytics has come up with numerous methods on calculating how difficult a player’s minutes are: From measures of competition, to measures of teammates, to measures that contextualize where players start their shifts most often (zone starts) – we have multiple metrics to explain EACH of these things.  Sure you can use fancystats incorrectly and completely ignore context, but good analytics work doesn’t do that, and it’s pretty easy to see where someone is and isn’t attempting to take into account context.

That said, with the new season coming up, it’s important to remember not to go TOO FAR when doing this.  That is, context is important, but context doesn’t explain EVERYTHING.  And people often tend to forget this.

The Process of Drafting Goalies: – A look at Isles’ goalie drafting since 2008

I wrote a piece on Hockey-Graphs this week about how we should and should not draft goalies in the NHL and whether things will change.  I wanted to apply this to the Islanders’ drafts from the Garth Snow era.  For those who are unfamiliar with how analytics treats goalie drafting, and I went over how we deal with goalies in general in my last livecast:

But in sum, there are a few points to remember about goalies:

1.  Goalies are HIGHLY variable over single seasons due to small sample sizes and the small differences between NHL goalies.  A goalie can be great one year and then be lousy the next year -> in fact when a goalie does have a great year, we do expect him to take a clear step back the next year due to regression.  With relatively few exceptions (Rask), you should never sign goalies to long term or expensive contracts, because the odds of failure are really high.
2.  Goalies peak REALLY early (age 24 or thereabouts) and then decline throughout the rest of their career.  This is on average, of course – some individual goalies may peak later and some will not suffer the effects of aging for a while longer than we’d expect, but for the most part, goalies decline every year and expecting a goalie over 24 to get better is making a sucker’s bet.

The above two points would seem to emphasize the importance of drafting goalie talent – after all, drafted players are the cheapest (not expensive) and will be on your team at the youngest age, near a goalie’s peak, so as to avoid the issues of goalie decline you get on the free agent market (most goalies don’t hit UFA till age 28 or even mid 30s).  But this brings us to point 3:

3.  Goalie prospects are far more variable than skater prospects and have a much higher rate of failure, due to the difficulty of scouting goalies and the extreme small sample size of pre-draft goalie prospects.  As such, you generally should NOT draft goalies early, and probably never draft a goalie before the third round.

So yeah, this doesn’t make it easy – to a large extent, you simply have to get LUCKY to draft a good goalie.  But it helps to have a good process, such that bad goalie drafting luck doesn’t result in you missing out on better skating prospects than you have to.  So let’s look at Isles drafted goalies under Garth Snow:

 

Josh Bailey vs Colin McDonald – Comparable?

In the Lighthouse Hockey comments on my last post (Crossposted at this blog as well), one commenter objected, arguing that Colin McDonald is a superior player to Bailey who simply hasn’t gotten the opportunities Bailey has.  I’d like to go into this comparison a bit more in depth than I did in the comments, where I misremembered and made an incorrect reference to how Bailey played with Reasoner (I was thinking of Grabner).

What do we know about Colin McDonald?

Above are Colin McDonald’s statistics as gathered through behindthenet.ca, stats.hockeyanalysis.com and my own neutral zone tracking.  What you see is a player who probably doesn’t drive possession, or makes his teammates slightly worse when he’s on the ice at pushing the puck forward – you can’t see it in these statistics, but if you use his two-year WOWYs at Hockey Analysis (See HERE), you find teammates have been on average 0.94 percentage points worse with him on the ice than off the ice.   McDonald has absolutely played with brutal linemates last year – Matt Martin and Casey Cizikas are unequivocally not very good at all and has at best played with decent linemates (Grabner, Aucoin).  That said, the WOWYs suggest that while he’s not as bad as his relative corsi would suggest last year (-7), he’s not good at driving play forward.

This shouldn’t be a surprise really – as I’ve noted before int he neutral zone #s (see the right side of the above #s), McDonald is a guy who makes a LOT of his line’s zone entries, whether he’s with the 3rd or 4th line (those 30.4 and 30.6% rates are amongst the highest on the entire TEAM), but he dumps the puck like crazy.  Some of that is his line position – while on the 4th line this year his dump rate was an abysmal 28% – but even on a more skill oriented line on the lockout year, his carry in % was a pretty bad for a forward 40%.  A guy who takes so many entries and dumps so damn often will have a hard time driving play unless he’s particularly good in other areas, and it doesn’t seem like CMac is one of those guys.  He also doesn’t deny opponents the ability to carry-in, even when playing with better players at that skill as he did during the lockout year.

As for scoring, CMac doesn’t really do that much either.  Again some of that may be linemates (Matt Martin is the worst shooter on the team, and that’s CMac’s most common linemate), and it’s not like the point totals are horrible, but his #s the last two years come in at a point per minute rate (min 1250 minutes) that puts him 168th out of 221 qualifying forwards.

One thing Cmac does well is he draws penalties and doesn’t take that many.  That’s a useful skill – last year he basically netted the Isles 2 goals through a +12 penalty differential (1 goal last year).  This is an underrated skill yes, but 2 goals isn’t exactly huge/

So what we have here is a guy who slightly hurts possession, who doesn’t score very much and can draw penalties.  That’s not a great player, although it’s not the worst guy to have on 4th line – course you don’t want him to be on a line where he’s the best player, which was the case on last year’s 4th line!

Okay so what about Bailey?

Josh Bailey isn’t a huge possession driver either, although he’s more positive than CMac.  Some of this may be linemates, but again if you use a two-year WOWY (see HERE) and average it out you wind up Bailey’s teammates being 2.84% better with bailey on the ice than without in corsi.  This is probably being generous to Bailey’s effects – adding a third year will put him a little worse, but you clearly see a small positive effect over the years.  Bailey’s zone starts are similar to Cmac’s so that isn’t the difference either.

Bailey is also a better scorer, being 110th in EV points per minute over the last 2 years.  He also is okay in the neutral zone at carrying it in, and at denying opponents from doing the same (although Nielsen deserves much of that credit).  He’s not a GOOD scorer, but he’s okay, and he’s probably going to shoot at a higher % next year, since this year’s shooting % was almost certainly a fluke.  That said, he doesn’t shoot enough – the lockout year was the first time he had a decent shooting rate, and he stepped back to his career average this year.  The one thing Bailey isn’t is a drawer of penalties, he’s -1 over the last two years (net effect is basically null).  

So again, these #s don’t suggest Josh Bailey is a great player.  But he’s almost certainly a decent one who you would be thrilled with at third line wing, which is now what he is if we consider Frans 3C due to Grabovski.  And the chemistry with Frans has worked the last two years.  

Conclusion:

In short, CMac and Bailey aren’t really comparable at all, except as wings on this team.  CMac’s certainly proven himself to be an okay 4th liner, but this team has SO many forwards that he shouldn’t be guaranteed a spot – except over Matt Martin and Casey Cizikas.  Alas, those guys will probably get the spot over him.

[Cross Post] Don’t Trade Skill: PLAY Skill – Why should the Isles trade Bailey or Grabner?

[This Post was also posted at Lighthouse Hockey.  Feel free to go over there to comment, the comment section should be more lively there.  You can comment here of course, but the post is cross-posted here for posterity’s purposes]

One thing that’s been taken for granted since the first two days of free agency, was that the Islanders were going to have to trade a forward.  After all, there are currently 13 one-way contract forwards on the roster (including Eric Boulton) as well as 3 highly talented prospects on two-way deals who you’d think the team would like to make the opening night roster (Anders Lee might in theory be sent down for roster reasons, but it seems highly unlikely that Ryan Strome or Brock Nelson are going anywhere).  Somebody has to go then – the team can’t really carry 15 forwards on the opening night roster (14 is very doable – 15 means the team basically can’t carry an extra D Man on the roster plus it means you’re scratching 3 healthy forwards in a night, which doesn’t seem like a good use of resources).  I’m telling you all nothing new, obviously.

The other thing that’s been taken for granted is that the team is most likely to accomplish this by trading Josh Bailey or possibly Michael Grabner.  After all, Bailey seemed to underperform for his contract last year – the overall point #s aren’t bad, but he simply didn’t score goals as he did the year before (He went from 1.27 G/60 in 13-14 to 0.36 at even strength), his worst rate in the last 4 years.  And then there was the insane streak where he basically had no point production whatsoever – nearly half of his points came after the olympic break too.  Add in a not cheap (although not expensive) contract with 4 more years on it, and it’s not an unreasonable thought to think the Isles should deal him and they obviously have put him out there.  Michael Grabner is a slightly different case – Grabner is obviously valuable in ways Bailey isn’t outside of scoring (elite penalty killing, greater goal scoring potential, strong defensive play, ability to play with other centers besides Frans Nielsen, etc.) but like Bailey he had an insane cold streak which (stupidly) resulted in a one game healthy scratch and unlike Bailey, his backloaded deal gets a bit pricey for the Isles starting next year.

That said, if the Isles can afford to carry Bailey and Grabner’s salaries (and no report from Staple says otherwise, but rather that the Isles are hoping to swap one for a top 4 D Man), this basically makes no sense for multiple reasons:

First, you’d be dealing either guy from a position of weakness – both guys had down years last year and are extremely likely to bounce back stronger – Bailey’s shot rate dropped from 12-13’s increase, but his shooting percentage also dropped which is a likely fluke (Shooting % fluctuations tend to be random, and Bailey has always been an above average shooter, but was below average last year)- he should be good for at least a few more goals next year.  Grabner is similar – his drop in goals was nearly entirely shooting % driven – at his career rate of shooting (12.3%) he’d have averaged 22 goals per 82 games instead of his rate of 15 last year, and Grabner has twice shot above that mark.   Grabner may also have better linemates for scoring next year too.

In short, you’d be selling low on either guy, when both guys are likely to have a bounce back season next year simply due to regression.  That’s generally a nono for any sports negotiating – instead of selling high and buying low, you’d be selling low and hoping to buy low.  You’re less likely to get a great (presumably Defensive) piece back given the seasons each guy is coming off – you might be better off trading midseason.

And you really should only trade either guy for a clear 2nd pair caliber D man for a simple reason:  Both guys are pretty good players who are amongst the Islanders’ current top 12 forwards.  Yes, the Isles have 15 non-goon forwards, but why on earth would you want to play Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas, or Colin McDonald over either guy (arguably Cal Clutterbuck too)?  Even WITH their bad years both guys were better scorers than those 3 grinders, and they were strong possession players as well.  Bailey’s possession #s won’t likely be that great again unless he plays with Frans, but they’ve always been better than Martin’s.  Seriously, look at this:

Let’s take a quick tangent here:  Why do teams play GRINDERS on the 4th or third line?

The answer isn’t that teams are better off with grinders rather than skill players in those spots – there’s a reason why olympic teams stack their rosters full of skill players instead of grinders, skill players are simply better at playing hockey in most ways. No, the reason is simple: With 30 teams and a salary cap, there simply aren’t enough skill players for teams to roll 12 skill forwards, so teams rely on grinding lines to eat up ice time (getting their skill players time to rest) and to hopefully prevent opposing teams from scoring in the mean time until the skill players can get back on the ice.

But some teams – like Chicago or the Rangers last year – do have enough skill players to fit four lines, and it tends to lead to being a pretty successful team.  After all, this means that no matter when your opponents have out a line that basically can’t score and is limited to trying to playing defense, you’re icing a line that can defend AND score, giving you a clear advantage.

This doesn’t mean teams can’t be cup contenders with 3 skill lines and a grinding line – see Boston, the East’s best team for a few years now for example – but in those cases, the team tends to have skill forwards and D Men who are elite enough that the grinders’ issues aren’t that costly (and in Boston’s case, a top 2 goalie).  Still, teams like Boston and Pittsburgh would also rather have skating talent on the 4th line and don’t simply because their other players have them RIGHT AGAINST THE CAP.  The Isles don’t have that situation – so why should they suffer the same limitation?

Again, let’s bring up the #s again:

The highlighted stat is relative corsi – the difference in the corsi (Shot differential including blocked and missed shots) of the team while each forward is on the ice from the corsi of the team with them on the bench.  In short, with those 3 forwards on the ice (especially Cizikas and Martin, since CMac was better when he played with other centers), the dropoff on the Isles was dramatic – they were pretty damn bad.  But you can practically use any other metric and you get the same thing – raw corsi only has Nikolai Kulemin as worse and well that was largely the impact of playing on the Leafs.  Points per 60 at EV again has Martin and Cizikas clearly at the bottom (and not the first time in Martin’s case) with again Kulemin (again, they’re hoping this is a Toronto thing and he had tougher minutes than any Islander) and now Clutterbuck (who has a better track record) the only other guys below CMac.  And no, context doesn’t explain it either – while the grinders had slightly defensive minutes in terms of faceoffs, they weren’t extreme defensive minutes enough to account for this, and nor were they minutes harder really than any other option for the same minutes other than maybe Cory Conacher (The only guys who got really easier minutes than the Isles 4th line in terms of faceoffs were the Tavares line, for obvious reasons).

So it’s clear that Martin and Cizikas are clearly inferior to the other 13 forwards, and CMac is pretty likely inferior to the other 12 guys as well.  So you DO NOT HAVE A JAM OF FORWARDS THAT MAKE IT SO YOU NEED TO TRADE A SKILL FORWARD – you have enough skill forwards (11 or 12 depending on what you call Clutterbuck) to make a full team and then you have a bunch of not needed grinders.  Trade those guys!  Don’t trade skill forwards at their lowest value unless you can get a clearly very positive thing in return.

I recently posted on my IslanderAnalytics blog on how the way analytics helps teams the most isn’t by helping them outsmart opposing teams but by preventing them from making stupid errors that those other teams might make instead.  This is one such case -> there’s nothing brilliant about playing a team of 11-12 skaters and without a designated “checking line.”  But there is something dumb over playing a checking line when you’re not forced to by cap or personnel issues – it’s rare to have the opportunity not to, but it’s right there for the Isles to grasp.  There’s no reason to trade skill players just to play inferior players at the same spots – and the Isles shouldn’t do so.