The big news heading into Game 4 is that Kris Letang will be missing from the Penguins lineup due to his suspension handed handed down from the Department of Player Safety yesterday.
Letang should have been suspended and based on how the leagues doles out its punishments (weakly) one game was the most likely result from that hit.
How are the Penguins going to allocate their defense pairs without Letang?
So here's how those pairing looked this year in the regular season:
The Dumoulin-Lovejoy pairing was actually the most used defensive pairing for the Penguins this year. There shouldn't be a learning curve for either player there.
The Pouliot-Daley pairing barely has a sample size but the small window we have was outrageously good.
Cole-Schultz was used in a bottom pairing role when given the opportunity to play with each other and I would continue to utilize that pairing in that role.
Here is some more interesting info about defensemen, but I will focus on Pittsburgh numbers
This year’s Pittsburgh Penguins are the perfect example of this idea put into practice. There are a couple of reasons why they immediately took off after making the change from Mike Johnston to Mike Sullivan, most of which point back to the facelift they gave their transition game. It’s no surprise their performance spiked once they shed Rob Scuderi, cut back on Ian Cole’s inexplicable usage on the top pair, and supplemented a finally healthy Kris Letang and Olli Maatta with another legitimate puck-mover in Trevor Daley.
Here is the pertinent information about some of the defenders in the PIT/WSH series:
Possession % = the percentage of all exit attempts by that defenceman that left the zone either by him carrying it, or successfully passing to a teammate. Failed % = blatant turnovers in the defensive zone, or icings.
This data can only be acquired by manually tracking it but it is incredibly useful in player analysis. Who can create more plays under control to get forwards through the neutral zone with speed and get a controlled entry? Letang and Daley have been doing it while Lovejoy and Orpik not so much. Those were the only four players from this series that Dmitri tracked.
I can say from my interactions with Andrew Berkshire (Sportsnet/Sportlogic) that their proprietary data has Derrick Pouliot on the high end of controlled zone exits which puts him on the Letang/Daley side of things. Pittsburgh will need that in Letang's absence and a Pouliot-Daley pairing should do well on this front.
The Penguins power play which has struggled to find the net against the Capitals this series (0-10) is looking at two players to fill Letang's void
Both Daley and Schultz are not afraid to fire the puck and that is a quality I like up top on the power play. It might make sense to give Justin Schultz the nod here if Daley is going to be playing close to 30 minutes in the absence of Letang.
If Rust and Fehr are not able to go that would probably mean Tom Sestito in the lineup. I have to imagine one of those two players will be joining Oskar Sundqvist in the lineup. Tom Sestito in a playoff game against Washington is ludicrous.
Olli Maatta's inclusion as a game time decision is surprising one. I can't believe he would be inserted back into the lineup without skating at all, but Sullivan has surprised us before with his lineup decisions.
"We have to play physical. Not them," Ovechkin said "Their guys don't like to play physical. Obviously, their D is not that physical. We're bigger and stronger and we have to use it."
The hit stat has the NHL has has no predictive value and I rarely use it but in 2015-16 the Washington Capitals had 1,994 hits and the Pittsburgh Penguins had 1,947. They ranked 11th and 12th respectively.
Pittsburgh can handle their business effectively in the physical domain they just choose to do other things better that do have predictive value to winning. The whole possession thing. Which is why they were the second best team at the NHL at it after Mike Sullivan was hired and the team made moves to commit to speed.
The Penguins won't be changing that approach anytime soon. From Bill West's
Penguins Insider article
“When our team is at its best, our defense starts 190 feet from our net with our puck pursuit, hanging onto pucks down low in the offensive zone, controlling territory, and using our foot speed to our advantage,” he said. “I didn't think we were able to do that.”
Washington was very unlucky to lose Game 3. They were clearly the better team. This wasn't the first time in 2015-16 the team that won between Washington and Pittsburgh was fortunate. All the way back in December during Mike Sullivan's first game with the Penguins is another example. Pittsburgh lost 4-1 in a game they out attempted Washington 65-37 at even-strength.
Why would I bring up this game from December? Why should it matter? It was played without Kris Letang. Losing Letang to a suspension is a tough hurdle to overcome but the team has shown during this season that they can indeed control the flow of the game against Washington while missing him.
Take the following passage as more of a look back in history than some predictive measure of tonight. The players aren't the same (very few) and again the past has no bearing on tonight, but this isn't the first time Pittsburgh has lost its best defender against the Capitals in a playoff series. Back in 2009 Sergei Gonchar was injured when Alexander Ovechkin kneed him in the corner. The Penguins came back the next game and won Game 5 4-3 in overtime. Pittsburgh outshot Washington 42-31
Thanks for reading!
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