tter
As I sat thinking about the Blues home opener last night, the more I kept thinking about the differences in the two guys who will be behind both benches tonight.
I think about Yeo’s comments about Schenn’s penalty after the Penguins game. Mike Yeo’s comments after the game about Schenn’s gaffe (watch
here at around the 6 minute mark). Yeo still praised Schenn and doesn’t beat him up over the mistake.
Think about Yeo’s comments about Tage Thompson before the start of the season, how he wants to “make sure Tage doesn’t go in paralyzed by fear thinking that one mistake is going to put him back in the minors” so that he can “have some comfort, some confidence they[he] can play the game”.
After the September 26th preseason game where the Blues played a lot of young players and lost 5-2, he commented that it is “one thing to try to not make mistakes. It’s another thing to try to make a difference. It’s a fine line and that’s you have to learn and that is what experiences brings is when the door is open you have to try and take advantage of that and make something happen.” He added “when it’s not you have to manage the puck the right way and put it in places where you can get it back. Those are learning moments. ”
Would Ken Hitchcock have made those comments? I don’t think so. How many times did you see a young player make a mistake and then have his ice time removed? How many times did young players look like they were too focused on trying not to make a mistake rather than being aggressive? I bet some Blues wonder how many shifts Schenn would have been given after the penalty if Hitchcock was still the coach.
Speaking of Ken Hitchcock, his Stars reincarnation didn’t start well last night. The Stars lost starting goalie Ben Bishop and the game to the Las Vegas Golden Knights. He likely isn’t very happy that his team gave up 7 power plays and 30 shots and blew a third period lead. Of course, the real stars of the game were Marc Andre Fleury who made 45 saves and James Neal who scored 2 goals.
You can see some of the Bishop injury here:
Expect the Stars lineup to look like this tonight:
Jamie Benn - Tyler Seguin - Alexander Radulov
Mattias Janmark - Jason Spezza - Brett Ritchie
Devin Shore - Martin Hanzal - Tyler Pitlick
Antoine Roussel - Radek Faksa - Adam Cracknell
Esa Lindell - John Klingberg
Marc Methot - Jamie Oleksiak
Dan Hamhuis - Stephen Johns
Kari Lehtonen
The Blues will be looking to win their 3rd consecutive home opener, last losing in 2014. For the Blues, Paul Stastny enjoys playing against the Stars, scoring 20 goals and adding 24 assists in only 41 games. Vladimir Tarasenko has 10 goals against the Stars, one of three teams where he has reached double digits in goals. Bradyen Schenn and Alex Pietrangelo have a higher points per game average against the Stars than they have overall.
Jake Allen’s statistics against the Stars are right in line with his career averages. Allen is set up to do well as he is much better on 2 days rest than 1, posting a 0.53 lower goals against average and a 2% higher save percentage. He’s also substantially better at home with a 0.39 lower goals against average.
Expect the home opener lines to be the same as those in Pittsburgh, which were:
Vladimir Sobotka – Paul Stastny – Vladimir Tarasenko
Jaden Schwartz – Brayden Schenn – Dmitrij Jaskin
Magnus Paajarvi – Oskar Sundqvist – Tage Thompson
Scottie Upshall – Kyle Brodziak – Chris Thorburn
Joel Edmundson – Alex Pietrangelo
Carl Gunnarsson – Colton Parayko
Vince Dunn – Robert Bortuzzo
Jake Allen
Speaking of Allen, Corsica finally posted its goalie statistics from Wednesday night. I wonder how you would characterize the goals against – goals from low danger shots, mid danger shots and high danger shots. They claim Allen saved 13 of 14, 9 of 11 and 7 of 8, respectively.
This shows exactly why I don’t trust most, if not all, advanced stats and models. The problem is with the data being used to create them. Either the data is created by pure objective rules that it cannot be accurate (a whiffed on shot from 5 feet out that barely dribbles to the goalie is the same high danger shot as one from 5 feet out that goes in off the bar) or it is created by subjective decisions of the data collector which has different problems like, how many people are doing it, are they being consistent among each other, are they being consistent individually from game to game, do they have team bias, etc.
In Allen’s case, assume for a minute that the two screened goals from the blue line would be expected to be characterized as the same type of shots which seems reasonable to me. This means that one of the two third period goals was considered a low danger shot. Sorry, I don’t see how that is possible.
Of course most model and advanced statistic proponents I have seen seem to ignore this aspect, maybe because they are using their own subjective data so they believe it accurate. Maybe because it doesn’t fit their narrative or maybe they just haven’t thought about it. I hope to write more about the advanced statistics and modeling in the offseason.
I have been buildings some playoff data and want to build a bigger bank of data to see what real correlation exists between certain advanced stats and winning or losing.
The NHL did a team history on the Blues. You can watch it
here.
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Nashville Predator's Paul McCann,
Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.
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