Big game tonight in Ottawa. Playoff implications are very high. It is very simple for the Penguins, defeat the Senators in regulation and the uncertainty of the playoffs goes away.
Ottawa has been on a roll lately. They are 6-2-2 in their last ten games and are fighting for their playoff lives. A win by the Senators could make it a four way tie at 95 points in the standings (with a Detroit loss against Carolina as well). The problem for the Senators is that they do not hold the tie breaker on Boston, Detroit, or Pittsburgh. This is important to remember. If the Penguins lose tonight the season isn’t over. Pittsburgh would still control their own destiny. Winning against both the Islanders and the Sabres still gets them in and that is assuming that Ottawa goes undefeated the rest of the way.
Regardless of what happens in the next week it is important to remember that these three games aren’t why the Penguins are where they are. The larger sample size of the previous 79 games has more importance from where I sit and it should to you as well.
I can already see the overreactions now. Trade Crosby/Malkin, blow this thing up, fire Johnston, fire Rutherford, yada yada yada.
Get ready for it because the likely outcome for the 2014-15 Penguins is not a Stanley Cup.
There are myths and then there is reality. Let’s try to sort through some of it today.
Myth: Sid and Geno need to do more for their money.
Reality: They are still among the league leaders in points per game. At the time of this blog Sidney Crosby is tied for number one overall at 1.09 with the great Tyler Seguin and Malkin is number three at 1.06. The declining offense is a league wide issue. There are only nine players in the league that average at least a point per game and Pittsburgh has two of them.
The Bruins traded Seguin away. The Bruins royally screwed up.
I have gone into great detail on why offense is down in the NHL. It is a league problem, not a player problem.
Aside from their elite offensive production they are also obviously excellent at driving possession.
Last but ceratinly not least, this is an entertainment business. Who would you rather watch play hockey for your favorite team? I shudder at the idea of watching the Penguins in this current offensive climate without the creativity and offensive brilliance Crosby and Malkin both bring. They are the Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci of this paint by numbers league.
Myth: Injuries are just an excuse
Reality: No they aren’t. Especially in a hard cap salary structure and especially when it is to quality players. If you aren’t healthy you don’t win the Stanley Cup. The evidence backs that up. Until proven otherwise this seems like an issue that is random and out of the team’s control.
I know it may seem crazy to some people but losing players like Ollli Maatta and Pascal Dupuis for the season hurts a team’s ability to compete. Especially when it is a high impact player like Maatta who is on an ELC. Couple that with losing Kris Letang and Christian Ehrhoff and you are left with a 35 year old Paul Martin to hold down huge minutes with either really young players or mediocre to below average veteran defensemen.
I documented with evidence how damning injury issues are earlier in this month. The numbers speak for themselves.
Myth: The Penguins can’t fill out depth because they are top heavy with Crosby, Malkin, and Letang cap hits.
Reality: Pittsburgh consistently overpays for average to below average players. Never do this. Average isn’t that hard to find. Rob Scuderi, Brandon Sutter, Nick Spaling, Craig Adams, and Max Lapierre add up to 10.675M on the cap space. This isn’t a good return for the investment.
Each player has a negative dCorsi with Pittsburgh this season which means they underperform in their given role on the team. This isn’t good because a lot of those players aren’t even being thrown into ridiculously difficult roles.
Mark Arcobello, Rob Klinkhammer, and Marcel Goc all had positive dCorsi with Pittsburgh this year. None of those players were hard to acquire.
While each individual player transaction may not add up to a lot IE: Goc for Lapierre. When you combine all of the transactions it can end up being death by a thousand paper cuts.
As Lestor Freamon of The Wire famously said “All the pieces matter”
*If you haven’t watched The Wire it is probably time to change that*
How do you make sure you are making all the pieces matter? Do your homework, get on board with proper analytics. By doing so you can sign the Daniel Winnik’s of the world to cost effective deals in the summer before you spend assets like second round pick in hindsight. You can also avoid giving guaranteed multi-year contracts to 35+ players who cannot impact a game positively.
Myth: Mike Johnston is in over his head
Reality: No he isn’t. Sure, I don’t like some of the player personnel choices on certain gamedays ,but the overall product that he gets out if this team is more than acceptable. Pittsburgh is a top five shot suppression team and in the ever important Score-Adjusted Fenwick they are third overall this season at 53.9%.
When you take into consideration the high volume of injuries to important players and the amount of zero impact players he has on the roster this accomplishment is even more impressive.
Possession is one of the best predictive measures we have available. There is a high correlation between championship caliber teams and their possession metrics.
They aren’t fool proof however. There are certain variables in ice hockey that lend itself to high variance. Namely shooting percentage and save percentage. When combined we call this PDO. Kyle Dubas, the Assistant GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, likes to call this Percentage Driven Outcome.
These variances which happen to every team over the course of a season can really shape the opinion of people and their perception how a hockey team is performing. This is usually misleading and can lead to poor decision making. Possession is a steady variable. Shooting percentage and save percentage are not. Trust the steady variable.
Here is an exercise in that mindset:
That is the 10 game rolling averages of both Minnesota and Pittburgh’s PDO for this season.
Mike Yeo magically went from a guy on the hot seat to a guy that knew what he was doing. In reality his team has been playing good hockey for much of the year but had unsustainably low PDO early in the year. Enter Devan Dubnyk and all of a sudden the Wild can be discussed as a Stanley Cup darkhorse. Mike Yeo did not magically change what he was doing, variance sorted itself out.
Likewise with the Penguins, Mike Johnston did not change what he is doing lately. The Penguins PDO has fallen off of a cliff. Because of this you are starting to get the same extreme/emotional opinions about the Penguins roster as you saw with the Wild earlier in the year. In reality (even with injuries) it appears Mike Johnston’s Penguins are progressively improving and feeling more comfortable within their system.
I understand that most people aren’t ready to wrap their head around variance playing a huge role in hockey outcomes, but that doesn’t change the fact that it does. It definitely sucks when that variance is on the low end during the most important time of the year.
Don’t make roster decisions on PDO. Make them based on steady more trustworthy variables like possession metrics.
Myth: If the Penguins miss the playoffs it is time to blow it up
Reality: That would be a huge disappointment but should not change the big picture. The Penguins are still in a position to take full advantage of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang era. Tweaks are definitely needed, but a nuclear bomb is not.
The reasons against blowing it up are all above and backed up by objective data. You really have two options moving forward. You can take the emotional approach, alienate your superstars, and keep adding crappy depth players like San Jose just did.
Or you can take the level headed approach which takes into consideration the proper variables to make logical choices.
Which one will it be?
Don’t fall victim to myths.
Thanks for reading!
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