Atlantic Notes: Zetterberg, Holland, Eichel, Chabot
The Detroit Red Wings were searching for answers after their 10-1 loss Saturday against the Montreal Canadiens. The team struggled immensely and added to their losing steak which has now reached seven straight. Players had were in shock and captain Henrik Zetterberg was quite candid with his reaction after the team had previously lost the first game of the home-and-home series with Montreal, a 6-3 defeat at home, according to Helene St. James of the Detroit Free-Press.
“I’ve played professional hockey for 20 years, I don’t think I’ve been a part of anything like what happened here tonight,” Zetterberg said. “The way we played, with the way our last game went, with what happened after that game, the next day — and then we come out here with this tonight.”
St. James writes the team was shocked, because it had two players-only meetings, one after Thursday’s home loss to Montreal and then the following day on Friday. Yet nothing went right Saturday.
“It’s about time we look ourselves in the mirror,” said defenseman Niklas Kronwall. “It doesn’t matter what talks you have if you are not going to go out there, be prepared and be ready to play. Today, we had nothing.”
- Sticking with the Red Wings, The Athletic’s Katie Strang writes (subscription required) that after Saturday’s 10-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens and the comments from Zetterberg, the team has made it quite clear they are not a playoff team. However, it is not likely a coaching change or a change at general manager is in the team’s short-term future. GM Ken Holland‘s contract expires at the end of the season and it’s likely the team will bring in someone new who will want to hire their own coach. That being said, Strang said she hopes that Holland will embrace a rebuild and at least start to trade players and promote the play of the team’s younger players.
- Speaking of futility, Buffalo Sabres forward Jason Pominville scored the team’s first goal Saturday after going scoreless for 232 minutes and nine seconds. The Sabres have now lost four straight, which included getting shutout twice in that span. The Buffalo News’ Mike Harrington writes that the goal is just a tiny speck of silver lining and the locker room must start stepping up. The team needs star Jack Eichel to be the one to lead them. “It’s tough to score goals in this league and you start gripping your stick a little bit, thinking, maybe fine-tuning it a little bit,” said Eichel, who has three goals in his last 18 games. “I’m guilty of it recently, fine-tuning my shots too much instead of getting pucks to the net and seeing what will happen.”
- James Gordon of The Athletic writes that Ottawa Senators’ defenseman Thomas Chabot is here to stay in the NHL after his performance in the team’s 6-5 OT victory over the New York Islanders on Friday. It wasn’t just that Chabot put up a goal and two assists in the win, but it was the minutes that the 20-year-old got in the game, which was 15:23, a very high number from a coach in Guy Boucher who is known not to give minutes out to young players.
The Case For Points Percentage
It’s not often in sports that there is a need for something as trivial as a change in how standings are listed. Yet, that is the exact situation that the NHL faces. Ever since the league changed its schedule format a few years back so that every team played in every building every year, scheduling has become increasingly difficult and teams play out their seasons far differently from one another. The result, at any given point in the season, is a wide gap in games played between teams across the league – one that has stretched as high as 8 games between the teams with the most and fewest games played.
With a points-based standings system, a games played gap greatly misrepresents the success of teams relative to one another. While anyone can look and see that a 25-5-5 team is superior to a 22-10-11, the problem is that the standings say otherwise – both teams have 55 points – and the average layperson isn’t going to calculate a metric to differentiate the two when just casually looking at the standings. In the end, all teams play 82 games, but for the ease of fans and even some media members to better analyze how teams are performing in-season, and additional metric is needed.
That metric is points percentage, which of course is the amount of points a team has accrued (two-point wins and one-point OT/shoot-out losses) out of how many possible points they could have earned with a win in each game. Similar to winning percentage, the main standings metric for the MLB and traditionally listed on NFL and NBA standings as well, points percentage is an easy way to show how teams are doing relative to a .500 mark and, more importantly, relative to each other. The only problem is that, while very easy to calculate and very useful, no one in hockey is yet using this stat in their standard standings. NHL.com should, above everyone else, at least use points percentage in their standings, especially since it is a metric they have on hand, but they don’t. Instead, users can go to team stats, where it is a searchable statistic, and refine their search by conference and division to see relevant standings. Helpful, right? ESPN, TSN, Fox Sports, and CBS Sports are among the other major sports information outlets who have yet to adopt points percentage for their NHL standings, continuing to leave fans without complete information.
The one site hockey fans should use: the old stand-by Hockey Reference. The reliable stats site lists points percentage right alongside points in its 2017-18 standings, allowing for an easy look at the true performances of teams so far this season. Do yourself a favor, and take a quick look. Points percentage is topical right now, as a perfect case study is playing out in the Atlantic Division. Yes, the season is only a quarter of the way in, but the margin in games played is already skewing the view of the league’s weakest division:
Fans of the struggling Montreal Canadiens are ecstatic to be back in a playoff spot with 27 points in 27 games and fans of the Detroit Red Wings are proud of their club for sticking around with 25 points in 26 games, good enough for fifth place in the division. What about the fourth-place Boston Bruins? Well, the Bruins have 26 points… but in 23 games. Due to the gap in games played between the B’s and the Habs and Wings, it looks like Boston is just another team in the mix. Yet, in terms of points percentage they are a ways ahead. The Bruins are currently at .565, right up there with the New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Washington Capitals within the Eastern Conference. The Canadiens are at .500, no better than the Atlantic’s sixth-place squad, the Ottawa Senators, and well outside playoff contention at this point. The Red Wings are at just .481, a success rate much closer to the Florida Panthers than the Bruins.
The whole outlook of the Atlantic is skewed due to the games played gap and points percentage is a clear way to show accurate standings. It is also a straightforward metric to calculate and display. So why haven’t more platforms adopted it? It’s time for the NHL and other sports media outlets to help out hockey’s spectators and format their standings to actually show how the season is going.
Red Wings Unlikely To Be Active In Trade Market
After a strong start to the season, the Red Wings have struggled considerably as of late, winning just two of their last ten games to fall out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. While some may be hoping for Detroit to make a trade or two to get back on track, that doesn’t appear to be a likely scenario. GM Ken Holland told Gregg Krupa of The Detroit News that any movement between now and the trade deadline will simply be shuffling the deck internally:
“There’s a player or two we’d like to see in Grand Rapids. If we have injuries up front or on defense, there’s a young player or two in Grand Rapids we’d like to see what they can do. So, I think for the most part it’s going to be internal between now and the deadline.”
One of those young defensemen may be 2016 second-round pick Filip Hronek. He’s off to a strong start in the AHL, leading all Griffins defenders with seven points through 16 games despite just turning 20 years old last month. Others that Holland may want to get a look at include Robbie Russo who saw action in 19 games in Detroit last season or undersized rearguard Joe Hicketts who had a dominant junior career but has yet to reach the NHL level.
Of course, a big factor in their likely inactivity stems from their salary cap situation. Even with Johan Franzen on long-term injured reserve, Detroit has less than $271K in cap room at the moment per CapFriendly. That’s not much room to work with. The team is carrying a full 23-man roster and could waive someone to free up a bit more money but still, they would basically be in a situation where they will need to match cap hits in any trade of consequence.
If the Red Wings hope to get back into the playoff picture, it appears that they will have to get there with what they have on their current roster instead of looking for help elsewhere.
Booth's Hard Work Paying Off In Detroit
David Booth had quite the night writes the Athletic’s Katie Strang (subscription required). Booth, who was signed to a PTO after sending general manager Ken Holland an email, has been a healthy scratch for most of the season. Last night, the 33-year-old journeyman netted two goals in a 4-3 Red Wings loss. The second goal tied the game after the Wings fell behind 3-1, gave the team a surge of energy, and nearly potted a hat trick for Booth just seconds later. After two seasons in the KHL that Booth describes as “two very tough years,” returning to the NHL with the team he grew up idolizing seems like a dream come true. A scrappy, “lunch-pail” type player, Booth is trying to follow in the footsteps of former Red Wings–Mikael Samuelsson and Dan Cleary–who struggled to find a niche until landing in Detroit.
Trevor Daley To Undergo MRI
Red Wings defenseman Trevor Daley is set to undergo an MRI today to determine the extent of an apparent neck injury sustained on Friday night against the Rangers, reports Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press. His first season in a Detroit uniform has not gone to plan and this certainly won’t help things. Through 23 games this season, Daley has managed to record just a single assist despite logging more ice time than he has in the previous two years. That’s hardly the type of output GM Ken Holland was expecting when he signed the 34-year-old to a three-year, $9.5MM deal back in the summer.
East Notes: Red Wings, Sabres, Capitals
The Athletic’s Prashanth Iyer hands out some quarterly grades (subscription needed) for the Red Wings and there were some surprises for Iyer in the first 20+ games. Iyer lists Jonathan Ericsson and Luke Glendening as a couple players who earned better marks for improved play while youngsters Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha both received As for their strong, team leading performances thus far. Iyer points out that Detroit has seen some modest improvement from last season, but it’s in the special teams where they’ve seen jumps, which has certainly helped their bubble-team playoff hopes. He does point out, however, that the 5v5 play will need to improve, or the Wings will be on the outside looking in for the second consecutive season.
- Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen writes that despite tanking and acquiring a star in Jack Eichel, the Sabres blueprint of suffering through lean years to get top talent hasn’t worked as they planned. Now, as they sink to the bottom of the Eastern Conference, the losing appears to be taking its toll on not only the fanbase, but players both on the current roster and those who went to playoff-ready teams. Boylen points out that for every success story in Toronto, Pittsburgh or Chicago, there are the Edmonton and Colorado cautionary tales that reveal a circle of hell that revolves around missing the playoffs and drafting high only to see little in return. Buffalo seems to be trapped, once again eyeing a top pick in 2018 with an 82% chance of not even getting that top pick. Worse, it’s shedding that “culture of losing” which has ensnared Sabres present and past. Changing the front office and coaching staff hasn’t changed much, and though it will take time, the Sabres are mired in a negative cycle that is challenging to escape.
- Are the Capitals next to see a decline in play? ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski listed a number of reasons why dark days may be ahead for Washington, who has come oh-so-close to turning that corner in capturing a Stanley Cup. And yet, it’s always found a way to be stopped–be it the always vexing Pittsburgh Penguins or a key injury at the most inopportune time, the Caps could never find a way to maneuver around that last hurdle to secure as much as a Cup Final appearance. Wyshynski writes that optimism remains in the organization but they’re certainly inching closer to that “iceberg” that could ultimately sink the Caps once and for all.
Red Wings Notes: Abdelkader, Frk, “Relentless Hockey”
Detroit Red Wings forward Justin Abdelkader was one of many players the organization needed to rebound this season for the team to improve. MLive’s Ansar Khan writes that this is exactly what has happened so far this season as Abdelkader has 14 points (4-10) and has notched a point in nine of his last ten games. The 30-year-old winger was the subject of fan derision after struggling last season, which followed the signing of his seven-year, $29.8MM contract. Abdelkader was rewarded for his strong play while on a line with Pavel Datsyuk, and many pointed to his performance as being tied solely to Datsyuk. Healthier this season, Abdelkader has shown why the Red Wings invested so much in him. If he can stay healthy, he’s on pace for 57 points.
- Right Wing Martin Frk is still at least a week away from returning according to Khan. The right-hand shot with a booming slapper has been one of many bright spots on the Red Wings roster, especially helping a power play that languished last season. The 24-year-old has nine points (6-3) in 18 games this season.
- The Detroit Free Press’ Helene St. James reports that Detroit wants to play “relentless hockey” so they’re not suddenly looking up at a gap in the standings. Currently, the Wings are third in the Atlantic and face the flailing Edmonton Oilers tonight, who are reeling after an 8-3 loss to St. Louis last night. It was the Oilers, St. James writes, that spurred the Red Wings current 4-1-1 run. Head coach Jeff Blashill stressed the importance of staying out of the defensive zone, a problem that saw them blow a 3-1 lead Sunday night and eventually lose 4-3 in overtime. Blashill also told St. James that it’s important to play every game “relentlessly,” a necessity in a league where a playoff spot could literally be decided by a regulation win.
Anton Rodin, Drew Miller Sign Overseas
On the same day he cleared waivers and had his contract terminated by the Vancouver Canucks, Anton Rodin has returned to Europe. However, the Swedish forward is not going back to Brynas of the Swedish Hockey League, where he spent most of his prime years, including an MVP season in 2015-16. Instead, the 27-year-old winger has signed with HC Davos of the NLA, the Swiss club announced. Davos reports that Rodin has signed a two-year deal that will keep him in Switzerland through the end of the 2018-19 season.
The hope for Davos is obviously that Rodin will perform more like he did in his previous European career than he has in the disastrous past season plus for the Vancouver Canucks. Injury and ineffectiveness left Rodin with only four points in 13 total games, NHL and AHL, over the last two seasons. Davos, which sits in fifth place in the NLA, needs a much better effort than that from their newest acquisition.
Meanwhile, while struggling Swedish squad Brynas may be disappointed that their former superstar Rodin chose not to return home, they made the most of the situation by going out and getting a big name of their own. The team announced that they have signed NHL veteran Drew Miller. The long-time Detroit Red Wings forward was unable to turn a tryout with the Chicago Blackhawks this fall into a contract and has been without a job since. He now makes his first foray overseas, joining a Brynas squad that has fallen on hard times. However, with an intelligent, hard-working forward like Miller now in the fold and playing alongside a player of similar ilk in Daniel Paille, it’s not too late for Brynas to learn to play a smart, two-way game and climb back up the standings.
Poll: Who Is The (Second) Best Team In The East?
The 2017-18 NHL season has not gone to plan. Ask any prognosticator from the preseason where their projected standings compare to those today and you’ll get grim looks and uninterested shrugs. The Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers, Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild and Montreal Canadiens are all far underachieving, while Vegas, Detroit, Winnipeg, Los Angeles and New Jersey are all showing that they shouldn’t be counted out so soon.
Tampa Bay of course, leads the entire league with 32 points and a whopping +28 goal differential through 20 games. Their dominance this year has led to just three regulation losses, and two early favorites for the Hart Trophy (three, if you think Andrei Vasilevskiy has a shot). Right now most would call them the class of the Eastern Conference, and who would disagree? With the best line in hockey, a stud defenseman entering his prime and an up-and-coming Vezina candidate they’re poised to compete for the Stanley Cup for at least the next few years.
But who does that leave in the second slot? Several teams have claims to stake on the silver podium, but each have their warts. Toronto had a struggling goaltender through the first month of the season, while Columbus can’t get their powerplay working properly. The Penguins have been blown out several times while the Devils have won just three of their last nine games.
Vote below on who you think is the second best team in the east, and make sure to leave a comment if you disagree with the original premise of Tampa Bay as the class of the conference. We’ve included all of the teams within 10 points of the Lightning.
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Atlantic Notes: Eichel, Housley, Red Wings, Lightning
The Buffalo News’ Mike Harrington writes how Buffalo’s struggles are just as perplexing as those affecting its franchise player, Jack Eichel. The third year pro has looked frustrated and lethargic this season as the Sabres sink to the bottom of the Atlantic, and the Eastern Conference even before the (American) Thanksgiving holiday. Harrington writes:
There’s one gnawing issue that keeps growing: What’s going on with Jack Eichel?
Forget about an elephant in the room. This is an entire herd. Eichel is not the guy we’ve seen the last two years. He was invisible again for long stretches Saturday — not getting a single shot on goal for more than 48 minutes.
He continues on the subject of Eichel, stating that the “dirty secret” amongst Sabres fans is that Eichel is essentially lolly-gagging around the ice when he should be skating harder. Worse, he pinpoints a play during the Sabres 3-1 loss to Carolina Saturday night where Eichel was a non-factor in what would be the game winning score. It’s Eichel, Harringon pens, who got his wish when former coach Dan Bylsma was fired. Which leads Harrington to his next subject: new bench boss Phil Housley.
- Calling him “Pollyanna Phil,” Harrington opines that while the first year coach finally talked tough following an uninspiring loss to Detroit, he was back to his passive ways Saturday. Where Harrington points out that Eichel may need to be shown how lackluster his play has been, Housley has instead gone a more positive route, choosing to highlight what he believes Eichel has done well. If you have a future captain, inked to an expensive long term deal, Harrington suggests that it may behoove the Sabres to call things as they truly are with Eichel.
- The Detroit News’ Gregg Krupa highlights the Red Wings’ young players as the reason for the team’s latest reversal of fortune. It’s been an uptick in usage of Andreas Athanasiou, Dylan Larkin, and Anthony Mantha that has helped the team while captain Henrik Zetterberg has taken a lesser role while still playing at a high level. Krupa adds that nine players on the team have four or more goals, showing that the more even distribution of ice time has benefitted the team.
- Tampa Bay hasn’t lost much this season, but when they have, it’s provided a “reality check” writes the Tampa Bay Times’ Roger Mooney. The Bolts have lost for only the third time this season, and as it was in the other two contests, they came out flat and ran out of time. Mooney points out that the team was resilient after both early season losses, ripping off a couple winning streaks after. Bench boss John Cooper likened it to the old Forrest Gump quote: “That stuff happens.” Regardless, it doesn’t seem to have fazed them in the slightest. Simply put, Mooney quoted Ondrej Palat as saying, “We have to be better,”