The light at the end of the tunnel. It’s so close, yet I can feel another multiple overtime game keeping me from a full night of sleep. Between my training and trying to stay on top of my tracking work, the past two months have been a real grind. The end is near, though. There are, at most, two games left of the playoffs and my first ever powerlifting competition is on Sunday. Balancing the two has been a tough act along with real life so that might be why this post-season has lasted six months instead of just nine weeks.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast when the qualifying round started. There were so many teams and I was embracing the weirdness of this tournament as long as they kept everyone inside the bubbles safe. Then I just hit a wall. I’m not sure if it was the five overtime game in the first round, the Hurricanes imploding against Boston or just everything adding up overtime, but I crashed. Hard. So much that I ended up taking a series in the Conference Finals off because I legit could not focus when I tried to work for a whole weekend.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy tracking games & all. It’s a brutal, time-consuming job but the stats are always fun to glance over at the end of games. Like how many shot assists Brayden Point had at the end of basically any Tampa Bay game or Mathew Barzal’s zone entries. It’s just something I enjoy & I feel like I kind of got away from focusing on that as the playoffs went on. Some of my statcaps weren’t getting any traction & I tried a little too hard to focus on the coaching/tactical side of things, which led to me making a lot of posts that made no sense or pointing out things that were ultimately trivial in the end.
Then I would get frustrated that people didn’t care about them because of all the work I put into it. Sometimes I forget that this data is new to most people, so the most I should do is post what happened & what it means instead of trying to come across as some “hockey genius,” (which I’m not). Yes, most of it is pretty straightforward, but there’s more I could have done to expand on it instead of trying to sound like I’m Mike Johnson.
I needed to remind myself that it’s okay if people don’t care or notice a post. The world is a disaster right now, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and there’s lots of other sports going on right now. If I’m feeling burned out on hockey then I can only imagine how a casual or neutral fan feels. It was just a frustrating season for me because I wasn’t making any real progress as an analyst. No writing gigs, a decrease in Patreon support, countless tweets that were just me yelling into the void. I didn’t appreciate the “jokes” everyone made about how I’m basically going to be useless once the NHL’s tracking data becomes public either. Seeing people I respected talk down about my work behind my back instead of giving me feedback when I asked for it also got me down (I probably took those a little more personally than I should have.). But I legit didn’t know if I wanted to keep doing this at the beginning of the year. It took me rebuilding my database in February & a few conversations with people around the stoppage.
Things have been going a little better since then. The data is so much easier to access for patrons than it was when I started this in 2016. It’s even easier for non-patrons to get a snapshot with my Tableau skills getting better. I’m close to rebuilding my data archive so we’re going to have four seasons of data to work with by the end of the week. So why am I so frustrated with where I’m at? I don’t know.
Everything can be better. I haven’t found an optimal way to share post-game stats & the All Three Zones data can be even more detailed than it is now. There’s data I’ve tracked that I haven’t even shared yet because organizing the basics is a huge task on its own. That’s kind of the niche I’ve settled in, though. Not book smart enough to fit in with most of the analytics crowd & not hockey smart enough to fit in with the player/coach crowd. It’s not a bad middle ground to be in, but I’m hoping there’s another level I can get to next year. Maybe I’m already there but I can’t see what’s happening because my days have been nothing but hockey, training & housework for two months?
It’s sort of like this Dallas Stars team. How many times have we said “holy shit, this team is out of their element!” after they were down two or three goals only for them to come back & win? How long were they in that middle ground of the NHL where they couldn’t seem to find the right mix to get them into the playoffs? I still don’t know if they’re that good of a team, but they keep finding ways to come back & win no matter how many times we say that they suck & don’t belong in the playoffs. They’ve slowly made a fan out of me over the years because of how similar their online fanbase is to the Hurricanes. Dallas is a bigger market & has had better talent, but we were all frustrated about the same things for years and savor the good seasons when they happen. It’s just a shame they couldn’t meet in the Cup Final, but hopefully that happens next year.
Hockey Thoughts
- Thank god the last two games were more competitive and interesting because I am not sure if I could stomach Tampa Bay just forechecking the hell out of the Stars for 60 minutes to close out the series. If they were skating around & outscoring them it would be one thing, but both teams just getting the puck deep & keeping play on the boards doesn’t entertain me much. It’s why I couldn’t get interested in last year’s SCF with Boston & St. Louis. That and Tampa Bay is going to win that battle nine times out of ten unless they’re playing from behind. Brayden Point’s line is going to do whatever they want once they get the puck, so it was great to see Dallas start to push the pace a little.
- I’m impressed with how well Dallas is at controlling scoring chances despite whatever the shot count says. It’s in line with how they played in the regular season (7th in xG against), but it didn’t matter because they couldn’t score a goal to save their lives. They’re finishing a little better in the playoffs & the good defensive play has held up for the most part. Game 5 was probably their best performance, outchancing Tampa 18-12 & allowing only one cross-seam pass (which didn’t happen until overtime).
I also feel the need to hammer this point home because whenever a team wins despite getting outshout & winning the xG battle, someone from media makes a snide comment about the shot attempts like it’s 2013 and analytics nerds only look at Corsi. We’re beyond that now!
As good as Dallas is at defending, it can only take you so far in the playoffs if you don’t have any scoring or top-end talent to back it up. Dallas’ offense was better than they showed in the regular season & we’re starting to see it come around. Jamie Benn was great in the Conference Final, Joe Pavelski is one goal away from matching his regular season total, John Klingberg is still one of the most creative players in the league at making plays from the point. Game 5 was, by far, Tyler Seguin’s best of the playoffs so we’ll see how much Dallas has left now that they’re letting their best players open it up a little more. - I still can’t believe Yanni Gourde went over 40 games without scoring a goal this year. I’m not sure if he felt the effect of Tampa trying to play a “grittier” style or if it was some insane shooting luck, but he has found a great niche for himself as a puck hound in these playoffs. He’s been on the same line with Coleman & Goodrow all post-season (I think?) and leads all players in puck recoveries off dump-ins. By a wide margin, actually. It’s been cool to see him seamlessly change his role after spending most of last season with Stamkos as his most common linemate & scoring 20+ goals. Also fits the old “acquire as many good players as possible” team building philosophy.
- As someone who tracks microstats & tries not to miss the big picture, analyzing Esa Lindell is tough. He is a total zero when it comes to moving the puck, but consistently ranks high as one of the top players at forcing dump-ins & negating zone entries. This is easy to see this when watching the Stars, too. He’s always playing high in the neutral zone, looking to poke-check or hip-check anyone who dares challenge him with the puck. He plays with the puck like he’s killing a penalty even if there’s 20 feet of open ice in front of him. He has exited the zone with control on only 21-percent of his attempts this post-season and 19-percent this series. Only Jamie Oleksiak has a worse Zone Exit Rate on the Stars & his regular Possession Exit rate of 25-percent was comparable with the likes of Kris Russell, Olli Maatta & Connor Clifton. Did I mention he kills an insane amount of penalties?
In other words, he’s a defensive defenseman. Nothing out of the ordinary on a good team. The weird part is that his on-ice stats are all pretty lousy no matter which source you check. The terrible zone exit rate & the lack of offense explains some of it, but he has never looked great from a defensive perspective either. He wasn’t especially bad this year going by Micah Blake McCurdy’s model, which estimates isolated impact, but he hasn’t exactly been Niklas Hjalmarsson either.
With how good he is at defending the blue line, you’d expect his on-ice impacts to be a little better. The fact that he sends the puck off the glass for all of his exits is one thing, but he is one of those players where the macro-level results don’t lineup with some of the micro-stats tracked.
On a personal level, I always wondered if Lindell’s style of play had to do with coaching because he scored 14-goals in his lone AHL season (and had 11 goals last year, somehow) & is known for showing some high level skill in the rare event that he’s in the offensive zone. It’s just that he’s been programmed to play a certain way since entering the league & can’t shake old habits. I don’t think this is the case because he’s on his third coach now & his playing style hasn’t changed much since Lindy Ruff left. It is one of those things I always think about, though.
- I was ready to crown Victor Hedman with saying he had one of the best playoff runs I’ve seen from a defenseman (yes, better than EK65 in 2017). Then he went onto have his worst game of the playoffs with eight failed exits & a brutal Expected Goal differential. Just goes to show that I have great timing with my hot takes. (Seriously though, he’s played like 800 minutes the past two months. I’ll cut him some slack).
The Energy Line 