IKnowPhysics

He should either be on the top line or in the press box in Seattle!

Lulz. I say 2nd line... maybe.

Krueger jumbling lines. Olofsson-Eichel-Reinhart Hall-Staal-Sheahan Rider-Eakin-Okposo Skinner-Lazar-Sheahan

Ristolainen is doing an excellent job cleaning up the bouncey trash and bailing out Ullmark. Definitely a calming veteran presence out there on big kill.

Ullmark channeling Hasek tonight.

Tie game.

Great tip by Reinhart.

***** these dead zone hits.

Ullmark showing up.

The aded ice time is because Olofsson has been playing the power play. Total 5v5 minutes on the season between SKinner and Olofsson are within a single shift.

That's 100% on Matt Irwin collecting the rebound and giving it directly to Panarin on the tape with Ullmark out of position. Awful play by Irwin.

Hall-Eichel-Reinhart are unstoppable.

Yep. ***** change. Hall eats ***** right at the bench which causes a slow Sabres change with the Rangers in quick transition. Risto reads it, steps up to his off side (LD) to try to jam the play at the blue line. But the successful zone entry anyway draws McCabe to the RD, unable to stop the pass across. Neither Rieder or Sheahan, late to get back in on the change, pick up the shooter.

Paper hands.

Now looking at Olofsson's numbers. Shift charts confirm Olofsson has only played 5v5 with centers Eichel and Staal, but had a few different RWs (Reinhart, Cozens, Thompson). Again, the sample sizes are small, but here's the 5v5 result so far: Center - TOI - CF% - HDCF% Eichel with Olofsson - 12:55 - 38.10% (8CF 13CA) - 75.00% (3HDCF 1HDCA) Eichel without Olofsson - 99:43 - 62.94% (107CF 63CA) - 79.17% (19HDCF 5HDCA) As mentioned before, Hall-Eichel-Reinhart are absolutely trashing opponents in CF% and HDCF%. Note that most of Olofsson's time with Eichel was also with Sam Reinhart. And in the previous post, you saw how much Reinhart boosted Hall-Eichel. CF% would say that Olofsson should definitely not play with Eichel and Reinhart and there's not enough HDCF% data to refute it, EPSECIALLY considering how well Hall-Eichel-Reinhart is currently playing. And last season's data supports that too. Olofsson-Eichel-Reinhart three played over 600 minutes together and recorded a CF% of 48.97% and HDCF% of 42.49%. Also last season, Skinner-Eichel-Reinhart played about 79 minutes and recorded a CF% of 61.27% and HDCF% of 60.00%- It's still a little mind boggling why we didn't see more of that. Anyways, focus on the overall impact on wins/losses from your top line improving in HDCF% from 42.49% to 79.17% when they play 1/3 of the 5v5 game! This alone should get you wet. Back to this Skinner/Olofsson with Staal this season: Staal with Olofsson - 69:45 - 47.41% (55CF 61CA) - 50.00% (7HDCF 7HDCA) Staal without Olofsson - 19:46 - 59.38% (19CF 13CA) - 83.33% (5HDCF 1HDCA) Staal with Skinner - 16:10 - 61.54% (16CF 10CA) - 80.00% (4HDCF 1HDCA) Staal without Skinner - 75:25 - 47.54% (58CF 64CA) - 53.33% (8HDCF 7HDCA) Lazar with Skinner - 51.06% (48CF 46CA) - 62.50% (10HDCF 6HDCA) There's not a lot of data on Staal with Skinner instead of Olofsson, but what's there is promising. Maybe enough to warrant getting more data. There's even less data about what happens if Olofsson is put with Lazar or Eakin (two and five minutes, respecitvely). But if you're Krueger, and you're happy with how Skinner elevates Lazar in HDCF, do you attempt to see what happens when Olofsson is put with Lazar? It's a risk. The data doesn't suggest that Olofsson is elevating anyone's CF or HDCF game so far, so do you boost Staal's game with Skinner while potentially creating a hole with Olofsson and Lazar? Krueger has repeatedly answered this question: no. One could boil it down into ++ (good CF% and HDCF%) and -- (worse CF% and HDCF%). Staal / Lazar Olofsson -- / ?? Skinner ++ / ++ I think Skinner being on the 3rd/4th line may have more to do with Olofsson's game than Skinner's game.

TRUST GIN

Thanks for the positive feedback. It's nice to know I'm not yelling equations into a void. I get where LTS is going, but there's just not enough data to know if the alternative is better. But there's no data if Krueger doesn't try it, so it's a chicken and egg problem. But I get it. To win, you need to score goals and prevent goals. To score goals, you need lots of shots multilplied by a good shooting percentage. To prevent goals, you need to prevent shots multiplied by forcing shots to have a low shooting percentage. You'd like to simultaneously win CF% with margin and have great SH% and great SV%, but realistically, you're trying to win the overall HDCF% battle, as high danger corsi typically has a much higher SH% and lower SV% against and these chances make bigger impacts on wins/losses over the season than low percentage plays. LTS points out that it's unknown whether the overall team HDCF when Skinner is with Lazar is any better or worse than when Skinner is with Eichel or Staal (or others). Maybe Skinner-Eichel-Reinhart is better than Hall-E-R and Hall aids Lazar just the same as Skinner, causing an overall team improvement in HDCF%. Hard to know unless it's tried.

I was tooling around with WOWY to begin to understand Skinner's usage. Skinner has played with centers Eichel, Staal, and Lazar. The sample sizes are small, but here's the 5v5 result so far: Center - TOI - CF% Eichel - 4:51 - 88.89% (8CF 1CA) Staal - 12:49 - 62.50% (15CF 9CA) Lazar - 59:55 - 51.09% (47CF 45CA) The obvious shines: Skinner is better with Eichel and Staal (and others) than Lazar. Let's isolate Skinner and Lazar: Both Skinner AND Lazar on ice - 61:34 - 51.06% (48CF 46CA) Neither Skinner NOR Lazar on ice - 258:34 - 52.66% (228CF 205CA) Skinner on ice without Lazar - 21:04 - 71.43% (25CF 10CA) Lazar on ice without Skinner - 10:46 - 46.67% (7CF 8CA) What you see is still obvious: Skinner generates more offense away from Lazar (because he's paired with Eichel or Staal and better RWs), and when they're together, Skinner lifts Lazar a little bit (but maybe within errors). You may look at the second case and say, hey, the team is better without that pairing... does that mean they suck? The answer is technically yes... but not for the reason you think. The next part shows how the team is doing, in sorts. Here's Eichel's WOWY so far this year: Eichel on the ice - 112:38 - 60.21% (115CF 76CA) Eichel not on the ice - 239:20 - 50.00% (193CF 193CA) The team is even with Eichel off the ice and Eichel's line is murdering other teams 5v5. Skinner and Lazar are 51.06%, which is slightly better than the non-Eichel average of 50.00%. This sounds bleh, but this is an ENORMOUS improvement over the previous years where Eichel reigns and the rest of the lines get their ***** kicked in. But last year, Eichel didn't exactly reign - he eked by: Eichel on the ice 2019-20 - 1122:51 - 50.90% Eichel not on the ice 2019-20 - 2270:16 - 48.20% Improving the top line's CF% from 50.90% to 60.21% is absolutely massive, especially when they are recording a full third of the 5v5 minutes. This must be a credit to Eichel or Hall or Krueger or all three, yes? No. Thank Sam Reinhart. Here's why: Hall and Eichel and no Reinhart - 25:01 - 51.35% (19CF 18CA) Hall and Eichel and Reinhart - 69:52 - 62.99% (80CF 47CA) Once Sam is added to the top line, Corsi goes off the rails in our favor. Our top line is outshooting opponents damn near two to one. If you're Krueger, do you upset this machine? Maybe it's worth it to try Skinner up there? I mean, Skinner had those five minutes when Hall was out and they did pretty good...? No. Even though the non-Eichel Sabres are at CF% 50.00%, the High Danger Corsi (based on high danger scoring chances not just shot attempts) for the team shows that they're actually doing a great job at creating high danger scoring chances more than the opponent and that the shots they're generating are much high quality than the shots they're allowing: Eichel on the ice - HDCF% 78.5% Eichel not on the ice - HDCF% 58.5% Skinner and Lazar are at HDCF% 62.50%, which is considerably better than the team without Skinner or Lazar or Eichel at HDCF% 53.19%. Skinner is helping the Lazar line tilt the ice in the dangerous areas and he's doing a better job at it than anyone not playing with Eichel.

Raw AF. I look forward to it. There could be insight into why Lafontaine departed, although the writing on the wall from the timing of his departure is that he either was given zero power after Tim Murray's hiring or he wanted nothing to do with tanking (he resigned the day after Steve Ott and Ryan Miller were traded) or both. This never gets talked about, likely due to the NDAs. And it looks like there will definitely be insight into the off-ice racism that many suspected but went largely untold.

Good stand at the end. Woo!

Hockey is for everyone. Period. The sport needs leaders, be they athletes, coaches, referees, or commissioners, to step up, light the beacon, and keep it bright. Defining metrics is hard, but listening to experiences is easy. The work won't stop until all people are welcomed and accepted in the sport and the business. The NHL is bad at this, but that means they have a lot of room to grow.

It's one of the many cases where the coaching staff gave a player the toughest defensive assignments and the fans think he "appears to struggle offensively" even though they're still productive. Dude worked harder than most on both sides of the puck, but that didn't stop fans from losing their ***** when he was made a rotating captain. Second best German player by NHL points of all time and 13th all-time Sabres GP, but that don't matter.

ALL OF THE PP

One of the most underrated Sabres of all time and a popular whipping boy by this board for an entire decade.