GDT - Devils @ Sabres, 7:00pm MSG, 1/8/2019

[woods-racer]

Just now, New Scotland (NS) said:

It's not a real word in the English language.  It's just made up.

If there is one thing I can say about Inky, other than the obvious, is that he really knows his English very goodly.  Yup.

He's gots good English?

That's goods to know.

I'm gonna post more, I think I could drive crazy without trying.?.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

Just now, woods-racer said:

He's gots good English?

That's goods to know.

I'm gonna post more, I think I could drive crazy without trying.?.

For 1 thing, you have way too many puctuation thingies in there.

[woods-racer]

7 minutes ago, New Scotland (NS) said:

For 1 thing, you have way too many puctuation thingies in there.

That's bad?

 

Who knew?

?

[LGR4GM]

5v5 stats that disprove the Reinhart Eichel pairing theory and reinforce the Skinner Eichel theory. 

Skinner - Eichel - Reinhart: 273:48 TOI / CF%48.77 / SF%48.73 / gf 18 / gf% 66.67 / 3.9 gp60

Jack and Sam: 98:33 TOI / CF%48.72 / SF%47.62 / gf 3 / gf% 33.33 / 1.82 gp60

Jeff and Jack: 172:39 TOI / CF%55.12 / SF%56.93 / gf 17 / gf% 68 / 5.9 gp60

Samson alone: 177:58 TOI / CF%50.77 / SF%52.75 / gf 9 / gf% 69.23 / 3.03 gp60

 

The theory that Sam is better with Eichel doesn't hold a lot of weight. Sam without Eichel produces a decent gp60 of 3.03 or 0.87 lower than with Eichel and Skinner. However with Eichel and Sam and no Skinner they are bad. In addition, Eichel with Skinner and no Reinhart is great. They produce almost 2 full gp60 more without Sam. Clearly moving Sam to a new line helps the team overall will only minimally hurting his production and making up for it with improved production from Skinner and Eichel. For context, Ratanen and McKinnon together produce at 3.6gp60 and Matthews and Kapanen produce at 4.55 gp60.

Sam should be taken off that line and put with Mittelstadt. In their limited time together Casey and Sam had a bad corsi but have produced. I think with Casey's improvements over the 20 games Reinhart has been stapled to Jack's wing, we could see that corsi improve as well. Give them a decent LW... CJ Smith or Sheary and see what happens. 

 

SF = shots for 

GF = goals for

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by LGR4GM

[LGR4GM]

Lines should be:

Skinner - Eichel - Thompson

Sheary - Mitts - Reinhart

CJ Smith - Larsson - Okposo (Erod)

Zemgus - Sobotka - Pommers (Erod)

 

Smith - Larsson - Okposo has played 36.24 TOI together at 5v5 and scored 1 goal, they have a positive Corsi (54.69%) even though they have a negative SF (47.06%).  Definitely worth a longer look. 

Edited January 10, 2019 by LGR4GM

[North Buffalo]

49 minutes ago, New Scotland (NS) said:

It's not a real word in the English language.  It's just made up.

If there is one thing I can say about Inky, other than the obvious, is that he really knows his English very goodly.  Yup.

Wrong: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/physicality

but yeh lots of American words are made up.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

21 minutes ago, North Buffalo said:

Wrong: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/physicality

but yeh lots of American words are made up.

I will fight anyone on this.

And I am not a fighter, but a lover, eh.

Just because it's 'in there' does not make it a real word.

[North Buffalo]

32 minutes ago, New Scotland (NS) said:

I will fight anyone on this.

And I am not a fighter, but a lover, eh.

Just because it's 'in there' does not make it a real word.

Oh but it does... ?.  Then you really dont understand Americanized english. Its about creativity and lots of colloquialisms. Despite my sometime exhausted dyslexia. 

Edited January 10, 2019 by North Buffalo

[Thorner]

10 hours ago, That Aud Smell said:

I'll be on the lookout for this. I think Sam's strong on his skates. My sense has been that he might do a bit better with a heavier team than he does with a fast team.

 

Anecdotally, he's definitely cut down on his helmet adjustments by at least 50% this year. 

I kind of miss it. 

[Thorner]

10 hours ago, dudacek said:

Remember when Jack had 4 goals?

I’m OK with moving Sam - or Jeff - away from Jack, at least temporarily.

But idea that Jack doesn’t benefit from playing with Sam is as silly as saying Sam doesn’t benefit from playing with Jack. Sam can get the puck to Jack in scoring positions better than anyone else.

He definitely benefits from playing with Sam, who wouldn't. He's a near-perfect complimentary player to those with a higher skill level. But of note, Jack's production without Reinhart this season is probably closer to "different" than significantly lacking, relative to playing with him. He was definitely still piling up the points without him, just leaning significantly more towards the assists side of things. 

To your point, Reinhart being on that line leads to a little bit more balanced JE. 

Edit: hadn't read LGR's post yet. He already had it covered, with stats, to boot!

Edited January 11, 2019 by Thorny

[Taro T]

10 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

5v5 stats that disprove the Reinhart Eichel pairing theory and reinforce the Skinner Eichel theory. 

Skinner - Eichel - Reinhart: 273:48 TOI / CF%48.77 / SF%48.73 / gf 18 / gf% 66.67 / 3.9 gp60

Jack and Sam: 98:33 TOI / CF%48.72 / SF%47.62 / gf 3 / gf% 33.33 / 1.82 gp60

Jeff and Jack: 172:39 TOI / CF%55.12 / SF%56.93 / gf 17 / gf% 68 / 5.9 gp60

Samson alone: 177:58 TOI / CF%50.77 / SF%52.75 / gf 9 / gf% 69.23 / 3.03 gp60

 

The theory that Sam is better with Eichel doesn't hold a lot of weight. Sam without Eichel produces a decent gp60 of 3.03 or 0.87 lower than with Eichel and Skinner. However with Eichel and Sam and no Skinner they are bad. In addition, Eichel with Skinner and no Reinhart is great. They produce almost 2 full gp60 more without Sam. Clearly moving Sam to a new line helps the team overall will only minimally hurting his production and making up for it with improved production from Skinner and Eichel. For context, Ratanen and McKinnon together produce at 3.6gp60 and Matthews and Kapanen produce at 4.55 gp60.

Sam should be taken off that line and put with Mittelstadt. In their limited time together Casey and Sam had a bad corsi but have produced. I think with Casey's improvements over the 20 games Reinhart has been stapled to Jack's wing, we could see that corsi improve as well. Give them a decent LW... CJ Smith or Sheary and see what happens. 

 

SF = shots for 

GF = goals for

 

But, if we look at Skinner - Eichel - Reinhart from the Detroit game (the 1st they were reunited for this last time) through the Boston game right before the Aisles game that Eichel was injured in and compare that to how they did prior to that and you are looking at:

Eichel: 22 points in 16 games (a 112 point pace) vs 27 in 23 (a 96 point pace);

Reinhart: 22 points in 16 games (that same 112 point pace) vs his best streak prior to having that line put together right before the Minny game and he had 10 points in 10 games (an 82 point pace)

Skinner: 14 points in 16 games with 10 goals (72 point pace with 46 goal pace).

You can say their Corsi is worse, but who really cares with small sample sizes and the actual point output is improved.

I'd further posit that the 'lousy' Corsi when together is overblown because of a few items: 1 - that line was absolutely eaten alive in the opener by the Bergeron line; 2 - Skinner did nothing in that initial 3 game stint they had before Pominville had his "terminal lucidy" moment in the Wild game which led to that line breaking up again; and 3 - the Girgensons - Larsson - Berglund line that took a lot of ice time against the other team's best line during much of the win streak had been broken up for good about the time the Eichel line got reunited forcing the Eichel line to have much harder usage with Reinhart than it faced with Pominville on the line.  Take the 1st 4 games together out of the Corsi stats and I'd expect they tell a much different story.  And considering it typically takes a few games for brand new lines to figure each other out, it isn't IMHO "cherry picking" to take those games out of the mix.

Not only was Housley not forcing Larsson against the other team's top line, Mittelstadt was slumping as well giving the Sabres absolutely nothing from the 2nd "scoring" line (is a line that never scores truly a scoring line?) so other teams were even more intent to make the Eichel's line as difficult as possible.  I realize that people use that tougher usage as a reason to break the line up.  I see it as a reason to reconstitute a shut down line that can at least take tough minutes at home if not on the road.  I also see that as a reason to give Mittelstadt the 4th line duty to get him rolling again and get some scoring from another line.  

As for Reinhart not scoring as many goals when paired with Eichel, I'm not that concerned about it because his overall scoring is up and it can be explained in large part to not simply standing in front of & around the net when he plays with Eichel.  He also, even when he goes to the net when playing with Eichel (& Ristolainen as well) does not go to the net in the same way.  He stands off to the side a bit, avoiding getting nailed with the puck rather than getting the full screen on the goalie.  When Pilut is shooting he plays like he did with O'Reilly; when Risto is shooting, he's not looking to make the total screen.

I'd still like to see the corpse of Pominville be made the full time 13th forward; keep THE Eichel line together; give Sheary and Sobotka Thompson to keep other teams viewing that as the 2nd line (and giving them relatively tough assignments); either go for a true shutdown Larsson line with Z and Okposo (Okie has shown a decent if not good Bergy impression so far on that line) or let Smith take Z's spot hoping for a bit of offense from the line even though it won't be as good at shutdown.  Then give Casey Rodrigues and either Z or Smith and hope for a smidge of Kotalik - Connolly - Afinogenov (too much to ask for Vanek - Roy - Afinogenov).  But, IF you break up THE Eichel line, let Skinner continue to do his thing on his own and bring Sheary back onto a stat sheet.

My 2 cents.