The Elephant In the Sabres' Room: Fixing the Power Play

[French Collection]

A guy I am thinking of currently works with many NHLers as an independent skills coach. He has tons of PP experience as a player and a coach.

Adam Oates.

[Jorcus]

19 hours ago, mjd1001 said:

I posted this in another thread yesterday, but here goes the PP part of it here:

Want to know what is different about the PP this year vs last?  Mostly Cozens and Tage.

 Those 2 guys had 11 pp goals by this time last year. This year? 2 PP goals between them. This year the team is at 14.29% on the PP.  If you add those extra 9 goal shortcoming between those 2 guys, you get the PP back to 25%, which is 6th or 7th in the entire league.

Have Tage pick up the pace and get CLOSE to his form of last year, and have Cozens do ANYTHING of value offensively to justify $7+ millon dollars, and there is your power play fix.  

And it is not the style/coaching the PP that is bringing those guys down, its really those guys that are bringing the PP down. Its not just the PP, both of them are producing a lot less than they have last year in all aspects of their game. (the last 2 years with Tage). Tage probably due much to injury..and Cozens just needing to be better all around.

The Style of the PP, the coaching, the number of passes, etc...all looks a LOT better if Cozens and Tage get back on track.

Tage just seems to be turning back against pressure too much. He is doing it every zone. This was a good transition team last year but it starts with getting the puck to open ice. He is not playing the direct game that Granato keeps asking for.  Is it my imagination or is Cozens skating slower this year? Not sure what the line juggle in the last two games accomplished. Hopefully the return of Tuch resolves that issue. Can't really have Mittlestadt on the PP if he won't shoot when open. Even if he only going to cause a rebound it would be better than whats going on now.  

[French Collection]

1 minute ago, Jorcus said:

Tage just seems to be turning back against pressure too much. He is doing it every zone. This was a good transition team last year but it starts with getting the puck to open ice. He is not playing the direct game that Granato keeps asking for.  Is it my imagination or is Cozens skating slower this year? Not sure what the line juggle in the last two games accomplished. Hopefully the return of Tuch resolves that issue. Can't really have Mittlestadt on the PP if he won't shoot when open. Even if he only going to cause a rebound it would be better than whats going on now.  

Tage is definitely playing mostly and east-west game. It allows the back pressure to catch up and then he tries to dangle his way out of trouble. Tuch on his line gained the zone with speed and then they could perform some magic.

Cozens had a few bursts last night that reminded me of last year, I think he gets the gorilla off his back very soon.

Mitts needs to shoot more. Quite often these guys are trying to pick high corners and miss the net, I like the low shots for rebounds when you have more players on the ice. Of course you need to crash the net for rebounds.

[Jorcus]

14 minutes ago, French Collection said:

Tage is definitely playing mostly and east-west game. It allows the back pressure to catch up and then he tries to dangle his way out of trouble. Tuch on his line gained the zone with speed and then they could perform some magic.

Cozens had a few bursts last night that reminded me of last year, I think he gets the gorilla off his back very soon.

Mitts needs to shoot more. Quite often these guys are trying to pick high corners and miss the net, I like the low shots for rebounds when you have more players on the ice. Of course you need to crash the net for rebounds.

One thing I thought of is there is no rule that says it's better to have only 1 D on the power play. Dahlin can't be super offensive if he has to be the defenseman too. Put Joki or someone else on the other side and let Dahlin be more creative. Mainly you want the other D to be responsible for the blue line and have the ability to take open shots or passes. Having forwards cover up for defensemen gets this team in trouble.   

Edited December 12, 2023 by Jorcus

[mjd1001]

Cozens played a half season (41 games) his rookie year and his shooting percentage was 6.5%

The following year he played 79 games (full season) and his shooter percentage was 8.1%

This year, through almost 30 games his shooting percentage is 6.0%.

Combine every year in his career except for last year, and he has played 147 games with 21 total goals and a shooting percentage of 6.2%

 

Last year of course he had 31 goals and shot 14.7%.  What if last year is the exception and the other seasons (including this) are the rule, and he just "is" a 6-10% shooting guy where 12-20 goal seasons might be the norm?

[LGR4GM]

5 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

Cozens played a half season (41 games) his rookie year and his shooting percentage was 6.5%

The following year he played 79 games (full season) and his shooter percentage was 8.1%

This year, through almost 30 games his shooting percentage is 6.0%.

Combine every year in his career except for last year, and he has played 147 games with 21 total goals and a shooting percentage of 6.2%

 

Last year of course he had 31 goals and shot 14.7%.  What if last year is the exception and the other seasons (including this) are the rule, and he just "is" a 6-10% shooting guy where 12-20 goal seasons might be the norm?

The important thing here is shots not necessarily games. He has 222 shots in his first 2 years and 211 in his 3rd year. The question is really is the 67 shots he has taken this year indicative of his shooting or not? Hard to say with such an even split between the first 2 years and his 3rd year. That first 222 shots results in a 7.66sh% which is still better than his current rate of 6.0% My guess would be that at some point we see positive regression in his sh% as it seems unlikely that Cozens is a 6% shooter and to be truthful most players are better than that. League average sh% is 10.1 across all teams so I think expected Cozens to be an average shooter is reasonable. 

[mjd1001]

12 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

The important thing here is shots not necessarily games. He has 222 shots in his first 2 years and 211 in his 3rd year. The question is really is the 67 shots he has taken this year indicative of his shooting or not? Hard to say with such an even split between the first 2 years and his 3rd year. That first 222 shots results in a 7.66sh% which is still better than his current rate of 6.0% My guess would be that at some point we see positive regression in his sh% as it seems unlikely that Cozens is a 6% shooter and to be truthful most players are better than that. League average sh% is 10.1 across all teams so I think expected Cozens to be an average shooter is reasonable. 

And that 10% shooting percentage IS is actual average when you count all of the seasons, this year, the previous years AND last year's great year. So maybe he is about 10%.  But then we look at his shot totals, and he is about a 2.5 shots per game guy pretty consistently  That means a goal every 4 games on average, that means about 18-22 goals per year from him.  Extrapolating numbers I know, but after last year I think a lot of people thought 30 was the floor for goals for him going forward and he was only going to improve on that.

[LGR4GM]

9 minutes ago, mjd1001 said:

And that 10% shooting percentage IS is actual average when you count all of the seasons, this year, the previous years AND last year's great year. So maybe he is about 10%.  But then we look at his shot totals, and he is about a 2.5 shots per game guy pretty consistently  That means a goal every 4 games on average, that means about 18-22 goals per year from him.  Extrapolating numbers I know, but after last year I think a lot of people thought 30 was the floor for goals for him going forward and he was only going to improve on that.

I wouldn't be surprised if Cozens was a 25g player. 

[GASabresIUFAN]

Shooting % tends to very, sometimes significantly, from year to year, but the good shooters, even in their off years are significantly above the NHL average.  Take Sam Reinhart for example.  Other than his 2nd NHL season, Sam has shot 12% or better every season with peaks as high as 17 and 19%.  His career average is 14.7% and this season he is en fuego at 25.8%.  

TNT's first 3 years were all under 10%.  Then he was 15.9, 15, and this season back down to 11%.  Skinner is an 11% career shooter but his success has varied wildly from 6.3% to 3 seasons over 14% (high 14.9%).  He also has 6 seasons under 10%. 

I'm not sure I'd read anything negative into DC's shooting just yet.  He has been lousy this year.  Maybe it's just the injuries, but it also could be the weight of expectations and a big contract on a young player.   Another DC stat that pops out is his TK/GV this year vs the last couple of seasons.  Last year his takeaways were nearly double his giveaways.  This season his giveaways are nearly 3 times his takeaways.  Something is just not right with DC this season.

Edited December 12, 2023 by GASabresIUFAN

[Marvin]

15 hours ago, French Collection said:

A guy I am thinking of currently works with many NHLers as an independent skills coach. He has tons of PP experience as a player and a coach.

Adam Oates.

IMHO, he would be a great choice.

[bob_sauve28]

 

 

[GASabresIUFAN]

Did we finally see a new PP set up last night?

The Sabres went 2/4 on the PP (net 1 because of the SHG allowed).  Both goals were scored the same way on passes through the crease to an open player on the side of the net.  
 

 

[Marvin]

8 hours ago, GASabresIUFAN said:

Did we finally see a new PP set up last night?

The Sabres went 2/4 on the PP (net 1 because of the SHG allowed).  Both goals were scored the same way on passes through the crease to an open player on the side of the net.  
 

 

We can hope, but I need more evidence.  At least it was a new wrinkle with a totally different use of the player geometry.

[Big Guava]

On 12/11/2023 at 10:12 PM, French Collection said:

A guy I am thinking of currently works with many NHLers as an independent skills coach. He has tons of PP experience as a player and a coach.

Adam Oates.

Why is a player who never was on a power play unit coaching the power play?

22 minutes ago, Marvin said:

We can hope, but I need more evidence.  At least it was a new wrinkle with a totally different use of the player geometry.

They need to be able to use all of these ways concurrently and not make it so it's one approach and that's it. That makes it easy to defend. They should be a threat to do anything at any time on the PP. One timers from the wall, cross crease passes, rush PP chances, etc...

I don't know why they are limiting themselves to only one method of attack.

Edited January 5 by Big Guava

[Pimlach]

1 hour ago, Marvin said:

We can hope, but I need more evidence.  At least it was a new wrinkle with a totally different use of the player geometry.

Indeed.  One data point is not a trend.  Lets see the PP keep going like that for a few games. 

If we are ever going to have a winning streak we need the first line to be scoring.  It's time for them to get hot. 

 

[Big Guava]

3 hours ago, Pimlach said:

Indeed.  One data point is not a trend.  Lets see the PP keep going like that for a few games. 

If we are ever going to have a winning streak we need the first line to be scoring.  It's time for them to get hot. 

 

If they can play more than 2 or 3 games at a time together. Tuch might be out AGAIN tomorrow due to illness...along with Greenway 

[lowsabre]

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