Current Projected 2024-25 roster

[dudacek]

8 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

3 best defensive players? Kubel might be the best defensive player on the team. I think writing off the only addition who plays specifically rw, is a mistake. 

V.

 

 

From a Caps fan on HFboards:

I wanna take a little deeper dive here to point out just how brutal the minutes for Washington's "4th" line are and how nuts it is that they're performing so well anyway.

The individual members of that line have started their shifts in the offensive zone 7.98% of the time (NAK), 8.02% of the time (Malenstyn), and 9.29% of the time (Dowd) over ~400 minutes of 5 on 5 play each. As you mentioned, as a unit they've outscored opponents 13-6 at 5 on 5. OZ Start% as a statistic dates back to the 07-08 season, and in that time only one player has posted a sub 10% season while playing at least 300 minutes at 5 on 5: Paul Gaustad in 15/16. He had 5.76% OZ Starts and was outscored 6-21. Coincidentally, Gaustad had been traded with a 4th for a 1st as a pure rental at the 2012 trade deadline, the only 4th line center I can think of who was traded for a 1st rounder. That year he ranked 8th out of 626 skaters with 31.98% OZ Starts. One of the things you notice as you go through OZ Start% year by year is that giving players extreme deployments in one direction or another is a pretty recent phenomenon. In 07/08, the skater with the lowest OZ Start% was Bobby Holik at 29.62%. This season, that number would good for 30th.

Long story short, the Caps 4th line is at the forefront of the current trend of highly specialized deployments, and as a result they're playing quite possibly the most brutal minutes of any line in the history of hockey, on a team that's overall been outscored 71-90 at 5 on 5 (58-84 if you factor their line out)... and they're outscoring their opponents by a 2-1 margin in the process. It's insane, it shouldn't be possible, and yet it's happening. Nic Dowd should've been the Caps' All Star, and he should legitimately be in the Selke conversation.

More, same source:

Tangent from the Beck Malenstyn stuff - Beck is a textbook example of why with/without models are flawed. The RMNB article gives this player card from Evolving Hockey which evaluates him as a bad offensive player and an atrocious defender.

At the same time, it rates Dowd and NAK as both being average offensively and elite (90+) defensively. It think Beck was the passenger on that line, but in reality Beck was the player that defined the shutdown line. You can see through Natural Stat Trick's Line Stats tool that when that line was together, they got 7.65% OZ Faceoffs. So what happens when they break up?
 

NAK solo: 53.1%

Dowd solo: 35.7%

NAK+Dowd without Beck: 35.3%

Beck solo: 20.4%

For some league-wide context, if Malenstyn had 20.4% for the season that would drop his rank amongst forwards from 1/771 to 8/771, min 100 minutes played - still 1st percentile for hardest deployments.

What does a with/without model see in this context? Well when Dowd and NAK play away Beck they get significantly easier deployments with more skilled teammates, so their numbers improve away from him. Meanwhile, when Beck's away from Dowd and NAK he's being asked to play the same shutdown role, but now with teammates who aren't as well suited to it, so those teammates who are normally being sheltered by Beck's line see their numbers plummet. The model interprets this as Beck being a drag on all the players around him, so it gives him low scores.

This is the fundamental issue with these kinds of models. They'll always underrate players who consistently get tough, defensively-focused deployments, and they'll always overrate players who consistently easy, offensively-focused deployments. Hence why these models always seem to love the sheltered third pairing offensive defenseman or the speedy young winger the coach doesn't trust in his own zone and hate the steady, D-first guys that coaches lean on. I think there's some value to these models for the guys in the middle, but it inherently can't handle the edge cases.

[dudacek]

J Fresh may be right, but the Sabres disagree.

That's why they spent one year, $1.5M on Aube-Kubel, two years, $4.2M on Lafferty, a 2nd-rounder, 2 years and over $6M on Greenway and a 2nd-rounder and the risk of arbitration on Malenstyn.

 

[Pimlach]

2 hours ago, dudacek said:

I've seen a lot of people taking a forechecking 4th-line of Malenstyn-Lafferty-Aube-Kuble kinda for granted.

And while I like that line, I'm still kinda fixated on two things:

• I don't think the Sabres gave up a 2nd-round pick for Beck Malenstyn to play him 12 minutes a night on the 4th line
• I'm not going to force Don Granato deployments or Sabrespace prejudices onto Lindy Ruff.

What if Lindy is thinking of putting his three best defensive players together and running an old-school 3rd line checking line:

• Malenstyn McLeod Greenway

What if Malenstyn is tapped to be the hammer and the defensive conscience with more skill guys in the top 6, like Grier was:

• Malenstyn Cozens Quinn or Malenstyn Thompson Tuch

Not enough offence? Grier had 7 goals and 23 points in 81 games in '06 playing with Drury, who scored 30. Malenstyn had 6 and 21 in 81 games last year with Nick Dowd.

One of the things Ruff said he wants is  a "shut down line".   Whatever that line ends up being, you will see them protecting a lead and getting more shifts  than a normal 3rd and/or 4th line.  

I think you are correct to throw out the past DG line combos, everything will start new.  

[LGR4GM]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

J Fresh may be right, but the Sabres disagree.

That's why they spent one year, $1.5M on Aube-Kubel, two years, $4.2M on Lafferty, a 2nd-rounder, 2 years and over $6M on Greenway and a 2nd-rounder and the risk of arbitration on Malenstyn.

 

You and I have no idea if the Sabres disagree. Listing acquisition cost doesn't prove anything other than what it took to get these guys. 

[Taro T]

2 hours ago, dudacek said:

Another player I'm really curious about after the off-season shuffle is Peyton Krebs.

The off-season changes and acquisition of McLeod has, in most people's minds, pushed him from a poor fit as 3C to a spare part as the 13th forward. Given his actions (and rumours of Krebs being trade bait) I'm inclined to think Kevyn Adams' post-season positive comments about Krebs to be utter bullspit.

But what if it wasn't?

I think Donnie Granato did a fine job of developing the young Sabres under his watch, but Krebs always seemed to be the lowest man on his totem pole. While guys like Peterka and Thompson kept getting given prime ice time and opportunities to "learn by doing", Krebs got treated like a normal rookie: bottom six minutes, bottom six linemates; keep your head down, skate hard and don't ***** up.

A thing that doesn't really get talked about much is how much his game has changed as a result. Remember, this was a kid, who, in his last year of junior, was playing a 1C role and putting up numbers like Matt Savoie. You can't always put a ton of emphasis on counting stats, but I think these numbers are reflective of how much Krebs has transformed in just two seasons:

• 2022: GP: 48, P: 22, +/-: -20, Hits: 19, Giveways: 31
• 2024: GP: 80, P: 17, +/-: +2, Hits: 108, Giveways: 13

I watched quite a bit of Krebs before he got to the NHL. The pace is similar, but he doesn't really look like the same player. The teenage Krebs loved to have the puck on his stick, was always around it, and was constantly looking to make plays. Last year's Krebs looked like your textbook NHL 4th-line centre: skate hard, hold the fort for 40 seconds, get off.

Don't get me wrong. At 20, Krebs was a turnover waiting to happen; he needed to learn how to be responsible with the puck and take care of the details because he was never going to be driving offence in the NHL.

But now that he's discovered a more responsible base — he's actually pretty good now defensively — I wonder if there's room to tap back into his offensive game.

And that's where Lindy Ruff comes in.

With his rough edges now smoothed, Krebs does seem like a Lindy-type player: competitive, plays fast, works, coachable. With no baggage, will Krebs be able to forge a new role under Lindy?

• Could we see him feeding Zucker or another shooter on a 2-way line, while the new guys handle the heavy lifting defensively?
• Could he move back to wing and carve out a role next to Cozens, like he did so well for Team Canada?
• Can he grow and expand his role as a 4C so he becomes, in effect, another version of what we think we are getting in McLeod

He's right at the crucial 200-game spot, with a new coach and a measure of opportunity in front him. it's a pivotal year for his career.

Personally, I don't think any of the above happens. I think the writing is on the wall for him in Buffalo. He plays a fair amount in the bottom 6, gets moved to another team, and goes onto a decent career as a 3rd-liner elsewhere.

But it's July, and it's fun to think about possibilities.

Personally, (barring a trade for a 2W) expect he's coming into camp as the presumptive 13th F; but can see him in a bit of a rotation with Greenway and Aubel-Kube (and maybe 1 or 2 others) depending upon how Ruff wants to work the matchups.  Also see him as being the injury slot in for any of the bottom 6 positions ahaed of Rousek (who'd appear to be his backup in that 13th F role).

And, depending upon just how much Ruff wants to have Briere & Drury style lines as his most deployed (with 1 or 3 guys that can be defensively responsible going against the other team's top lines while still having a scoring punch) and letting a young primarily scoring line w/ not quite as much defensive responsibility take advantage of mismatches against the other team's lower lines could see Krebs on a wing on any of the 4 lines (because he actually had some chemistry with Tuch when he 1st arrived in Buffalo & expect Tuch will be Ruff's new Dumont and the RW on the top scoring line).  Would guess that comes down to how defensively responsible he appears in Ruff's eyes.  (Not saying him moving to top line is expected; it isn't, and do expect he's nominally the 13th F.  And in a jumbled lineup would expect when he dresses he's still somewhere on lines 2-4 as a W, most likely 3 or 4.  But don't consider it'd be a head scratcher should it happen.)

[LGR4GM]

1 hour ago, dudacek said:

From a Caps fan on HFboards:

I wanna take a little deeper dive here to point out just how brutal the minutes for Washington's "4th" line are and how nuts it is that they're performing so well anyway.

The individual members of that line have started their shifts in the offensive zone 7.98% of the time (NAK), 8.02% of the time (Malenstyn), and 9.29% of the time (Dowd) over ~400 minutes of 5 on 5 play each. As you mentioned, as a unit they've outscored opponents 13-6 at 5 on 5. OZ Start% as a statistic dates back to the 07-08 season, and in that time only one player has posted a sub 10% season while playing at least 300 minutes at 5 on 5: Paul Gaustad in 15/16. He had 5.76% OZ Starts and was outscored 6-21. Coincidentally, Gaustad had been traded with a 4th for a 1st as a pure rental at the 2012 trade deadline, the only 4th line center I can think of who was traded for a 1st rounder. That year he ranked 8th out of 626 skaters with 31.98% OZ Starts. One of the things you notice as you go through OZ Start% year by year is that giving players extreme deployments in one direction or another is a pretty recent phenomenon. In 07/08, the skater with the lowest OZ Start% was Bobby Holik at 29.62%. This season, that number would good for 30th.

Long story short, the Caps 4th line is at the forefront of the current trend of highly specialized deployments, and as a result they're playing quite possibly the most brutal minutes of any line in the history of hockey, on a team that's overall been outscored 71-90 at 5 on 5 (58-84 if you factor their line out)... and they're outscoring their opponents by a 2-1 margin in the process. It's insane, it shouldn't be possible, and yet it's happening. Nic Dowd should've been the Caps' All Star, and he should legitimately be in the Selke conversation.

More, same source:

Tangent from the Beck Malenstyn stuff - Beck is a textbook example of why with/without models are flawed. The RMNB article gives this player card from Evolving Hockey which evaluates him as a bad offensive player and an atrocious defender.

At the same time, it rates Dowd and NAK as both being average offensively and elite (90+) defensively. It think Beck was the passenger on that line, but in reality Beck was the player that defined the shutdown line. You can see through Natural Stat Trick's Line Stats tool that when that line was together, they got 7.65% OZ Faceoffs. So what happens when they break up?
 

NAK solo: 53.1%

Dowd solo: 35.7%

NAK+Dowd without Beck: 35.3%

Beck solo: 20.4%

For some league-wide context, if Malenstyn had 20.4% for the season that would drop his rank amongst forwards from 1/771 to 8/771, min 100 minutes played - still 1st percentile for hardest deployments.

What does a with/without model see in this context? Well when Dowd and NAK play away Beck they get significantly easier deployments with more skilled teammates, so their numbers improve away from him. Meanwhile, when Beck's away from Dowd and NAK he's being asked to play the same shutdown role, but now with teammates who aren't as well suited to it, so those teammates who are normally being sheltered by Beck's line see their numbers plummet. The model interprets this as Beck being a drag on all the players around him, so it gives him low scores.

This is the fundamental issue with these kinds of models. They'll always underrate players who consistently get tough, defensively-focused deployments, and they'll always overrate players who consistently easy, offensively-focused deployments. Hence why these models always seem to love the sheltered third pairing offensive defenseman or the speedy young winger the coach doesn't trust in his own zone and hate the steady, D-first guys that coaches lean on. I think there's some value to these models for the guys in the middle, but it inherently can't handle the edge cases.

When Kubel is in the defensive zone, everyone he played with in Washington had better sh suppression numbers. When you isolated Kubel, he had elite shot suppression numbers. I'm telling you and everyone else, the only right shot guy they brought in is playing that rw 4th spot and is probably the best defensive forward they added. 

Zone starts are being turned into this mythical stat. You've already posted this once, it's flawed because it equates zone start with difficulty. I think it shows Malenstyn starts a bunch of his own zone in faceoffs but also suggests maybe he's not the best at getting the puck out of said zone. It cuts both ways. 

They overpaid for Malenstyn because he's young, fast, hits, and has decent defensive metrics... but they acquired his linemate because they knew they needed that shot suppression. 

Those stats don't prove easier deployments. If I start in the offensive zone against McDavid that's not easier than starting in the defensive zone against McLeod. 

Further the bold disproves this hf posts own logic. If Malenstyn gets worse when playing with guys that aren't as good at it as Kubel and Dowd then clearly kubel and dowd must be good or better at, something. It's why Buffalo got Kubel too. He's going to play with Malenstyn. He's going to suppress shots on that 4th line rw.

Edited July 20 by LGR4GM

[dudacek]

43 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

You and I have no idea if the Sabres disagree. Listing acquisition cost doesn't prove anything other than what it took to get these guys. 

Listing J Fresh cards doesn't prove anything other than how what a player did shows on J Fresh calculations.

(Trying to be funny to make a point, not be snarky. 😁 I see it as all relevant information to weigh as each of us sees fit.)

Edited July 20 by dudacek

[stinky finger]

2 hours ago, triumph_communes said:

The ‘4th’ line will get 2nd most minutes matching up against top lines.

 

we have enough scoring elsewhere in the line up that this will work out okay 

[dudacek]

36 minutes ago, LGR4GM said:

When Kubel is in the defensive zone, everyone he played with in Washington had better sh suppression numbers. When you isolated Kubel, he had elite shot suppression numbers. I'm telling you and everyone else, the only right shot guy they brought in is playing that rw 4th spot and is probably the best defensive forward they added. 

Zone starts are being turned into this mythical stat. You've already posted this once, it's flawed because it equates zone start with difficulty. I think it shows Malenstyn starts a bunch of his own zone in faceoffs but also suggests maybe he's not the best at getting the puck out of said zone. It cuts both ways. 

They overpaid for Malenstyn because he's young, fast, hits, and has decent defensive metrics... but they acquired his linemate because they knew they needed that shot suppression. 

Those stats don't prove easier deployments. If I start in the offensive zone against McDavid that's not easier than starting in the defensive zone against McLeod. 

Further the bold disproves this hf posts own logic. If Malenstyn gets worse when playing with guys that aren't as good at it as Kubel and Dowd then clearly kubel and dowd must be good or better at, something. It's why Buffalo got Kubel too. He's going to play with Malenstyn. He's going to suppress shots on that 4th line rw.

Good post, but I disagree with the bold.

He's saying the other two caught a break sometimes that inflated their numbers whereas Malenstyn did not.

All three were mostly charged with holding up a wall, and all three were good at it.

But Malenstyn was always charged with holding up the wall and sometimes he had to do it without the help of the other two. The other two got breaks from wall-holding and rarely had to wall-hold without Malenstyn.

You're saying that the deployment doesn't prove Malenstyn was always wall-holding, and you may be right, but it suggests he was a lot more than it doesn't. And it is coming not from 'just' a number-cruncher, but a number-cruncher who regularly watches the Capitals and should have a good sense of how those guys were being deployed away from each other.

I may be underestimating Aube-Kubel. He's a guy a haven't seen much and Malenstyn not really at all. Lafferty, at least, I've watched my share of with the Canucks.

I need summer to be over so we can get a look at how Lindy plans to utilize his tools.

[Pimlach]

Right now we know who the top 13 forwards are, unless one of Kulich/Rosen/Rousek pushes Krebs out or they move him.  

Defense top 8 is Dahlin, Power, Byram, Muel, Clifton, Joker, Bryson and Gilbert, unless Johnson pushes for a spot but its best to keep him playing in Rochester rather than the 5/6/7/8 rotation in Buffalo.  

Goalie is UPL, Levi and Reimer.  Not sure what will happen here.  Seems like the logical thing would be to start Levi in Rochester and give him games.  

We could still see another move before the season starts.  

Edited July 21 by Pimlach

[Night Train]

5 hours ago, Pimlach said:

One of the things Ruff said he wants is  a "shut down line".   

Agreed and they made that effort to finally change that.  I started to worry that KO and Girgs would be here yet another year beyond their usefulness. Nothing personal but they should have been moved out long ago.

 Reminds me of the Bills during the drought when I became convinced the Bills would keep signing average Chris Kelsay to 1 year deals for the next 25 years. " We like him ".  Great....go adopt a dog...

[Warriorspikes51]

We still badly need a top 6 forward & top 4 D  IMO 

[LabattBlue]

45 minutes ago, Warriorspikes51 said:

We still badly need a top 6 forward & top 4 D  IMO 

They also “badly” need a GM willing to make said moves. 😂

[Warriorspikes51]

1 hour ago, LabattBlue said:

They also “badly” need a GM willing to make said moves. 😂

I expect nothing from Adams. Especially a substantial move.  It's depressing honestly.  I was shocked we even traded for 4th and 3rd line players

[Drag0nDan]

On 7/20/2024 at 7:13 PM, Night Train said:

Agreed and they made that effort to finally change that.  I started to worry that KO and Girgs would be here yet another year beyond their usefulness. Nothing personal but they should have been moved out long ago.

 Reminds me of the Bills during the drought when I became convinced the Bills would keep signing average Chris Kelsay to 1 year deals for the next 25 years. " We like him ".  Great....go adopt a dog...

My issue with KO and Girgs wasn't their defense, it was that they were incapable as a unit of providing any level of real offensive pressure.  Chip, chase, change - maybe get a high slot shot off the dump.  Being a faster unit can potentially put some more pressure on the defense of teams we play, that can result in neutral zone turnovers, penalties, etc.