The Rich Peverley Factor

Prospect Camp has been fabulous – and I’ll certainly have thoughts for you sometime soon – but it’s my blog, damn it, and I want to talk about Rich Peverley.

“Timmy,” you ask, “why on Earth do you want to write a blog about Peverley when you can talk about Evander Kane? You’ve had months to write a piece on Peverley, why now?”

Well, dear readers, let’s just say this has something to do with Evander Kane. Where does he fit on the Thrashers? If we’re looking at Top-6 guys, we’ve got Kovalchuk, Kozlov, White, Little, Peverley, and Antropov. It’s very unlikely that Kane would bump one of those guys to the 3rd line. Do we play Kane on the 3rd line?

Perhaps. Let’s assume, for a moment, that he also has the “Bogosian Factor” – the ability to jump right in and make a difference this year. Where does that leave us?

If we’re going to evaluate lines, I want to set them up based on one guy… Rich Peverley. There’s two reasons for this.

1. As we saw with Nashville, put in the wrong role, Rich Peverley is useless. When we had him in a proper role – as a center on a offense-first line – he performed very well.
2. I lack the tools to analyze data only after a certain date. Since the numbers look VERY different between the first and second half, I need some way to divide the data. If I only look at Peverley’s numbers, I can do that.

So then! Thanks to the Dobber Hockey folks, I can look at line production for Peverley in different combinations. How about a chart?

Rich Peverley's production on various line combinations

So what can we see here? Well, first off, you have to ignore some of this data. I’d say anything less than 100 shifts is probably too small of a data set to use. Based on that data, it looks like Peverley performed best with Armstrong and one of Kovalchuk or Kozlov. That’s in line with observations I made last year and makes a bit of sense: Peverley and Army are roommates on the road.

Now, just because Peverley plays well with Armstrong and a Russian left-wing doesn’t necessarily mean you want to play one of those combos. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular Top-6 line combos from last year and see how they produce together.

Point production by different Top-6 Line Combinations

Remember my point at the beginning of this post: since I can’t trim my data for post-Peverley Thrashers only, lines which played together frequently at the beginning of the season (such as Kozlov – White – Little) will naturally look a little worse in this table. That said… Kozlov and Kovalchuk are both more productive when playing with Peverley and Armstrong than with White and Little. This is, to me, shocking.

Let’s get back to our initial assumption: Evander Kane is ready to be a Thrasher. If you decide to keep Peverley and Armstrong on the same line, as I strongly believe is a good idea, a very clear set of lines starts to appear.

Kovalchuk – Little – Antropov

Kozlov – Peverley – Armstrong

Kane – Reasoner – White

Little and Antropov could easily switch places based on production and comfort, as could White and Reasoner. Kane gets to play with two guys who are very solid defensively, freeing him up to do what he ought to for our team: score goals. I wouldn’t necessarily say you give these three lines equal time at even strength, but you’d certainly play the Kane line a fair bit.

While chemistry is always a difficult thing to predict, the lines above give Evander Kane NHL ice time without throwing off the chemistry and production of your Top-6. The biggest question mark would be whether Little *or* Antropov are capable of playing Center on the line with Kovalchuk.