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When Meeting Expectations is Exemplary

July 16, 2009 in Free Agency, Hockey, Signings, Trades | 3 comments

It’s been a paradoxical off-season for the Thrashers. Does anybody else seem confused that Don Waddell has done exactly what he said he would? After seasons and seasons of disappointment, it’s somewhat surprising to go down the least of off-season needs and check them all off. Even the most pessimistic commentator must admit that we’ve picked up all the items on the shopping list.

A Top-6 Forward

While I disagree that we had a major hole in the top-6, conventional wisdom said the Thrashers needed to pick up a top-6 forward. I would say that Kovalchuk – White – Little and Kozlov – Peverley – Armstrong are perfectly acceptable lines, but adding talent is always beneficial (at least when you ignore financial constraints.) Waddell said he’d pick up a top-6 guy… and he did. Nik Antropov may not be ideal, but did anybody think Martin Havlat was coming here? Mike Cammalleri might have fit in, but do you want him for $6 million over 5 years? I sure don’t.

Let’s face facts: Nik Antropov is not a game-changer. He’ll score goals, he’s got a big body… but he’s no superstar…

…and that is perfect for this team. He scored 28 goals in 81 games this past season between Toronto and the Rangers. He’s picked up his scoring year-over-year since the lockout. If you ignore his play with Toronto this year – and let’s not forget how terrible they were – he’s a solid plus-player: +53 over all his NHL years, +31 from 2005 – 2008.

Does Antropov take us from the basement to Stanley Cup contention? Of course not! He’s certainly a step forward. The best way to look at this aquisition is to see which player he’s displacing from the end of last season. Take your pick: Colin Stuart or Eric Perrin.

Is Antropov a step up from Colin Stuart or Eric Perrin? Do I even need to answer that one?

A Top-4 Defenseman

Next up on the wishlist: a top-4 guy to play with Enstrom, Bogosian, and Hainsey. A lot of folks thought we’d part with a goalie to get either the top-6 forward or top-4 defenseman, but in the end, all we had to give up was Garnet Exelby and Colin Stuart.

God knows we all love Exelby… and I thought his play – minus the broken-leg days – was pretty good this year. He seemed to play pretty well with Ron Hainsey. Hainsey had the passing skills that Exelby lacked, so when paired together, Ron helped to cover up his weaknesses. In the end, though, Exelby is not nearly as mobile or pass-proficient to play in the John Anderson system.

Pavel Kubina is. While he doesn’t have the grit of Exelby, he’s got the offensive flair. Last year, Kubina had 14 goals and 26 assists for 40 points. This is an important stat: these both would have been franchise records for the Thrashers. So would his 11 goals / 40 points in 2007-2008 (in just 72 games). He scored 11 or more goals in 3 other seasons prior to that.

The knock against him is the combined -101 over 11 seasons in the NHL, but -87 of that came in his first 4 years with a very, very bad Tampa Bay team. He’s not a shutdown type, and his stats reflect that. The question is whether the offensive-capability he brings is enough to offset any weaknesses in the defensive zone. That remains to be seen.

If you’ve watched the Thrashers enough, though, you’ve probably noticed an infuriatingly common trend: after 40-45 seconds of play in their own defensive zone, the Thrashers will recover the puck only to skate to the red line, dump, and change lines. Repeat. Believe it or not, this isn’t a systems problem, it’s a talent problem. If you’ve got a guy who can’t move the puck quickly and accurately, he’ll carry and dump. (cough cough, Exelby, cough.) If you’ve got a guy who can pass the puck to a teammate – even better, a guy who can carry it into the offensive zone for a shot… think Bogosian – you can break this cycle. Establishing a forecheck can be tricky business, and the more talent you have on the blueline, the easier that’ll be.

I think the John Anderson system will focus on this: no longer will we pair an “offensive defenseman” with a “stay-at-home defenseman.” Every defenseman needs to be able to make clean first passes. Every defenseman needs to be able to carry the puck into the offensive zone. It makes sense: if you don’t have a strong backchecking team (which we don’t) you will get fewer chances to advance zones. You must make the most of each attempt.

This is a statistic that I do not have but wish I did: efficiency of zone-advance. For a player in the defensive-zone who gains possession of the puck, what percentage of the time does he cleanly 1) pass the puck to a teammate in the neutral zone or 2) skate the puck into the offensive zone? Zach Bogosian excels at this. Garnet Exelby does not.

This brings us back to Pavel Kubina: if he can be more efficient at moving the puck forward through the zones, he’ll likely be successful as a Thrasher. From what I’ve seen, he’ll be capable.

It’s tough to lose Colin Stuart. He’s a fantastic third line player and was very effective on the penalty kill. That said, I’m more excited about seeing guys like Kane, Klingberg, and perhaps Machacek have a shot at that spot in the next 2 or 3 years (or for Kane, perhaps sooner.) While Colin scored a few goals during the year, I think a guy with a more natural scoring touch will be even better.

Lock Down the Guys Who Need to Stay

Lehtonen? Check. Armstrong? Check. Reasoner? Check. Salmela? Check. Looks good to me.

We even got these guys for good money! Lehtonen got another deal at $3 million – very reasonable. Colby Armstrong is in that tough range between a third line guy and a second line guy and his contract of $2.4 million reflects that. Reasoner was a bargain at just over a million and Salmela is near the league minimum.

Look at this list and ask yourself… did the Thrashers get better this offseason? I think you’ll agree that they did.

Leaving:

  • Colin Stuart
  • Eric Perrin
  • Garnet Exelby

Joining:

  • Nik Antropov
  • Pavel Kubina
  • Evander Kane?

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Fire Waddell? No thanks.

April 17, 2009 in Hockey | 5 comments

There’s a pretty big talking point that’s been going on in the Thrashers blogosphere for the past couple years and I feel it’s time for me to address it. I recognize that my blog is young and has few posts… in fact, I haven’t even properly launched it yet. (Look for a redesign with a reasonable logo sometime this summer…) Still, it seems that so many of our blogs attack Don Waddell (professionally, not personally) and so few argue the other side.

In fact, pro-Waddell sentiment seems to be largely based on the “he can help us re-sign Kovalchuk” case. If you are unfamiliar, it works like this: Kovy respects Waddell.

Yeah, that’s basically it.

My argument for keeping Waddell is perhaps more simplistic, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I believe that Don Waddell is the best man for the job. While he has done some things in the past that can – and perhaps should – be held against him, what’s the use of firing him if you aren’t going to replace him with someone who is better?

Let’s turn the clock back to our 0-6 start to the 2007-2008 season. We were swept out of the playoffs in the spring and started very, very poorly. The decision was made to send Bob Hartley packing… but we didn’t have anybody in mind for coach. Waddell took over and gave a mixed performance: a good start was crushed with a late season collapse (mostly due to the Hossa situation). We didn’t hire a new coach for several reasons: Waddell wanted to give Anderson a shot, but John wanted to finish up the season with the Wolves, and we were also still paying Hartley’s salary. The Thrashers are on a budget, and paying two coaches is an expensive proposition.

Let’s talk budget for a minute as well… you realize that a hockey club costs more to run than player salaries, right? The GM, scouts, coaches, trainers: these folks all get paid. When you have an organization that is budget-minded, these folks take pay cuts as well. (Remember, we *have* to spend to the cap floor for player salaries.) If you need to cut money from payroll, guess where the cuts are made? Scouts, coaches, trainers… Want to know why our drafting hasn’t been as good as clubs like Detroit and New Jersey? I bet we don’t spend as much money on scouting as they do. (If you have actual figures, I’d love to see them.)

Okay, so if we’re going to fire Waddell, we need to make sure we can get a GM who will perform better. The problem is that we aren’t going to spend the money necessary! I can imagine somebody from the Spirit making calls. “Yes, hi, we’d like to talk to you about becoming the General Manager for the Thrashers. I know Atlanta is not a hockey city and you’ll be forced to keep salary near the floor every year, but it’s an exciting opportunity. Sure, it’ll be a huge pay-cut from other cities you could work in, but at least you’ll get little to no recognition in the media!”

I’m sure guys are chomping at the bit to come to Atlanta.

The thing that makes the “Fire Waddell” case even weaker is that he’s started to perform much better as GM in recent years. Let’s look at draft picks who will turn into NHLers (with 50% probability or greater) since the lockout:

  • 2008: Bogosian (1st)
  • 2007: Machacek (3rd) and Postma (7th)
  • 2006: Little (1st) Holzapfel (2nd) Kulda (7th)
  • 2005: Pavalec (2nd) LaVallee (4th)

There are several other players who have a good shot, but it’s too early to tell: Leveille, Paquette, Saponari, Lucenius, Albert, Kangas, Enlund

So our drafting has looked up, how about our waiver-wire fishing? Waddell actually tried to trade for Rich Peverley earlier in the season before he was available on waivers. An obvious pickup? Nashville didn’t think so, they wanted to keep him. If it was such an obvious move, why was the blogosphere not going nuts when Rich was placed on waivers?

And that brings us to trades. We’ve brought in and moved out some players, so it helps to see the full context here:

Marian Hossa and Pascal Dupuis for Colby Armstrong, Eric O’Dell, Daultan Leveille, and Angelo Esposito

This trade also includes the Christensen/O’Dell trade and the drafting of Daultan Leveille. Look at the above line and tell me we didn’t win this one. Hossa was going to walk after the season anyway. We picked up a 20-goal scoring character guy and three prospects. Of those three prospects, two were drafted in the 1st round and the other in the 2nd. We made out like gangbusters on this one.

Ken Klee, Brad Larsen, Chad Painchaud, and a conditional pick (3rd, 4th, or 5th round) for a 2nd round pick in 2009 and a 3rd round pick in 2010

We’ve zeroed out Schneider in this deal. It looks like our conditional pick will be a 3rd rounder (as Montreal will likely be ousted by Boston in the quarterfinals) so you can think of this as Klee, Larsen, and Painchaud for a 2nd round pick. Is anybody really unhappy with that? Oh, and it got us above the cap floor as well.

Those are two examples. You can see my analysis of Havelid for Salmela in a previous post. But here’s the one everybody loves to talk about…

Braydon Coburn for Alexei Zhitnik

Am I the only one who remembers how bad Coburn looked when he played here? He looked absolutely lost on the ice, it was terrible. He was worse for us than Valabik has been this year (and I’ve suggested we hang on to Boris a bit longer so we don’t potentially make the same mistake as with Braydon). Zhitnik came in and performed hugely for us. In 18 games to end the season, Alexei had 2 goals and 12 assists. That’s 0.78 points/game as a defenseman! Even Ron Hainsey’s record-setting year (points in a season) for our franchise was only at a pace of 0.48 points/game. While Hainsey was a -16 for us this year, Zhitnik’s 18 game run came with a +4. 

So what happened the next year? Who knows. Maybe it was conditioning, maybe it was differences in style of play. The guy fell apart… is that Don’s fault? Sure, a bit. But forgetting how well the trade looked during those 18 games leads most folks to a very different conclusion.

How about free agent signings? Hainsey’s been good, but Marty Reasoner is the real standout to me. There’s a guy who works hard every game and can put the puck in the net on occasion as well.

While I recognize that Don has been General Manager for a long time, it’s also important to note that we got better every year until we sent away our young talent to make the playoffs. It seems like we’ve learned our lesson: we’re building the way a team is supposed to build, through the draft. We’ve got a good group of coaches in place to work with our young guys (including former Sabres-organization whiz Randy Cunneyworth) and the team is starting to believe in itself. The 17-10-1 finish should be enough indication that this team is heading in the right direction.

I’m not the type to say “don’t change horses mid-stream,” it is often necessary. We’ve got a good thing building up in Atlanta, though. Now is not the time to rock the boat. Waddell has one last chance: he needs to get Kovalchuk re-signed. If he fails to do that, I’ll be in the angry mob with the rest of you, calling for his head.

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It’s all about special teams… right?

March 29, 2009 in Hockey | No comments

Conventional Wisdom suggests that games are won and lost by special teams: if you can kill penalties and score on the power play, you will be a successful team in the NHL.

And sure, that’s easy to accept, but is it causality (special teams play leads to wins) or just correlation (good teams play good special teams)?

While I am no statistician – and believe you me, I am both mindful and thankful for that every minute of my life – I think I’ve devised a simple little experiment which will allow us to test this Conventional Wisdom. Here’s how it works:

Create three lists: the first list will rank the teams by 5-on-5 goals for / goals against. I’ll call this our “Even Strength” ratio. Yes, we’re leaving out 4-on-4 (and 3-on-3) situations, but those are special situations that will be difficult to factor into our list. It’s simpler (and I believe better) to just ignore them. The second list will rank teams by their “Special Teams Rating” – Power Play Percentage plus Penalty Kill Percentage. The rule-of-thumb is that teams over 100 are playoff teams and teams under 100 are not. The third list will have the teams ranked by current number of points.

The test here will be to see if one of our first two lists matches the third list better than the other. To test this, I’ll determine the difference in ranks between the 1-and-3 and 2-and-3 and find the standard deviation of those number sets.

Are you still with me? Great. Here’s our results:

Standard Deviation between Points per Game and 5-on-5 Goals For / Goals Against: 4.93

Standard Deviation between Points per Game and Special Teams Rating: 8.54

For the record, I hadn’t calculated the numbers before writing this post. But I think this shows that the “Special Teams Rating” that many talk about – looking at penalty kill and power play – mean less to a team than we may like to think. Sure, the Thrashers have a dreadful penalty kill and it hurts them greatly, but the Thrashers are also something of a reverse case. They are 6 places from their 5v5 spot (ranked 26th in record, 24th in Special Teams Rating, but 20th in 5v5 play).

What immediately becomes visible, however, are cases for the following teams:

  • Columbus: Ranked 14th, but 5th while 5-on-5 and 26th in Special Teams. Columbus shows us that a team which has terrible special teams – mostly due to a woeful power play – can make up for it in 5-on-5. Another example of that is…
  • New Jersey: Ranked 4th, the Devils have a Special Teams Rank of 16 – which suggests they’d finish at the bottom of the playoff contenders. Their strong play while 5-on-5 (ranked 2nd) has elevated them to a Cup contender.
  • Minnesota: Despite having the 2nd-best Special Teams Rating (with the help of an astounding 87.4% penalty kill), the Wild are mired in 21st thanks to their 24th-ranked 5-on-5 play.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Take the following teams as an example:

  • New York Rangers: A 24th-ranked 5-on-5 ratio doesn’t hold the Rangers back from being ranked 13th overall. The Rangers have an 11th-ranked Special Teams Ratio. Is that the key to their success? If so, you would expect the Rangers to have more opportunities on the Power Play, but they come in at 15th in Power Play Opportunities and 18th in Shorthanded Situations. In this case, the Rangers are simply an outlier.
  • Philadelphia: The Flyers follow the same outlier case as the Rangers, but find themselves shorthanded the 2nd most number of times in the NHL. Their 82.9% Penalty Kill would be expected to sway their overall position more. (The Flyers are ranked 7th, but are only 14th in 5-on-5. They have the 4th-best STR.)

The conclusion, therefore, can be stated very simply: In general, most teams will trend toward winning or losing more closely with their full-strength performance, not special teams performance. There are cases where having strong special teams can offset poor performance at even-strength – or vice-versa – but these cases are found primarily in teams that take (or draw) and exceptional number of penalties.

For Thrashers fans, if you think I’m kidding, I simply suggest you look at these two numbers. These are the penalty kill percentages for two teams:

Thrashers: 75.2%

Red Wings: 77.6%

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Out Come the Optimists

March 23, 2009 in Hockey | 3 comments

You know, for a pessimist, I’m pretty optimistic about the Thrashers. Not just now, but since I’ve been a fan. Admittedly, I came to the team after the lockout and am not as burned out as many long-term Thrashaholics.

That said, I find the recent turn to optimism to be surprising, refreshing, but a bit late.

Let me explain:

I’ve felt that the Thrashers have always been one piece short of a winning team. In 2005-2006, that piece was a healthy goalie. In 2006-2007, Kari was far healthier, but that missing piece was a game-changing defenseman. In 2007-2008, we witnessed the meteoric rise of Tobias Enstrom, but we were missing our contract extension for Marian Hossa. Remember, just a few weeks before he was traded, we were leading the Southeast Division. In 2008-2009, Bryan Little has ably filled in for Hossa, but we were one thing short. What was it?

My thesis is that we were missing the confidence to finish games. Possibly it was because we *felt* like a bad team, possibly it was because we *were* a bad team. (I think the former.) We got rid of some under-performers (Williams, Christensen) and some soon-to-be-departed-anyway veterans (Havelid, Schneider) and started winning games. Who wins by removing pieces?

Sure, Kari has stepped up his game considerably. Naming Kovalchuk as captain has put some fire back into the team. All of these are good things… but does anybody really think Kovalchuk wasn’t already giving it 100% before being named captain?

So here’s the thing that was missing: luck. Luck may be considered a non-factor, but let’s face it: every game has a goal that could have been a save or a save that could have been a goal. There are elements of randomness that determine the very close cases. Let’s analyze how close the Thrashers really were playing all season.

An important thing to look at: goal differential. Bob Hartley, whatever you may think about it, had it right. If you score more goals than you give up over the course of the season, you’ve got a good chance to make the playoffs. Let’s look at the GD for our best teams:

  • San Jose: +57
  • Detroit: +58
  • Boston: +73

Now how about some of the worst:

  • Tampa: -51
  • New York Islanders: -52
  • Colorado: -43

So where do the Thrashers stand? -26. While not a good stat, you’ll notice it’s significantly better than the other bottom-dwellers. What other teams have a goal differential in that range?

  • Los Angeles: -26
  • Dallas: -18
  • Toronto: -37
  • St. Louis: -13

Most of these teams are not competing for a playoff spot, but they are considered far better teams than we are. The point that I’m trying to make here is that, while we’ve lost a lot of games, we haven’t necessarily lost them by a lot. In fact, if you ignore empty net goals allowed (7) it becomes even closer. So let’s look at how many goals we’ve won (or lost) by. I’ll keep both empty net goals for and against in this chart.

Thrashers Game Result Chart

I know this chart seems confusing off the bat, but let’s take a second to go over it. The most important color in this chart is the light blue. Light blue shows games the Thrashers lost by a single goal (not counting Shootout losses). You can see that in October, something like half of our games were lost by a single goal. That number was smaller in November, a much better month for us, but was high again in December (over 30% of our games). In January, this team lost several games by 2 and more goals (greens at the top of the bars). Many of those were prior to Kovalchuk being named captain, however (1/4 -3, 1/6 -2, 1/10 -4).

On the other hand, let’s look at games we won by a goal. We had a good November (~25% won by a goal) but Otherwise, we haven’t won many games by a single goal. Our shootout skills have somewhat saved us (6 games won in the shootout this year, only one lost) but overall, we’ve won very few games by a single goal. In fact, while we’ve won 11 games by 3 or more goals, we’ve only won 13 by 1 (7 in regulation/OT, 6 in SO).

So, let’s make this a bit simpler. One goal games:

  • Won: 13 (4 regulation, 3 OT, 6 shootout)
  • Lost: 19 (13 regulation, 5 OT, 1 shootout)

To me, that’s the thing we’ve been missing. 4-13 in games decided by one goal in regulation. If that were more even, say 8-9, this team would be far better off. Or perhaps if we kept it tied and moved into overtime more often, say on 7 extra games? With our OT record, that’d be 4W 3OTL for an extra 11 points. That’d put us in 10th place (not counting points other teams would have not gotten from the change).

To sum it all up: the real problem with the Thrashers this year hasn’t been skill or talent or any of that, it’s been their inability to win close games. Fix that and this is a far, far more competitive team.

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