Borgman traded to STL for Jordan Schmaltz

[Bullfrog]

My take-away from that chart: Gauthier = defensive beast. 

 

[herman]

My take-away from that chart: Gauthier = defensive beast. 

In this game, that is rare. But it is also kind of useless.

 

[Bill_Berg]

The good quadrant (top-right) is good at generating chances and good at limiting chances. Most of the Leafs live in very good at generating chances, and giving back almost as much. Left of the red line means they give up more than they create.

So the Leafs got rid of every player that gave up more chances than they generated?

 

[Bullfrog]

My take-away from that chart: Gauthier = defensive beast. 

In this game, that is rare. But it is also kind of useless.

I appreciate your expert analysis of my completely unfacetious observation.

 

[herman]

So the Leafs got rid of every player that gave up more chances than they generated?

Check out who we added though

 

[disco]

Muzzin-Barrie
Tavares/Marner/Hyman

Is a solid five-man unit to go against top lines. He was basically doing that by end of the season, and Muzz w/ Barrie is a massive upgrade over Zaitsev. I'm sure Babs will be using that and having the secondary:

Rielly-Ceci
Matthews/Nylander/Johnsson

 

[Bill_Berg]

So the Leafs got rid of every player that gave up more chances than they generated?

Check out who we added though

Don't ruin it!

 

[princedpw]

Leafs defense is a bit more dependent on how the forwards develop in terms of their responsibilities supporting the puck and giving open options to their defense.

Matthews and Marner* and Nylander are really good at quick backchecks and stealing the puck, but if the other team gets set up in our zone, they're almost non-entities. Nylander is probably the strongest defensively of the three, and that's somewhat horrifying given how everyone believes he's the worst DZ player ever to wear the Leaf (erroneously).

Larger numbers = more shots against. For reference, the team-wide shots against Threat% is +8; Matthews is +16, Marner is +13.

What has changed on the positive for the Leafs, even after losing Gardiner, is that there is far more puck competence on the backend now. Rielly, Muzzin, Dermott, Barrie, Schmaltz, Holl are all pretty comfortable handling the puck for more than two seconds. I think Ceci is okay if you support him with short outlets; same with Marincin. All they need to do is get the puck cleanly to a forward.

*Don't give me this nonsense that Marner is better defensively. People only think that because Marner looks like he's working harder (hunched over waterbug). Similar to Kapanen, they're always chasing the puck that way because they're in the wrong place.

This is not intended to diminish your post, but I'm wondering who all out there finds these shot chart visualizations completely useless?  The aggregate number (eg: +8% threat) may have some value but I'm tempted to believe that pre-shot puck movement is more important than shot location.  More importantly, though I'd argue it is almost impossible for a human to process such a visualization reliably on its own (perhaps they have some value in side-by-side comparisons).... So there's a red point somewhere on the ice at a +0.3.  What am I supposed to do with that?  If a player plays all 60 minutes for 10 games straight, they give up 3 extra shots over the norm on that spot.  We are fooling ourselves if we think we can aggregate all those red dots relative to those blue ones and come up with a reasonable assessment.  By, the way, at what diameter/area does a red dot confer +0.3 shots/hour?  ... 1% of the figure area?  3%?

Also, FYI, the stats gods just had their revenge as I spilled coffee all over my keyboard, mid-post.  f&*#.

 

[herman]

Here's the explainer on the model and what the Threat% means:
https://www.hockeyviz.com/txt/magnusEV

The visualization, in and of itself is already a comparison tool to the league average per the existing data. All it does is give a feel for where action happens, isolated to an individual player being on the ice or not.

Threat% is just an aggregated expected goals measure based on the player's shot location propensity and frequency, which implicitly captures shot movement and some teammate influence.

Those who watch Leaf games knows that Matthews likes to shoot from between the dots. The data backs this up.

Mitch Marner, last season, started attacking the left side of the ice more frequently and used his skating to cut to the middle to draw attention off of Tavares or Rielly. He's a pass-first player who liked to feather passes back against the grain. He also knew better than to pass the puck to Hainsey or Zaitsev. The data also backs this up.

William Nylander plays a similar resulting style to Mitch Marner, but does a lot of the carry and setup work himself, and also shoots more, but didn't really have a linemate crashing the net.

 

[slapshot]

But I agree with you left side looks really scary until Dermott gets back. The M word on the left side I don't even want to think about...

The Left side is Rielly and Muzzin along with the best of the bottom pairing possibilities, whether it's Harpur or Marincin or whoever. That's almost certainly still going to be better than a right side of Barrie-Ceci-Holl/Schmaltz/Liljegren

Agreed, but I was mainly referring to third pairing left side. Neverthess, I think right side will be significantly improved over last year.  Barrie big upgrade on Hainsey, Ceci - Zaitsev may be a wash, both started with some promise but tailed off. I'm hoping Liljegren will be a solid upgrade of Ozighanov. On the leftside, last year was mainly Rielly, Gardiner, Dermott, this year Muzzin will replace Gardiner. I'll take that.

 

[93forever]

I'm completely fine with Marincin as a 3rd pairing/PK guy. At this point of his career, he is what he is. I'm not particularly passionate either way.

I'm curious to see what the other guys bring in pre-season.

I agree with you.  Out of the (non-Sandin) options right now, I'd lean strongly towards Marincin over Harpur and Gravel. 

Even when Dermott returns, I think I'd rather have Marincin in the lineup as the 6th D over anyone not named Liljegren or Sandin.

Rielly - Dermott
Muzzin - Barrie
Marincin - Ceci

It will not take half the season for Leaf fans to see how bad Ceci is on defense.  Maybe a fresh start with a new team will make a difference for him, and I hope he does well with the Leafs, but Schmaltz, Liljegren, Sandin, Marincin and Ceci will be fighting for the bottom 3 pairing.