Leafs @ Canucks - Mar. 14th, 7:00pm - CBC, TSN 1050

[Rebel_1812]

God, I wish they'd kept Stralman.

I lost track of him for a few years after he left Toronto. When did he start becoming so good? Was it right away or not until he got to New York?

when he got to new york.  He bounce between teams and was even on waivers once.  So the leafs could have got him back.

Yup, I recall reading an article about how he beefed up when landing in NY, a few of the Rags D took him under their wing in the weight room and he got significantly thicker and hard to play against.

May have been a Leafs game against TBay but fairly recently, I saw him manhandle someone and toss them into the boards ... and said to myself "where did that come from ?" My recollection of him as a young Leaf was considerably different - he was kind of skinny and almost frail.

Yes he was tall and thin when he was drafted.  This goes back to conditioning.

 

[pmrules]

I'm just referring to the highlights I saw of last night's game this morning...Gardiner on the top paring?  That's all-out full tank.

Shot attempts at even strength when Gardiner was on the ice last night were 27-9 Leafs.  NHL's stats have him with 0 giveaways and 2 takeaways in the game.

Here's a graph of every player in that game (for you old people, that's Gardiner on the far right):

Ideally you'd like to be lower on the vertical axis and farther to the right on the horizontal axis.  Maybe there were some psychedelics in your morning coffee?

Does your graph show all the defensive mistakes, giveaways, bad zone coverage that leads to goals?  Because he always seems to be the guy that makes the mistake.  If your graph doesn't show that, then it doesn't show the important stuff.

I think this Gardiner and stats discussion needs to carry forward.  Can one of the mods please move to a Gardiner thread since it's an important discussion.

I think that graph from Potvin showed a few things.

1.  How horrible a game defensively Gardiner actually had. If he was only on the ice for ONLY 9 shot attempts against..And 2 of them found the back of the net...and some say he was the one responsible....that's a horrible game defensively.

2.  Again, Criticisms of Gardiner have never been about times when Leafs have possession.  It's about when they don't have possession.  He's been this bad for a long time. Last year was masked by some great offense, but this year he's playing the same defensively, but without the offensive results.

3.  How additional context is always needed in CORSI discussions when assessing player impacts on a game.

 

[Chris]

Yup, I recall reading an article about how he beefed up when landing in NY, a few of the Rags D took him under their wing in the weight room and he got significantly thicker and hard to play against.

Points to the importance of having teammates setting a good example. I'm sure it's not the only reason he improved, but probably played a big role.

Glad to see Stralman having success, bummed it's not with the Leafs.

 

[Lynx]

God, I wish they'd kept Stralman.

I lost track of him for a few years after he left Toronto. When did he start becoming so good? Was it right away or not until he got to New York?

when he got to new york.  He bounce between teams and was even on waivers once.  So the leafs could have got him back.

Yup, I recall reading an article about how he beefed up when landing in NY, a few of the Rags D took him under their wing in the weight room and he got significantly thicker and hard to play against.

Thanks for that.

I'm sure others are aware of this, but I would just like to note that Stralman was 25 when he started with the Rangers. I'm sure he didn't instantly turn his game around on his first shift with them either.

 

[Rebel_1812]

I'm just referring to the highlights I saw of last night's game this morning...Gardiner on the top paring?  That's all-out full tank.

Shot attempts at even strength when Gardiner was on the ice last night were 27-9 Leafs.  NHL's stats have him with 0 giveaways and 2 takeaways in the game.

Here's a graph of every player in that game (for you old people, that's Gardiner on the far right):

Ideally you'd like to be lower on the vertical axis and farther to the right on the horizontal axis.  Maybe there were some psychedelics in your morning coffee?

Does your graph show all the defensive mistakes, giveaways, bad zone coverage that leads to goals?  Because he always seems to be the guy that makes the mistake.  If your graph doesn't show that, then it doesn't show the important stuff.

I think this Gardiner and stats discussion needs to carry forward.  Can one of the mods please move to a Gardiner thread since it's an important discussion.

I think that graph from Potvin showed a few things.

1.  How horrible a game defensively Gardiner actually had. If he was only on the ice for ONLY 9 shot attempts against..And 2 of them found the back of the net...and some say he was the one responsible....that's a horrible game defensively.

2.  Again, Criticisms of Gardiner have never been about times when Leafs have possession.  It's about when they don't have possession.  He's been this bad for a long time. Last year was masked by some great offense, but this year he's playing the same defensively, but without the offensive results.

3.  How additional context is always needed in CORSI discussions when assessing player impacts on a game.

The most important point there is bolded.  Corsi can be useful as an additional stat.  Similar in value to the old giveaways/takeaways stat.  However you cannot just look at corsi and say a player or a team is doing well.  They you get the erroneous conclusion that the leafs were doing poorly under carlyle because they had bad corsi but winning record.  Or the conclusion that the leafs are improved under the new coach since the possession numbers went up but the winning went away.  The same thing goes for players.  Here are his stats :
2011-12 TOR 75 7 23 30 -2
2012-13 TOR 12 0 4 4 0
2013-14 TOR 80 10 21 31 -3
2014-15 TOR 67 2 18 20 -22

Minus 22 this year.  Big regression.