Thursday, January 24, 2008

 

Flames thru 50

Previous: Games 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40.

Record: 6-3-1 (3-1-1 Home, 3-2-0 Road)
4 Regulation Wins, 1 OT Win, 1 SO Win, 3 Regulation Losses, 1 SO Loss

Scoring & Preventing Goals:
Check the special teams here: they were a wash in terms of total goals (8 scored, 8 allowed), but the rates show that they were a fair bit more efficient up a man than the opposition was. That's because (danger alert?) they were shorthanded 11 more times than they had a PP (52-41) and spent 16-1/2 more minutes on the PK than the PP. Hopefully this is mainly fluke, but if not, the prescription should be unsurprising to Flames fans: Hale, Sarich, and especially Conroy need to keep their sticks off of the opposition.

I'm going to skip posting player rates going forward; 10 games is too small a sample, and the current rates are accessible (in both senses, increasingly) at Behind The Net. Here instead is a look at the difference between the first 25 games, where the Flames went 10-12-3 (1-3 in OT/SO), and the last 25, where they went 15-5-5 (3-5 in OT/SO). Empty-net and shootout goals are *not* included.


This just in: when you're a decent 5-on-5 team, killing penalties at 85% rather than 75% does wonders for your record.

Comments:

killing penalties at 85% rather than 75% does wonders for your record.

Yeah..but how much of the improved PK is just Kipper playing better? Your best penalty killer is always your goalie. Whats the save percentage first 25 games vs second 25 games?
 


Not really quantifiable, at least by me, on account of not knowing for sure about shot quality (subjectively, I'd say the skaters are allowing fewer great chances). However, I do have some splits for G1-18 and G19-50:

Kipper SV%: 0.828/0.888
Shots Allowed per TSH: 1.48/1.24

Survey says: it's the goalie and the skaters.
 


This goes a little to a previous post concerning Kipper, but it seems to my anecdotal eye that a)Kipper was suffering some confidence issues, so b) he tried to compensate by increasing his aggressiveness, which c) led him to play further out from the goal line, which d) made him more susceptible to the cross ice one-timers which are featured prominently in powerplays, thus e) PK rate goes bad. Now if improvement in Kipper means he's able to play a little bit deeper AND the Flames PKers can reduce those cross ice one-timers, then you're cookin' with gas.
 


I was surprised, looking at Behindthenet, to see that the Flames are something like top three at 5 on 5. It's amazing to me, given Kipper's struggles, that they're so good in that department.
 


I'm not saying Duhatschek's a dummy or anything but this post by Matt reminded me of something disappointing I read from him awhile back.

I'll take Matt's word that the improvement was as simple as the PK being shored up and it takes me back to the Oilers of '06 pre and post Roli.

That season the Oilers were outchancing teams far more than the other way around. It looked like all the Oilers needed was a good goalie and they could hang with anyone.

Well, Roli showed up and shook some rust off and the rest was nearly history.

Later on I read Eric D talking about how lucky the Oilers had been and it made me wonder how a guy who's paid primarily to know the Western teams could just throw something out there that was so bloody false.

That's not to saying that anyone's supposed to be infallible but if David Shoalts said something uninformed about the Isles, it's a lot different than if he said it about the Leaves.
 


I know this isn't the right thread BUT: I cannot watch the Oilers right now.

Just awful.
 


Mike W said...

I know this isn't the right thread BUT: I cannot watch the Oilers right now.

Just awful.


Whoops!
 

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