I'll deviate this morning, to address the reaction to Andrej Sekera.
The Oilers fanbase as with any other is often miscast as either a singular entity with a collectively homogenous viewpoint on any particular issue, or two tribal camps opposing one another.
Neither's true, save the second during certain times(typically trying) and I don't mean to play the snooty centrist believing himself above the partisans and star-bellied sneetches but I do believe that the middle ground is most reasonable here in regards to Sekera's absence for what will likely be an entire season.
I'm writing in real time during my research, so I have the unique ability to tell you that my initial reaction coming into this is that the main consequence for this development is the lack of cover for injuries.
As opposed to something like, say, the difference between the starting six prior to the loss of Sekera and after the loss of Sekera being the difference between projecting this team in the playoffs or not.
That might read as my projecting the Oilers to make the playoffs either way, it's not so.
I had the Oilers making it neither way, provided average injury and puck luck, and average goaltending variance.
Oilers Dcorps; up against the Pacific
I'll make pretty pictures, with metrics I consider to have above-arbitrary value and then provide my own thoughts.
The numbers are projected Goals-Against-Replacement*; Blended Wins-Against-Replacement**; Corsica Player Rating***.
* via Chace McCallum @cmhockey66
** via Sean Tierney @ChartingHockey; Emmanuel Perry @manny_hockey; @DTMAboutHeart; @EvolvingWild
** CorsicaHockey.com
Many don't rhyme perfectly, I count that for and not against the value of putting them together here.
All of the details of their methodology can be found and best explained through their own resources in full thoroughness, but I'll add some especially relevant tidbits about (perceived and real) limitations here:
- In general, what's been found by most data scientists around hockey is that offensive impacts(and forwards) are much easier to distill than defense, and even-strength play the same comparatively to special team situations, especially penalty kill.
- Certain player types are bearishly valued: Penalty differentials are one of the five big parts of these equations, and players who you may perceive to be rated too low often have a combination of the above point about lack of 5v5 offense, and a bad penalty differential. I believe the amount that penalty differential is punished and rewarded is entirely fair, and an understated(among mainstream media; casual fans) concern when evaluating players by traditional methods.
- Even-strength shot share impacts are heavily weighted when it comes to defensive contributions; more than shot quality impacts This is due to the belief that players cannot influence the save percentage of the goalies they play in front of. Many people part with the math crowd here.
- Because of the self-professed (relative) limitations of evaluating penalty killing prowess in GAR, buoyed with the more precise ability to evaluate powerplay defencemen's ability, combined with the point above about shot quantity vs. quality means that most of the discrepancies between eye test and analytics is in the differing valuations of defensive defensemen and more gifted puck-movers and playmakers.
- If you believe there to be limitations in the evaluation of defending, I would simply suggest you ding who you perceive to be the offensive defensemen who are poorer away from the puck, and boost the better sortie-stoppers as you see fit. Proceed with caution.
- Each metric has trouble (obviously;understandably) with rookies. I'll fill in the gaps with my knowledge of what a player has to look like pre-NHL to look like something in the NHL.
We also know things about Anaheim's defense drafting and honestly after getting what they did out of Josh Manson (converted forward out of the BCHL turned into one of the leagues premier shutdown guys, puke.) I just plain don't doubt any of their D selections anymore. He has very good relGF% numbers as a top-pairing guy in the AHL, so we're going to guess he's not going to be a negative player third pairing in his rookie year in the NHL. Truth be told that might not be flattering enough versus reality.
I don't have to write much about their top pairing and top four, that's why I haven't yet. Montour's unproven relative to the rest, but nothing seems unsustainable from cursory glances over his first full campaign.
The best D corps in the division, no contest - from myself.
These first two could have been in alphabetical order or in the order of quality and it'd come out the same.
What I mean is that you're looking at a Coyotes team with an actually enviable pile of defensemen.
There's a wrinkle here regarding Goligoski: He had a really, really bad half(or-so) season while miscast in deployment and generally floundering, and put up a negatively influential season, manifesting itself from a combination of negative penalty differential and negative defensive contribution. He'll be lower down the line-up and has had much better seasons before by the same metrics, so I'll say he'll wash out to replacement level on the third pairing.
The key to this configuration, for me, his Hjalmarsson has to not be done. Everything else is good, I think Chychrun may actually be underrated here, he's been talked about as sheltered but is in a spot where his level of success in that situation indicates he's well equipped for a promotion. The Coyotes really like him, and he'll get his shot.
The top pairing is a returning one that's not at the level of Anaheim's, but is sneaky close because of how much Ekmann-Larsson's dinged from the weighting on last season and Demers bouncing around last season. They'll probably end up closer to +20 as a sum in GAR than the 13 that's projected, by my estimation.
Key here is that there/s no-one negative unless Goligoski repeats results despite demotion, and that they have a workhorse top-pairing that can act as a true top pairing in a pinch as opposed to the usually top-four time on ice allocation scheme. This helps if one of the two second pairing guys go down, and the coach isn't comfortable with the spotted duo that results.
This is a very interesting situation to almost everyone following the league.
Dougie Hamilton is one of the very best defencemen in the league, full stop. He was 13 GAR last season(more than Giordano and Brodie's projection combined) that marks him as 99th percentile, he moves the puck extremely well out of his own zone as well as manning the point, puts up even strength offense not just by leeching points but by driving goal and shot rates, does well on the powerplay (even without being given the most PP! minutes!), and remarkably for a defenseman, draws more penalties than he takes, has an impressive arsenal of shots, list goes on.
It's always hard to parse the pairing when it comes to guys who play almost all their minutes together (model-builders admit this) however, and Giordano-Hamilton was like that. Teasing it out comes up Hamilton by GAR and WAR, we'll see. Giordano-Brodie was a little overly-famous pairing when Calgary ran a PDO heater all the way to the 2nd round of the playoffs, not sure if they'll be as good now, and I don't if they were as good as what was said then, considering Brodie's subsequent history away from Mark Giordano. Brodie certainly looks good by Corsica Player Rating, though.
Hamonic's been off for longer than he's been on as of late charitable consider him above water-level then consider his partner'll be a very young defenceman. Still, Hanifin is absolutely on track as a future top-four and we'll find out when exactly that future arrives(or alternative, if it ever does) in pretty short order.
Calgary shares with Edmonton a vulnerability to right shot maladies compounding, one guy goes down and it's top pairing Hamonic, 2nd pairing Stone. There's help on the farm, but they've made curious decisions there in the past in regards to floundering veterans staying in place over mathematically impressive solutions from Stockton.
Los Angeles has some real problems under the hood that they've been powering through with upgrades to their offensive engine both organic and artificial. That trend continues with Kovalchuk, but it's gonna be tough to outrun these negative guys, especially when they're veterans with ink to spare and you wonder if they know they're hurting and are waiting it out, or if reputations built during the cup years have hidden poor performance from their internal analysis. The team's top-heavy at forward too, and if you have one pairing adding value, one treading water and one hideously negative all fair in black and white, what you end up with is which pairing is on the ice swinging your forward line's results wildly and unless that's good, that's bad.
You end up with a situation where having Kopitar or Carter(subject to injury concerns) on the ice with the Doughty pairing is all world; either with the Muzzin pairing being just a hair above average(for a top six unit); the 3rd pairing sinks all boats regardless; and if you add that pairing to either bottom six line you hit the floor of the ocean.
I read something by Tyler Dellow where he mentioned that the Kings were the only team to have a better share of the shots when the opponent's top six was on the ice than they did when the opponent had their bottom six on the ice, and I bet that has a lot to do with that bottom pairing joining their bottom lines with Andreoff, Lewis, Mitchell et al on them and just getting crushed by other teams 3rd and 4th lines.
Now, individually, Oscar Fantenberg's a guy who's just too old to be given the benefit of the doubt on his North-American career based on his play so far in circumstances that should have been favourable. Phaneuf and (in a bordlerline sense) Martinez just seem done. That's who I was referring to in the leading paragraph. From there you've got Forbot playing the Methot role, and Muzzin trying his damndest with whatever he's gonna get. That second pairing sinks? They're a Doughty injury away from having a worse group than Vancouver.
This is what a situation that's almost identical with what happened in Winnipeg with Enstrom: Ryan entered just as veteran Martin aged out. He was bought out in spirit midway through the season, ans Joakim Ryan represented an example of the dividends of drafting and developing defensemen well. He's the most under-the-radar competent top-four guy, or at least Burns buoys him enough to make it look so. #198th overall in 2011. There's differencing defending from the AHL to the NHL, which is why you obviously wait until it happens but in terms of on-ice results in the AHL all signs were pointing to top-four potential with this guy draft position be damned. Again, I could be overstating this as there's the effect of the Burns pairing's deployment as well as Burns ability in general to consider, but if it works it works and it's working for them. Dillon & Demelo are just a few years removed from being utterly exposed by Pittsburgh in the playoffs; they were young then but not young enough to entirely excuse them but in terms of Pacific Division, regular ol' season patrolling they seem just fine at what they do.
Vlasic and Braun have both hit their 30's now, but they have an enduring style of play in both micro and macro time and it's bad business betting against them. Speaking of players the two-hundredth most favourite on draft day, Braun went three picks after Ryan's spot, four years earlier. Did anyone tell you life was fair?
Most everyone needs a mulligan on this whole team.
Engelland's carriable in the top four? And Theodore's that guy?
Yes and yes, apparently, and I'm more sure by eye of the latter (Theodore is a treat to watch) and as long as McNabb's brand of hockey sells that top pairing is in business.
I'm at a loss on these guys. Are they good enough to provide a boat to sail in for the non-Marshessault lines? The question marks are Merrill and again, Engelland, and I'm not a fan of the pairing concept employed here unless the superior is a Doughty-calibre guy, and even then it's a waste in my opinion.
Fleury mucked this whole thing up and I could so easily say so many things here that'd make me a fool in a matter of months. And I mean inordinately.
I'll ignore my own prescription: If McPhee wants to go all in with this core, he really needs to do that Karlsson dance or any other number that finds him a righty. Miller's the only true value-adder in my opinion here, and if Glass ruins the negotiation for you you're basically betting that he himself becomes the engine that makes a non-Marshessault line drive and you win that way because that's honestly what a pairing would do for you like say, Schmidt-Karlsson or McNabb-Karlsson. It's time sensitive too.
Bottom line, these guys work and they're about middle of the road for the division. It's good enough, but they're only gonna go as far as Marshessault-Karlsson-Smith takes them until a Suzuki or Glass bursts onto the scene. Again, time sensitive.
Also again, Fleury though. And I mean that both ways.
Below the spaghetti meteor, here lies the worst defense in the division.
Tanev's a victim, like Larsson of the offense-emphasis in these metrics.
They do fairly rate how poor their offensive contributions really are, though. That part's just the truth, but I saw him(Tanev) take some unfair criticism in the late '17 dust-up over Nylander trade ideas.
Stecher I like, he might be a 4 and I'm not trying to be funny with that, that's value. If you want to giggle at Vancouver I'll inform you that we're paying more for less.
Gudbranson is a guy that, obviously he's victim to his player-typing here but I'm honestly not certain he's been effective at what he's supposed to be. He's not Adam Larsson. What the Canucks have got here is a glowing-red weak-point third-pairing that's more typically of a team that's got enough substance somewhere higher up to be called top-heavy.
The real tragedy here? The fan aren't getting any Quinton Hughes viewings yet. That guy is special.
They need two more.
Edler's dormant explosives at this point, there's a chance he breaks and Tanev's not gonna carry the next one down the line because it's Del-Zotto and that guy is whole-foods Jack Johnson.
You know what I did here? I took Klefbom's 16-17 numbers and said that's the guy, that's who he is. That's my Oilers Optimism. @ me.
Know what else I did? I bet you do, because you can see it. For your information, Kevin Gravel was right around replacement but speaking of replacement I got us another Swede.
Enstrom's a guy who's all defensive contribution that still shows up good in the numbers. I took his 16-17 for the proj. GAR. To-be quite honest with you, I don't even know if he's a Chiarelli guy. I think, though, based on comments he is going to add but based on more comments prior it might be waiver wire. Gravel was definitely a 7D plan, I think Pete believes in him but in that role and not another.
I want to talk about Keegan Lowe. He did work on the Condors last year, the good kind. If I'm projecting Petersson on rels with Anaheim, Keegan's older but he's got those same credentials. This is a training camp thing but I'm not uncomfortable with the idea at all. Whoever you pick up, they're gonna want to play so maybe Lowe's there if waivers won't bring you anything and Toby doesn't pick up the phone.
I mentioned this all the way in the beginning but this is about depth. My plan would have been 77-6; 25-83 in the top four to start with but there's no cover for either of the lefties
I don't have the smartest touch when it comes to taking the temperature on the Oilers fanbase, though I do try and I feel comfortable forecasting that coming in, people are going to be more sure of Darnell than they are of Oscar, and I'm opposite ways around on it. Far as I can tell, Nurse had one good half one bad half and so did Klefbom but there was no overlap and I think either people were tuned out or they had already made up their mind before Klefbom found redemption along the way.
Klefbom's healthy and that top pairing runs just fine, I'm sure of it. Through all of it, the bum shoulder, the shot demand, and the defensive scheme switch-up by the actual goals Klefbom closed okay.
I talked about all this in The Best Player Available but I'm strong on Benning in his spot, too. It's just the vulnerability to injuries that absolutely will happen. That's what we know.
But let's for a moment imagine that the probability of any player sustaining a long-term injury is equal.
I would say that, from there, there are the same number of season-sewering possibilities up front as there are on the back-end.
Klefbom or Larsson or Benning goes down, and everyone moves up a spot?
That's bad, but if Draisaitl, Nuge or McDavid goes down it's the same thing.
You had one piece of cover in one spot(LHD) and that was a good thing, but even if Sekera was 100% the vulnerability of the team to forward injury is still more dangerous overall. That's the real problem with this team, as of now there's three top six forwards. It was always going to be outside chance at the playoffs. The only way the non-McDavid minutes were even-ish in shot-share is by gaming the volume with point shots. Also, that discrepancy between the goals and the shots overall away from McDavid is going to be less the shots-against being defended poorly and resulting in relatively more goals, and more the shots-for lacking finishers behind them. I know this is a contradiction via the GF and GA rates relative to league average from last year, but I'm speaking from a place where I'm assuming the 5v5 defending will be different(we've been told this).
That being said, Talbot can save us all. But do we want him to? Do we want a first-round playoff exit that encourages status quo?
It seems infinitely greedy to ask for another difference-making forward from the draft, but honestly there's been more traded away than gained since 2015, assuming Puljujarvi doesn't defy the current developmental processes that appear to be inverse to what every other team is doing in their attempts to turn their top draft pick forwards into strong-links. For Kailer, they seem to like him so it's just up to chance whether or not he's Eberle or beyond.
I'm not sure the current organisation can put together what I believe to be a 'cup-guarantee' window, 5 years as a top-5 team, within McDavid's coming eight years with this kind of top talent deficit, given what's been done with a surplus.
I'm rambling, so I'll quit doomsday-preaching for now.
In conclusion, if Sekera's absence changes the year-long outlook of this team for you, we either differ in our evaluation of Sekera or our evaluation of the 2018-19 Edmonton Oilers as they stood before the news hit.
Edit:
I had an exchange that added some clarity and information in the comments of Lowetide.ca, and thought I'd add it as a footnote here. I chopped up his original comment to respond to each facet individually:
Jordan said:
Hey Wilde,
Was just thinking about numbers from your projections for the D Corps in the Pacific and I have some questions:
Based on your understanding of the numbers and what they represent, could they be used to project either the value of a specific pairing, or of the defense corp(se) as a whole?
I was curious to see if the numbers correlated to what I thought I understood about the overall strength of a given team’s d-corps, so I aggregated them with the following results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x_26B4itETAdQyqfh5SJ7to24Sd5BPvPaWa0GlrphVQ/edit?usp=sharing
My response:
I’m glad you asked, I’ve mentioned this before but my main weakness in ‘predicting’ defense corps is putting individual players together into pairings.
For example, Shea Theodore + Deryk Engelland is not a pairing I thought would work.
I didn’t think Sekera + Russell would either.
I can rate defensemen fine, but when it comes to arbitrating who can carry who and who will sink who, weighting TOI shares to project the totality of the Dcorps I’m wrong a lot.
In terms of just the math of putting the numbers together, it’s tough, because of stuff like who plays with who and for how long and how they’re used.
For example, if a D corps’ highest rated guy ends up playing the least and with the worst partner, the net influence of his higher rating is lower
(that's simplified)
You can see in your document Anaheim is the best, and that was my take without putting the numbers together – they’re the easiest to do this with because there’s almost no ambiguity in year-to-year usage and context differences – only the bottom pairing is going to be different and there’s a rookie that’s decently promising and a veteran that’s a massive upgrade on last years’ Bieksa contribution.
You can also see this a bit with the difference between my evalutation of Arizona and your arithmetic: They’re held down by the difference between my personal projection of Ekmann-Larsson being much better and Goligoski being better sheltered and Chychrun continuing his trajectory in the GAR department.
Jordan:
Does the GAR, WAR or PR data take any circumstances of play (Common Linemates, PP/PK/EV TOI, or QualComp data into consideration, or are they “raw” numbers?
Yes and yes and yes, in the preamble about their limitations and discrepancies in evaluation versus traditional measures I talked a bit about disciplines and QoC and QoT, here’s the links to their methodology along with quick summary of components:
(The QoT and QoC and deployment are factored into each of the following)
Chace’s GAR:
https://hockeyandstuff.weebly.com/chaces-blog
3) Even Strength Offence
3A) C-BPM
3B) C-XPM
4) Even Strength Defense
5) Power-play Offence
6) Penalty Differential
7) Extras
Emmanuel Perry’s WAR:
Offensive shot rates
Defensive shot rates
Offensive shot quality
Defensive shot quality
Shooting
Penalties taken
Penalties drawn
Zonal transitions
(Corsica Player Rating is a weighted stacking of per game WAR from the past 120 games, as I understand it)
Jordan:
Interested to hear feedback – does this provide insight, or does this provide noise?
No, this is useful and I should have included it, up until the ‘Overall D corps rank’. It’s good to see where their guys are by which model and how, as opposed to having to scroll around everywhere. For example, the only place the Oilers are good is the GAR, and you can bet it’s from me grabbing Oscar’s 2016-17 numbers.
Which then you can ask an interesting question: Is the most important facet of this Dcorps having a 2017 version of Oscar Klefbom? I’d say yes.
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