is that we dont have another top pair RD. Boyle would be a disaster as would Klein (even if you think he's a good #4 dman). So then you're talking about moving a LD to RD. Say a top 4 of Staal-McD and Yandle-DG. Which I would do. But you're left with 3 natural right Ds then for the bottom pair. So by demoting DG, you're moving 2 other dmen off their natural side.
Im sure they can do it (6/7 dmen do it all the time). But it's a consideration. This is one of the big reasons I've been talking about trading Klein (since no one else is movable). Free up money to make sure Yandle stays, and move on with the necessary restructuring of the defense. Boyle, McIlrath, Diaz, and Skjei IMO is a top 5 or certainly top 10 3rd pair anyway.
I wouldnt have gotten all the ones you got. But I really have no sense of Rangers history. I started watching in 88 or 89, and I couldnt tell you a thing about even the mid-80s teams.
Deej, that's the result of a lifetime spent watching games with my dad talking my ear off about the guys he grew up watching like Chief Nielson and Rod Seiling :) Most were educated guesses - the only ones I was certain about were Leetch, Greschner and Howell, and was pretty sure about Patrick because it seemed like he played for them my entire childhood. OK, checked the list now. I didn't think Beuk was right but I couldn't think of anyone else who was close. Ching Johnson I've heard of, the other guy never.
except my wife who can tolerate it (a Minnesota girl). I played it at camp one summer, and then came home and found a Rangers game on a month later when I got home. Was hooked. Luckily we didnt pay for SportsChannel, or I might have found an Islanders game first.
we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
I badly wanted to resign AS and wasnt even keen on extending Girardi. But that's the past. Right now, moving DG off the 1st pair would require moving a LD to RD and an RD to LD, and would likely break up every defensive pair we have. Im not against it, but I think if we go that route it is better to just trade KK and promote Skjei to play LD3. Maybe in 20-30 games. I really struggle to believe that this team will be in any danger of missing the playoffs. The Atlantic division is pretty crappy so there is easily room for 5 from the Metro.
If they hadn't given Staal one, too. Pick one or the other, but spending more than $10 mill annually on two very similar, fairly limited defensemen was nuts, particularly when your coach wants his defensemen to really move the puck and drive offense. Neither Girardi nor Staal can add much in that department.
It's funny given how fast our forwards are that we have two defenders in the top-four that are slow as shit.
I still don't know what process led to Staal/Girardi/Boyle being given a higher value than Stralman. Frustrating. This group has to win a Cup for me to get over that.
we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
rough schedule to open the season.
You guys faced Toronto to start the season, though. That doesn't count.
he's a really good Dman. I actually think the offensive skill is there. He had 56 points over 2 years before getting hurt. I think if we pushed him to play a more two way role, he would be a 25-35 point guy.
There is something just weird about our defensive corps. I dont think it is as overrated as the possession stats would suggest. It cant be that everyone in the league who is raving about Staal and McD and the corps in general is just too old school to realize that our Dmen are just ok (and frankly it's hard to jive the CF% from last year with the Presidents Trophy unless we were insanely lucky).
Some of it I think is tactics. For example, some teams try to have dmen deny zone entry a lot more. We dont. Leads to more shots overally, but crappier ones. OTOH, the inability to win battles and gets the puck cleared is not a question of tactics. And our forwards are very good and responsible defensively, so its not like the dmen are left out to dry. I also think that guys like Staal, McD, and Girardi would each do a lot better if paired with a PMD.
we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
rough schedule to open the season.
You guys faced Toronto to start the season, though. That doesn't count.
LOL, I will say Toronto looked much different in Babcock's system. they still had Bernier in net though - he played ok other than the softee in the first - which turned out to be the difference.
I don't like getting into the Stralman discussion Â
A lot of it is based on a rep earned under a different system, one much better suited to Girardi and Staal. You get a rep as a shutdown guy, and it takes a awhile for that to fade away even if you're not really shutting anyone down anymore.
You hit on another part of it - Staal's eye. He's never been quite the same player since that injury.
Again, they're not a bad defense. They just aren't as good as their collective reputation, and two of them are massively overpaid. It's been beaten to death, but it also doesn't help that the Rangers locked up those two guys but let a better defenseman than both of them walk away, to a conference rival no less.
I was impressed that Babcock managed to find a suit with the same Â
Deej, I do think there's something to the idea that AV's system limits possession, but I'd have to look up how his teams in VAN did CF% wise. The Rangers seem to deliberately go for prime scoring chances instead of shots (how many times did we bitch about one too many passes last year?).
I don't think the defense is top three in the league, but probably top third. I think Lundqvist covers for a ton of mistakes, as he did last night.
BTW, Hunwick is on Toronto's top pairing and is an alternate captain.
is zone starts. Zone starts drastically impact player possession stats, especially in the first 10 seconds of the play. The link describes Dellow's study on this (unavailable since the Oilers hired him), where he found (as described by someone else):
Quote:
defensemen who get the most extreme defensive zone starts have an average corsi% of 44.7% while the average corsi% for defensemen with the most extreme offensive zone starts is 53.3%. This would seem to indicate that for defensemen zone starts can impact your corsi% anywhere from -5.3% to +3.3%
Staal and DG look terrible in Corsi. Staal was a horrible 45.4% CF% with -8.2 CF% rel. Except his zone start split was 36o-64d. So of course he was gonna get badly outshot. Girardi also had a tough split, with 41o-59d. Even with that disadvantage, Giardi's -7.4 CF% rel falls to just -2.7 for FF% rel. Given how important blocks are to his game, FF% rel seems more relevant. 48.2% Fenwick strikes me as very good for a guy with such crappy zone splits. Of the 60 dmen who played 1250+ minutes last season, DG and Staal were #7 & 8 in taking faceoffs behind their own blue line. Then add in our inability to win faceoffs in the dzone (45%) which is mostly on the centers, and you start to understand how the CF% numbers used to kill DG and Staal are actually complicated.
But Im semi-uneasy with the advanced stats so Im probably butchering things. And these stats are more of an excuse than proof that these two are any good. Link - ( New Window )
Corsi and advanced stats have nothing to do with irardi... Â
...flubbing a weak clearing attempt into the opponents skate for a defensive zone turnover that ends up behind Hank. That's just shitty hockey and those plays are happening far too often with him for a while now.
RE: Corsi and advanced stats have nothing to do with irardi... Â
...flubbing a weak clearing attempt into the opponents skate for a defensive zone turnover that ends up behind Hank. That's just shitty hockey and those plays are happening far too often with him for a while now.
True. I wasnt trying to make an argument that he's Vlasic. Im just convinced that he isnt as bad as his top level CF% suggests.
The single most overly adored former Ranger of all time. Mainly because the way he is discussed, you'd think he was Chris CHelios. This past season was his best season by a massive amount. He was not even close to being that good for us. And he would not be a better top D man on this team than anyone other than Boyle (who outplayed him in the playoffs last year, even in our series against TB).
Deej, another extremely ignored yet important thing about Advanced Stats is that they take zero game context into account. They don't tell the story about who was winning the game and when, and by how much. They don't tell whether we played up or back. They can't tell the full story of why. For example: Dan Girardi and McD played 25 and 23 minutes last night, and we had a lead the whole game, the Hawks were playing catch up the whole night. In the third period they were in our zone dominating puck possession because the Rangers played passive, conservative hockey because they were going against a great team with Towes, Hossa, Kane etc... playing big minutes, and aggressively trying to tie the game. When those guys are on the ice, the top D guys are matched up nearly everytime with those players. If we are playing a "prevent" type of period to prevent a tying goal, and they have the puck for much of the period, it's not because the defensemen were ineffective. It's because the barrage of shots and puck possession by the Hawks would push the Rangers team and player "corsi's" down dramatically. If you look at the team Corsi numbers from last night, it was something like 65 - 45 in favor of the Hawks...yet we won the game. Thats what happens when you are playing conservatively with a lead against a great offensive opponent.
None of these stats are really taken in context. If you look at just the raw numbers, you're missing the details of the entire hockey game. If you use many of the advanced stats together, you can get a better idea but still not a great one. They are fun to look at and interesting to discuss etc... But if someone uses them exclusively to "see" what happened in the game, they are not seeing very much.
And Dan Girardi had a giveaway. Bad one. If we are lucky, neither he nor any of the other defensemen will make the same mistake again for the rest of the year. If some of you guys want to analyze and pick apart every giveaway, bad pass, mistake, poor positioning etc... enjoy that. What a miserable way to watch a hockey game.
The single most overly adored former Ranger of all time. Mainly because the way he is discussed, you'd think he was Chris CHelios. This past season was his best season by a massive amount. He was not even close to being that good for us. And he would not be a better top D man on this team than anyone other than Boyle (who outplayed him in the playoffs last year, even in our series against TB).
LOL. Let me guess, 'eye test'? A) Most analysts agreed he was our best defender throughout the 2014 playoffs and B) on what metric was Boyle better than him the past postseason?
But i will also say a big reason we can't get over Stralman is because he, Cally, Boyle and Yzerman shoved it up our ass in the ECF. Talk about an in-your-face mistake.
They were sick of the endless banner ceremony, too:
Quote:
“[W]e were sitting in here and they delayed a little bit, I may be a little bit upset so you want to go out there and pay them back,” Lundqvist said. “To try to kill the atmosphere a little bit like that was huge for us.”
look it up. Use anything you want....standard points etc or Corsi.
Greg you're just clueless as all hell when it comes to this shit. You just vomit out whatever nonsense you read somewhere and then fight that good fight because other people told you some wrong nonsense. If not agreeing with you makes me obtuse then that's super. You don't care to have a conversation, you just disagree with anything I say regardless. I could explain this shit with powerpoints and data and you'd ignore all of it because you have some sort of issue with me no matter the topic. It's boring to read your insults. Go rail against Girardi all day for all I care.
Im not sure how much I buy into the prevent defense theory Â
Inability to get the puck out of your zone for 60+ seconds is not buckling down and playing conservative. The Rangers routinely get the ice tilted against them late in game. Yes, it is because the other team is desperate. No, it is not because we've made an affirmative decision to cause heart attacks.
And Seth, gotta disagree on Stralman. He's a fine #2 dman and an excellent 2rd pair guy. The WOWY stats suggest that he made Staal WAY more effective.
RE: Im not sure how much I buy into the prevent defense theory Â
Inability to get the puck out of your zone for 60+ seconds is not buckling down and playing conservative. The Rangers routinely get the ice tilted against them late in game. Yes, it is because the other team is desperate. No, it is not because we've made an affirmative decision to cause heart attacks.
And Seth, gotta disagree on Stralman. He's a fine #2 dman and an excellent 2rd pair guy. The WOWY stats suggest that he made Staal WAY more effective.
I don't agree that we don't alter the game plan depending on score and opponent but ok. I could get detailed if you want but you don't so it's all good.
And thats cool about Stralman too. He was a fine defensive player for us but if you want, take a look at just his offensive numbers from his last year with us to last year with TB. I thought he was very good for us but he wasn't some elite defenseman that people remember him as. But agree to disagree.
Stralman got PP time in Tampa (and performed quite well) and never even got the opportunity in NY. Think that might explain why his numbers shot up in Tampa?
The single most overly adored former Ranger of all time. Mainly because the way he is discussed, you'd think he was Chris CHelios. This past season was his best season by a massive amount. He was not even close to being that good for us. And he would not be a better top D man on this team than anyone other than Boyle (who outplayed him in the playoffs last year, even in our series against TB).
Deej, another extremely ignored yet important thing about Advanced Stats is that they take zero game context into account. They don't tell the story about who was winning the game and when, and by how much. They don't tell whether we played up or back. They can't tell the full story of why. For example: Dan Girardi and McD played 25 and 23 minutes last night, and we had a lead the whole game, the Hawks were playing catch up the whole night. In the third period they were in our zone dominating puck possession because the Rangers played passive, conservative hockey because they were going against a great team with Towes, Hossa, Kane etc... playing big minutes, and aggressively trying to tie the game. When those guys are on the ice, the top D guys are matched up nearly everytime with those players. If we are playing a "prevent" type of period to prevent a tying goal, and they have the puck for much of the period, it's not because the defensemen were ineffective. It's because the barrage of shots and puck possession by the Hawks would push the Rangers team and player "corsi's" down dramatically. If you look at the team Corsi numbers from last night, it was something like 65 - 45 in favor of the Hawks...yet we won the game. Thats what happens when you are playing conservatively with a lead against a great offensive opponent.
None of these stats are really taken in context. If you look at just the raw numbers, you're missing the details of the entire hockey game. If you use many of the advanced stats together, you can get a better idea but still not a great one. They are fun to look at and interesting to discuss etc... But if someone uses them exclusively to "see" what happened in the game, they are not seeing very much.
And Dan Girardi had a giveaway. Bad one. If we are lucky, neither he nor any of the other defensemen will make the same mistake again for the rest of the year. If some of you guys want to analyze and pick apart every giveaway, bad pass, mistake, poor positioning etc... enjoy that. What a miserable way to watch a hockey game.
There's score adjusted Corsi, corsi close, corsi ahead/behind, etc., and multiple sites break it out. And according to Hockey Reference, Girardi's CF% 5 on 5 tied was worse than his overall CF% (with about a 3% increase in defensive zone starts in 5 on 5 tied, which was surprising to me). The stats very much take context into account.
my good man, we just will not agree on this one and I think that you (being someone who looks at these stats as seriously as you do) can look into the range of stats that includes mainly: Quality of Competition, Zone Start locations, total ice and even Quality of Teammates and you'll find what I am talking about regarding his vital role on the team. I get that you don't only think he sucks because of advanced stats, but because you say you watch the games and see a guy who is mediocre or worse. So it's really the two of us not seeing these things in the same view at all. From my point of view (talking about the stats specifically) when you put the relevant categories together, it shows exactly why he's not mediocre, not below average, not awful but actually the opposite.
To me Dan Girardi is just like a very solid, quality o lineman in the way that a lineman gets none of the attention until he commits a penalty or allows a sack. He may be consistent and play well nearly all of the time but when he fucks up, the mistakes are glaring and that's when fans take notice. He'll turn the puck over or he'll get beaten to the outside by some elite forward and it'll happen a bunch of times this season. And it'll happen because he plays every game against players that are on a higher level than nearly every defenseman on nearly every team and that includes himself. He even plays against those players more than most other more skilled defensemen from other teams do. People will flip out every time there's a mistake and we'll go in circles arguing about this shit for years to come. So as soon as we can find an elite player to play on the top pair for 25 minutes a game, we can all rejoice. Until then he'll probably stay up there because of his ability to never miss a game, his right handed shot, his conditioning, his more stay at home game that allows McD to play more two way, and his willingness to sacrifice the shit out of his body to block a shot and throw checks at anyone.
I'm happy he's there, many if not most are not. Not gonna agree and that's the way the cookie crumbles. Lets Go Rangers.
If there is expansion in 2017-18, do we expose him to the draft? I think the better reading of the CBA is that NMC/NTCs do not prohibit exposure to the expansion draft. Would he be picked, or would we need to sweeten the pot with a prospect/pick?
by an expansion team assuming he doesn't decline into a traffic cone. If a team is looking for some veteran leadership on the blueline he's a good option.
Im sure they can do it (6/7 dmen do it all the time). But it's a consideration. This is one of the big reasons I've been talking about trading Klein (since no one else is movable). Free up money to make sure Yandle stays, and move on with the necessary restructuring of the defense. Boyle, McIlrath, Diaz, and Skjei IMO is a top 5 or certainly top 10 3rd pair anyway.
right call, incidental goalie interference, I just hate they can review that now, it was mostly incidental and those shouldn't be challengeable IMO.
One of those is wrong, and I'll obviously credit you with DG as well. Missing 2 guys.
right call, incidental goalie interference, I just hate they can review that now, it was mostly incidental and those shouldn't be challengeable IMO.
After 2014 SCF Game 2, you're not going to get any agreement on this opinion from me. ;)
Grrrrrrrrrrr
Deej, that's the result of a lifetime spent watching games with my dad talking my ear off about the guys he grew up watching like Chief Nielson and Rod Seiling :) Most were educated guesses - the only ones I was certain about were Leetch, Greschner and Howell, and was pretty sure about Patrick because it seemed like he played for them my entire childhood. OK, checked the list now. I didn't think Beuk was right but I couldn't think of anyone else who was close. Ching Johnson I've heard of, the other guy never.
Deej : 10:41 am : link : reply
is that we dont have another top pair RD.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
rough schedule to open the season.
I still don't know what process led to Staal/Girardi/Boyle being given a higher value than Stralman. Frustrating. This group has to win a Cup for me to get over that.
Quote:
we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
rough schedule to open the season.
You guys faced Toronto to start the season, though. That doesn't count.
There is something just weird about our defensive corps. I dont think it is as overrated as the possession stats would suggest. It cant be that everyone in the league who is raving about Staal and McD and the corps in general is just too old school to realize that our Dmen are just ok (and frankly it's hard to jive the CF% from last year with the Presidents Trophy unless we were insanely lucky).
Some of it I think is tactics. For example, some teams try to have dmen deny zone entry a lot more. We dont. Leads to more shots overally, but crappier ones. OTOH, the inability to win battles and gets the puck cleared is not a question of tactics. And our forwards are very good and responsible defensively, so its not like the dmen are left out to dry. I also think that guys like Staal, McD, and Girardi would each do a lot better if paired with a PMD.
at least one is their own. MTL home opener isn't until game 5 and it's the President's trophy winners.
they get a tough draw the beginning of the year.
Chewing on cigars and downing three fingers of scotch would be my guess.
Quote:
In comment 12534143 MetsAreBack said:
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we have 3 games in the books before Anaheim even takes the ice for the first time this year. I guess we'll appreciate the off-days later in the year and at least CBJ has to do the back-to-back with us this weekend, but not sure why we're starting off the bat with 3 games in 4 nights.
they did this to a few teams. Montreal starts with 4 road games, the latter 3 in 4 nights.
and 3 of the 4 are home openers, the lone one that isn't is the Bruins game.
rough schedule to open the season.
You guys faced Toronto to start the season, though. That doesn't count.
LOL, I will say Toronto looked much different in Babcock's system. they still had Bernier in net though - he played ok other than the softee in the first - which turned out to be the difference.
You hit on another part of it - Staal's eye. He's never been quite the same player since that injury.
Again, they're not a bad defense. They just aren't as good as their collective reputation, and two of them are massively overpaid. It's been beaten to death, but it also doesn't help that the Rangers locked up those two guys but let a better defenseman than both of them walk away, to a conference rival no less.
I don't think the defense is top three in the league, but probably top third. I think Lundqvist covers for a ton of mistakes, as he did last night.
BTW, Hunwick is on Toronto's top pairing and is an alternate captain.
Staal and DG look terrible in Corsi. Staal was a horrible 45.4% CF% with -8.2 CF% rel. Except his zone start split was 36o-64d. So of course he was gonna get badly outshot. Girardi also had a tough split, with 41o-59d. Even with that disadvantage, Giardi's -7.4 CF% rel falls to just -2.7 for FF% rel. Given how important blocks are to his game, FF% rel seems more relevant. 48.2% Fenwick strikes me as very good for a guy with such crappy zone splits. Of the 60 dmen who played 1250+ minutes last season, DG and Staal were #7 & 8 in taking faceoffs behind their own blue line. Then add in our inability to win faceoffs in the dzone (45%) which is mostly on the centers, and you start to understand how the CF% numbers used to kill DG and Staal are actually complicated.
But Im semi-uneasy with the advanced stats so Im probably butchering things. And these stats are more of an excuse than proof that these two are any good.
Link - ( New Window )
True. I wasnt trying to make an argument that he's Vlasic. Im just convinced that he isnt as bad as his top level CF% suggests.
Deej, another extremely ignored yet important thing about Advanced Stats is that they take zero game context into account. They don't tell the story about who was winning the game and when, and by how much. They don't tell whether we played up or back. They can't tell the full story of why. For example: Dan Girardi and McD played 25 and 23 minutes last night, and we had a lead the whole game, the Hawks were playing catch up the whole night. In the third period they were in our zone dominating puck possession because the Rangers played passive, conservative hockey because they were going against a great team with Towes, Hossa, Kane etc... playing big minutes, and aggressively trying to tie the game. When those guys are on the ice, the top D guys are matched up nearly everytime with those players. If we are playing a "prevent" type of period to prevent a tying goal, and they have the puck for much of the period, it's not because the defensemen were ineffective. It's because the barrage of shots and puck possession by the Hawks would push the Rangers team and player "corsi's" down dramatically. If you look at the team Corsi numbers from last night, it was something like 65 - 45 in favor of the Hawks...yet we won the game. Thats what happens when you are playing conservatively with a lead against a great offensive opponent.
None of these stats are really taken in context. If you look at just the raw numbers, you're missing the details of the entire hockey game. If you use many of the advanced stats together, you can get a better idea but still not a great one. They are fun to look at and interesting to discuss etc... But if someone uses them exclusively to "see" what happened in the game, they are not seeing very much.
And Dan Girardi had a giveaway. Bad one. If we are lucky, neither he nor any of the other defensemen will make the same mistake again for the rest of the year. If some of you guys want to analyze and pick apart every giveaway, bad pass, mistake, poor positioning etc... enjoy that. What a miserable way to watch a hockey game.
LOL. Let me guess, 'eye test'? A) Most analysts agreed he was our best defender throughout the 2014 playoffs and B) on what metric was Boyle better than him the past postseason?
But i will also say a big reason we can't get over Stralman is because he, Cally, Boyle and Yzerman shoved it up our ass in the ECF. Talk about an in-your-face mistake.
Link - ( New Window )
Greg you're just clueless as all hell when it comes to this shit. You just vomit out whatever nonsense you read somewhere and then fight that good fight because other people told you some wrong nonsense. If not agreeing with you makes me obtuse then that's super. You don't care to have a conversation, you just disagree with anything I say regardless. I could explain this shit with powerpoints and data and you'd ignore all of it because you have some sort of issue with me no matter the topic. It's boring to read your insults. Go rail against Girardi all day for all I care.
And Seth, gotta disagree on Stralman. He's a fine #2 dman and an excellent 2rd pair guy. The WOWY stats suggest that he made Staal WAY more effective.
And Seth, gotta disagree on Stralman. He's a fine #2 dman and an excellent 2rd pair guy. The WOWY stats suggest that he made Staal WAY more effective.
I don't agree that we don't alter the game plan depending on score and opponent but ok. I could get detailed if you want but you don't so it's all good.
And thats cool about Stralman too. He was a fine defensive player for us but if you want, take a look at just his offensive numbers from his last year with us to last year with TB. I thought he was very good for us but he wasn't some elite defenseman that people remember him as. But agree to disagree.
Suck it Fish!
Suck it Fish!
Good one bro
Really sucks about stralman. Can't believe he's gone.
Deej, another extremely ignored yet important thing about Advanced Stats is that they take zero game context into account. They don't tell the story about who was winning the game and when, and by how much. They don't tell whether we played up or back. They can't tell the full story of why. For example: Dan Girardi and McD played 25 and 23 minutes last night, and we had a lead the whole game, the Hawks were playing catch up the whole night. In the third period they were in our zone dominating puck possession because the Rangers played passive, conservative hockey because they were going against a great team with Towes, Hossa, Kane etc... playing big minutes, and aggressively trying to tie the game. When those guys are on the ice, the top D guys are matched up nearly everytime with those players. If we are playing a "prevent" type of period to prevent a tying goal, and they have the puck for much of the period, it's not because the defensemen were ineffective. It's because the barrage of shots and puck possession by the Hawks would push the Rangers team and player "corsi's" down dramatically. If you look at the team Corsi numbers from last night, it was something like 65 - 45 in favor of the Hawks...yet we won the game. Thats what happens when you are playing conservatively with a lead against a great offensive opponent.
None of these stats are really taken in context. If you look at just the raw numbers, you're missing the details of the entire hockey game. If you use many of the advanced stats together, you can get a better idea but still not a great one. They are fun to look at and interesting to discuss etc... But if someone uses them exclusively to "see" what happened in the game, they are not seeing very much.
And Dan Girardi had a giveaway. Bad one. If we are lucky, neither he nor any of the other defensemen will make the same mistake again for the rest of the year. If some of you guys want to analyze and pick apart every giveaway, bad pass, mistake, poor positioning etc... enjoy that. What a miserable way to watch a hockey game.
There's score adjusted Corsi, corsi close, corsi ahead/behind, etc., and multiple sites break it out. And according to Hockey Reference, Girardi's CF% 5 on 5 tied was worse than his overall CF% (with about a 3% increase in defensive zone starts in 5 on 5 tied, which was surprising to me). The stats very much take context into account.
To me Dan Girardi is just like a very solid, quality o lineman in the way that a lineman gets none of the attention until he commits a penalty or allows a sack. He may be consistent and play well nearly all of the time but when he fucks up, the mistakes are glaring and that's when fans take notice. He'll turn the puck over or he'll get beaten to the outside by some elite forward and it'll happen a bunch of times this season. And it'll happen because he plays every game against players that are on a higher level than nearly every defenseman on nearly every team and that includes himself. He even plays against those players more than most other more skilled defensemen from other teams do. People will flip out every time there's a mistake and we'll go in circles arguing about this shit for years to come. So as soon as we can find an elite player to play on the top pair for 25 minutes a game, we can all rejoice. Until then he'll probably stay up there because of his ability to never miss a game, his right handed shot, his conditioning, his more stay at home game that allows McD to play more two way, and his willingness to sacrifice the shit out of his body to block a shot and throw checks at anyone.
I'm happy he's there, many if not most are not. Not gonna agree and that's the way the cookie crumbles. Lets Go Rangers.