tomh009

So ... Dach out until late December Guhle out until mid-January Laine out until January/February Newhook out until mid-March That's a hole big enough that a single player, even that much-dreamed-about 2C, cannot fix. The good thing is that the strong start of the season still has them with the top points percentage in Atlantic, even after three consecutive losses. If they can staunch the bleeding for the next two months, until Dach and Guhle are back, they can still be in the playoff hunt. But that means getting decent goaltending from both Montembeault and Dobes, and getting the power play working again. And figuring out how to configure the bottom-nine forwards for the best results (not only most goals for but also the least goals against). The season is far from being lost, but the challenge is certainly much bigger than before.

We can hope but I don’t know where Hughes can find that player—and how much he would have to pay. Suspect Kampf chose Vancouver because it gave him a better chance at a top-nine role.

Someone cross-checked his chair while he was picking his nose.

It's a low bar, though.

Carrier is not defensively solid?

Many people thought Veleno could be more than a fourth liner, but it really hasn't turned out that way.

Finding another Carrier might be enough.

😂😂😂

Right-handed and can do PK, at least that part would help fill (some of) the gap from Newhook's absence.

The Stars were very good at keeping our shooters to the outside and preventing them from getting decent scoring opportunities.

Apparently the Leafs have been trying to trade him (for a bag of pucks, I presume, maybe with a sweetener even) but there were no takers so I expect he'll clear waivers.

Sign Kampf once he clears waivers and his contract is cancelled? Can he do anything for us?

I expect to see Montembeault starting the third.

Moneypuck says GSAx is -3.10 at the moment (at the end of second). Naturalstattrick classified three of the goals as medium-danger (though that is open to argument, of course), one as high-danger and one as low-danger.

I think our slump has arrived. A different one from early last season but we are still getting our asses handed to us.

It did not look good. 😢

New Habs PP vs old Habs PK maybe? 😊

Further stats discussion ... Habs are fifth in the league for power play goals/60, and yet they are dead last in the league for power play shots/60. As a result, the Habs' power play shooting percentage is the highest in the league at 25.53% (and a PP PDO of 1.253). Clearly our PP units do not attempt to bombard the net with shots but rather look (sometimes agonizingly long) for a good scoring opportunity. So, is 25.53% sustainable? Looking at the recent history, TBL has 21.64% in 2018-19 (also with a low number of shots) and Oilers 20.27% in 2019-20 (more shots). A number of other teams had shooting percentages close to but below 20%. Maybe it is possible, with skilled players and selective shooting? Whether that approach maximizes the number of power-play goals is a different question, though.

Well ... that assumes that the xG calculations are 100% accurate. And they are not, because they only have a limited number of data points. You can see for yourself by looking at the individual shots on Moneypuck: while they are directionally correct, there are cases where the shot is far more dangerous than its xG value, and vice versa. For example, if (say) Demidov gets the goalie to commit to his faked shot, that makes the actual shot by Kapanen on the other side that much more dangerous, but the xG data doesn't have that level of information (yet). As concrete examples, here are the xG values for yesterday's goals: Yamamoto (Mammoth) 0.208 Kapanen 0.121 Krause (Mammoth) 0.120 Caufield 0.046 Newhook 0.137 Caufield 0.146 Suzuki 0.085 Dach 0.275 Suzuki's goal is a much lower xG because he took the shot from 30' away rather than Dach's 7'. Caufield's values are lower because of the angle. And so on ... but does it fully account for the danger? If Caufield took that shot 22 times, would he only score once? Ah, but we need to remember that the xG is based on an average NHL player, so maybe once in 22 is correct for xG, even if it's not correct for xCaufieldG. And the models are all somewhat different. For the Habs team xG, for example: JFresh: 45.9 Moneypuck: 46.7 Naturalstattrick: 44.2 My point is not that xG is useless, but it's good to understand its limitations.

If Dach is not going to make it to 2C, I expect him to end up on the wing.

If he can keep up this level of play, he is good enough for at least this season, prior to the actual contention window, removing the need for a panic trade for a 2C. And, in the longer term, he should be good enough for 3C at least.

Quite likely Prokhorov was ranked significantly higher due to his size.

Arguably Bergevin should have extended Lindgren instead of Primeau back in 2021. But goalies are voodoo ...

A black maple leaf ... ugh.

I think that one hurt bad, he doesn't usually go down that heavily.