tomh009

Yes. Of course, if the surgery were unsuccessful, he would have been untradeable and would have been on Buffalo's LTIR for years to come, with nothing at all in return. They decided not to risk that. I respect the choice, we'll have a better idea of whether it was a good decision once Vegas allows Eichel to have the surgery and the results become clear.

Or Alzner. We grossly overpaid him, but he worked hard and was a positive influence even in Laval. He just didn't have the skills (any more) at the level at which we chose to pay him. Not his fault.

Those are indeed not impressive numbers. But if the team does make it to the playoffs, he has played significantly better. Regular season vs playoffs: 16/17 - .923 vs .933 19/20 - .909 vs .936 20/21 - .901 vs .924 But in that span, we missed playoffs twice (although Price did have a decent regular season in 18/19).

Really, it was a decade of purgatory (as a bubble team), not total suckage (a la Detroit, Buffalo, Edmonton, Ottawa etc). So, for the most part, we got mid-range draft picks only, not the top picks the tanquiste teams got.

I think Kulak was playing much better with Niku than he did last night with Savard.

I saw only snippets of the game, but it actually looked like the Habs were playing reasonably well, certainly not 5-0 badly (defensive lapses, though ...). 4-2 would not have been an unfair score. But this team really has trouble putting the puck into the net when they have scoring chances. It's not just Lehkonen, either.

Without looking it up, I would bet that the average is one goal (two goals in one game, shut out in another).

How can it be that we have one forward line at -4 when we are playing at home and have the last change? The Nelson line (+3) is murdering those guys, why is Ducharme putting them on the ice together?

Dvorak-Anderson-Hoffman also -3.

All the D-men have now equally participated in the ritual of gifting goals to the Isles.

A bit early to declare a turnaround (even if we were to win this one) but at least it would be an indicator of positive progress.

Hoffman is 31, Toffoli 29. The question is how long the retool/rebuild will be. Wideman, Kulak and Niku tend to have easier assignments than, say, Petry and Chiarot, but not so much different from Romanov. Yet Wideman and Niku have allowed less than 1.0 GA/60 while Romanov is 2.31 and Savard is 2.67. (GA/60 is the average number of goals against per 60 minutes of TOI.) So, while neither Niku or Wideman is a defensive stalwart, I would argue that neither are they disasters.

If Molson decides on a reset/retool/rebuild, I do expect that some of the top-nine wingers will be on the block: Gallagher, Hoffman and Toffoli are possibilities. Lower down, Armia, Byron and Lehkonen could also have value for a playoff-bound team.

So, that would leave us with only the following D 😧 Defensive type: Edmundson, Savard, Romanov Offensive type: Petry, Niku, (maybe) Norlinder That means we might need to bring up someone like Ouellet, and really have no depth beyond that. Kulak and Wideman would have little trade value anyway, nor would we save much salary on them.

It's per 60 minutes of playing time, so it normalizes the numbers across players that get varying amounts of ice time. As you suggested! And, yes, Lehkonen gets/generates quite a lot of scoring chances relative to his ice time, unfortunately he's not as good at finishing those and putting the puck in the net!

And they have actually won three out of the last six -- that's .500 hockey! 😮

So, looking at iGF/60 vs ixGF/60 on 5v5 for individual players, prior to Detroit game. The biggest differences: Hoffman 1.29 vs 0.38 (scoring more goals than expected given his opportunities) Perreault 1.42 vs 0.74 Drouin 0.87 vs 0.44 Suzuki 0 vs 0.43 Toffoli 0 vs 0.46 Caufield 0 vs 0.67 Gallagher 0 vs 0.68 Armia 0 vs 0.74 Lehkonen 0 vs 0.83 (ouch!) The sample size is really too small to pay a lot of attention to ixGF. But there is no doubt about Hoffman's and Perreault's scoring. And zeroes are zeroes ...

Faceoffs matter the most on PP and PK. Otherwise ... well, you can make it up elsewhere. But on PP/PK possession is important. And if we aren't winning faceoffs, it's going to hurt our PP and PK. Which are indeed hurting.

Dvorak 52.7% Perreault 51.0% Evans 47.8% Suzuki 46.3% Paquette 24.1% (!)

But if you make decent picks (eg Sergachev) you can also trade them to get value. Now, it turns out that Sergachev has beecome a better player than Drouin, but conceptually there is nothing wrong with this trade. We would (at least in theory) have an equivalent value player on the roster, it's just not the one we drafted. It doesn't lose you any picks or waste any assets, if you trade reasonably well (which Bergevin has done in general, this particular trade notwithstanding). The advantage of trading over drafting is that you have a much better idea of the player's potential, with drafting the percentages are much lower. Many first-rounders never establish themselves as NHL players.

Why does it matter whether we draft or trade? What's so special about having players you drafted on your roster, in today's NHL? Trading is Bergevin's strength in any case. Drafted by Habs: Price, Caufield. Drafted by others, acquired by Habs: Armia, Drouin, Suzuki

By Clydesdale attrition (injuries) there are more now on any given night: Niku, Wideman, Kulak, Norlinder. Now, that's not to say any of them are top-pairing D-men ...

But that's all right because we are #1 in the number of penalties taken! 🙄

I'm no guru on advanced stats but xG should be measuring the scoring potential based on the scoring chances. Habs have tended to have lower GF than xGF as we have not had any snipers recently, so our shooting percentage is lower. But the xGA surprised me: basically we allowed 15% more goals than a typical goalie should have, given the same scoring chances. You may recall that both Price and Allen struggled for significant parts of last season ...

18th worst so 14th best? More seriously, if you look at the xGA/60, they ranked fifth-best overall last year. Fifth! But the goaltending didn't really come through last year: with an xGA of 1.95, we actually allowed 2.26/60, which ranked 13th (slightly different than the total GA ranking as this one is a rate per 60). In contrast, Detroit had an xGA rate of 2.26 but a GA rate of only 1.88. As for top-four puck movers, yes, we haven't had any of those, as Bergevin and the various coaches have preferred the Clydesdale approach to D, for better or for worse. And that wasn't the question hab29 posed anyway ... he said no impact defenders apart from Petry.