NHL analysis

Four games tonight:

Home            Away                    Prediction

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Los Angeles    Columbus            Los Angeles
Anaheim         Minnesota            Minnesota
Washington    Vancouver           Washington
Detroit           Dallas                  Dallas

Dallas over Detroit should be an easy win, mostly because Dallas has been phenomenal at home.  Los Angeles and Minnesota are both winners in what should be close games.  The prediction shows a surprising strength for Washington over Vancouver, which I don’t entirely agree with.

Ottawa is definitely starting to look more like the powerhouse they are.  The Leafs were simply not in the same game tonight, excepting a few spurts here and there.  On the plus side, what a goal by Bates Battaglia.

I blogged previously about the importance of top five draft picks in team success in the NHL. You can read about it here. The quick and dirty is that in the past few decades, virtually no team has won the Stanley Cup without a top five pick drafted and developed entirely in house. The New York Rangers are the most recent exception, and they had both Brian Leetch (9th overall, by the Rangers) and Mark Messier (drafted later but one of the greatest team leaders in the history of the sport). This blog started out of a discussion at the Maple Leafs Forums, about whether it was possible to win without bottom-feeding to acquire a top pick around which to build your team.

Assuming for a second it is impossible, or virtually impossible, to win a Stanley Cup without a homegrown top five pick begs the question of what teams should be capable of winning this year, or in the very near future. And so I looked a little further at current players in the NHL, specifically players drafted in the first round, and especially players chosen with a top five overall pick, and very especially players chosen with a top five pick playing for the team that drafted them. And here are the results:

There are currently 74 players active in the NHL who were chosen with a top five pick. This number also includes nine players selected in the past four drafts who have yet to play in the NHL. Of those 74 players, 39 play for the team that originally drafted them. Those players are as follows:

Bobby Ryan (ANA - 2)
Ilya Kovalchuk (ATL - 1)
Kari Lehtonen (ATL - 2)
Phil Kessel (BOS - 5)
Thomas Vanek (BUF - 5)
Eric Staal (CAR - 2)
Andrew Ladd (CAR - 4)
Rick Nash (CBJ - 1)
Nikolai Zherdev (CBJ - 4)
Rotislav Klesla (CBJ - 4)
Jonathan Toews (CHI - 3)
Cam Barker (CHI - 3)
Mike Modano (DAL - 1)
Raffi Torres (EDM - 5)
Stephen Weiss (FLA - 4)
Nathan Horton (FLA - 3)
Jay Bouwmeester (FLA - 3)
Marian Gaborik (MIN - 3)
Benoit Pouilot (MIN - 4)
Carey Price (MTL - 5)
David Legwand (NAS - 2)
Rick DiPietro (NYI - 1)
Jason Spezza (OTT - 2)
Chris Phillips (OTT - 1)
Joni Pitkanen (PHI - 4)
Marc-Andre Fleury (PIT - 1)
Sidney Crosby (PIT - 1)
Ryan Whitney (PIT - 5)
Evgeni Malkin (PIT - 2)
Jordan Staal (PIT - 2)
Patrick Marleau (SJ - 1)
Erik Johnson (STL - 1)
Vincent Lecavalier (TB - 1)
Daniel Sedin (VAN - 2)
Henrik Sedin (VAN - 3)
Trevor Linden (VAN -2)*
Alexander Ovechkin (WAS - 1)
Nicklas Backstrom (WAS - 4)

Not a terribly long list, but a revealing one. Pittsburgh is by far the leader, with five players on their current roster that they chose with a top five pick. Three teams - Columbus, Florida and Vancouver - have three, though Vancouver’s Trevor Linden has traveled extensively since his early years and while still an important leader, can hardly be considered an impact player like the majority of players on this list. Six teams have 2 players, 13 have a single one. And seven teams have zero - Calgary, Colorado, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Jersey, NY Rangers and Toronto.

What does this tell us? Well, historically, it tells us only that those seven teams would require almost unheard of goaltending or leadership from within their dressing rooms to have any hope of a Stanley Cup. There are some other interesting facts to be uncovered, as well.

Colorado has three of its #1 draft picks currently playing in the league - Mats Sundin, Owen Nolan and Eric Lindros - and all play for other teams. Only Pittsburgh, Phoenix and Dallas have more than one #1 pick on their current roster, and only Pittsburgh drafted both of them (Crosby and Fleury).

I expected Pitsburgh to lead in many of these categories, but here’s one where they surprised me by being #2: Florida has SEVEN top five picks currently on their roster, compared with Pittsburgh’s five. Colorado is the only team in the NHL with zero top five draft picks on its roster.

Washington and Florida each have 14 first round draft picks on their rosters. Colorado has only 2. However, Colorado drafted 11 players in the first round who currently play in the league - second behind only Washington’s 12.

Calgary has eleven first round draft picks on its roster, but they only drafted two of those players. Their nine imports lead the league.

I’m still poring over some of these numbers, and will report back anything further that piques my interest. Those were by far the most interesting results, however.

First off, full disclosure - I’m a Leafs fan and I happen to (usually) like the way that Darcy Tucker plays. Now that that’s out of the way…

The Leafs were getting beat pretty baddly, tempers were starting to flare, and Tucker was hitting everything in sight - and getting hit in return. He latched on to Patrick Eaves, who obviously didn’t want to fight. I give Eaves full credit here - he didn’t turtle, he didn’t run away. He stood his ground, took his licks and threw a few good punches.

I have a few beefs with how this fight went down, most (not all) having to do with Tucker’s conduct.

1) Fight someone who’s willing. Tucker should have gone after someone who wanted to fight. Eaves had never been in an NHL fight before. Whether it’s true or not, this simply makes Tucker look like he was too scared to take on Patrick Fischer or Chris Neil, both of whom can (and have) pounded him in the past.

2) Take off your helmet if you’re wearing a visor. Now, I know Eaves didn’t want to fight, and I know Tucker didn’t really give him a chance. But if you aren’t going to pull off your visor, then you shouldn’t be throwing punches, period. Had Eaves taken the time to pull his visor off, and Tucker had kept throwing punches throughout, it really would have made Tucker look bad.

3) Don’t give your opponent a rallying point in game 1 of a home-and-home series. Seriously Tucker. All you’ve done is give the Senators another reason to be fired up for the next game. It was too late to get the team going that game, and you picked on a skill player who didn’t want a fight. Now you know Neil (maybe Fischer) is going to go after Tucker next game, a fight Tucker will have a tough time staying in, let alone winning. Oh boy!

4) Give Tucker a break. I know, I’m contradicting myself here. But consider that Tucker is hardly the first guy in the NHL to pick a fight with an unenthusiastic victim. Zdeno Chara has fought with Vincent Lecavalier twice, and not surprisingly pummeled him both times. Is there a single person out there who thinks Vinny wanted to fight Chara the second time around? Of course he didn’t! But Chara wouldn’t let him go, and so Lecavalier did his best. Eaves did the same thing Vinny did, but Tucker did the same thing as Chara!

The point is that Tucker didn’t go after someone smaller than he is, Eaves was playing physical, and both of them walked way without injury. Rather than all the posturing and arguing over whether Tucker is a cheap player or a gritty team leader, why don’t we all just sit back, relax, and enjoy what should be a wild rematch tonight?

Here are Thursday night’s games:

Home            Away                    Prediction

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Montreal        Boston                  Montreal
Atlanta          Philadelphia            Atlanta
San Jose       Nashville                 Nashville
Edmonton     Phoenix                  Phoenix
Toronto         Ottawa                  Toronto
Florida           New Jersey             New Jersey
Carolina         Tampa Bay             Carolina
Buffalo           NY Islanders          Buffalo

Phoenix over Edmonton? Yes, you read that right.  I wouldn’t bet on it - Edmonton will not be happy about their performance against Anaheim last night and should be out for blood.  However, Phoenix gets credit for it’s incredibly difficult schedule at home, even if their home winning percentage is not very good.  And Edmonton has gone only 1-3 on the road this year.
Atlanta over Philly is statistically the easiest the call.  Will the front office shakeup get better results from the Flyers?  Doubtful.  They’re simply not fast enough, and their goaltending is too weak.  And Atlanta is on fire.

Nashville over San Jose is statistically almost dead even, which sounds just about right for these two teams.

If anyone wants to see how your picks do against mine, I’m currently posting my picks here and in three pools.  All of them are free and two of them show weekly as well as total results, meaning you won’t be at all behind for joining late.

Hockey Analysis Pool
Hockey Leaks: This one is in the forum.
The Score Fantasy Shootout.

The last one is an “official” contest, so there are even prizes.  I’m listed as gekko in all three, if you care to see how you do against me.

7 games coming up tonight:

Away            Home                        Prediction

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Florida           NY Rangers                NY Rangers
Los Angeles   Minnesota                  Minnesota
Washington    Colorado                   Washington
Edmonton      Anaheim                    Anaheim
Atlanta           Carolina                    Atlanta
San Jose        Detroit                      Detroit
Vancouver      Chicago                    Vancouver

Let’s see here… Vancouver is expected to beat Chicago, plus Chicago has lost Martin Havlat, Nikolai Khabibulin and Mikael Hadzus.  The Blackhawks will be lucky to avoid a complete blowout.

My predictions go against points-based rankings in twogames, choosing the Rangers (8 points) over the Panthers (9) and the Capitals (7) over the Avalanche (10).  It’ll be interesting to see how those games work out.

Since I started posting my regular season predictions I’ve gone 5 for 6 the first night and 2 for 3 the second, for a total of 7 for 9 or 77.7%.  Not a bad start at all.  I’ve been keeping track since the first day of the schedule, but in the vast majority of games up until now the predictions simply defaulted to the home team, since most teams had 0% power rankings in the first weeks of the season.  I’ll post October full results at the end of the month, at which point my “official” stats will start fresh.  Consider October a warm up.

How ’bout those Thrashers? Marian Hossa has saved me early in my Hockey Leaks hockey pool (luckily no one knows Yahoo auto-picked Hossa for me before I remembered about my draft and logged in). Anyways, he’s also doing his best to get the Thrashers started on the right foot. Atlanta jumped to a great start to the season, before Ilya Kovalchuk started scoring!. That’s a scary thought.

The Thrashers received excellent goaltending, solid scoring through their lineup, and Vyacheslav Kozlov has been excellent in shootouts, all reasons the Thrashers have started the season 7-1-1.

Now, Atlanta has had a fairly easy schedule. They’ve played Boston and Carolina once each, Tampa Bay and Washington twice each, and Florida three times. The average adjusted winning percentage of those teams, adjusted for games played, is only 0.385 - good enough for the easiest schedule so far in the entire NHL (my adjusted winning percentage treats overtime and shootout victories and losses differently than games that end in regulation).

All in all, my stats how the Thrashers to be slightly overachieving. They’re due for a slip up but not as much as I would have expected a few weeks ago. They are slightly below average in both offence (shots for plus goals for per game) and defence (shots against plus goals against per game). My power rankings currently list Atlanta as being the third strongest in the league, due mostl to the fact that despite their easy schedule, they’re taking advantage and winning hockey games.

If you haven’t done so already, this would be a good week to subscribe to A Foot In The Crease. On their next show, they will feature an interview with Andy Frost. Wow. And here you were thinking that Dave and Jeff could not possibly do better than interviewing me.

I’ve been using a great daily stats recap page and email service for about the last week, and wanted to let everyone know about it as well. You can find it here and it’s well worth checking out.

The author of the site does a great job. Every day you can get a recap of the previous day’s individual stats - goals, assists, +/-, time on ice, and more. Well worth checking out.