The holiday season is here and we just passed the quarter mark of the NHL campaign. So teams around the league are getting a good sense of what they need to improve their prospects for winning. Last week I looked at the East, this week I’ve got a holiday wish list for the Western Conference.
Anaheim The top team in the NHL with 51 points through 36 games would like some good news from the infirmary. Corey Perry’s knee, Kyle Palmieri’s shoulder, Francois Beauchemin’s broken finger, Eric Brewer’s broken foot—that’s a lot of injuries, and that’s after Beauchemin and Perry also had the mumps in mid November. The only team worse off (via CHIP rankings, which tabulate the combined cap hit of players lost due to injury) are the Blue Jackets.
Arizona A place to offload their pricier pending UFAs (Antoinne Vermette, Martin Erat) in exchange for cheaper prospects and/or picks. The Coyotes rank 23rd in the NHL in CF%, they’re the third-worst possession team in the West, the goaltending hasn’t been great and the only team behind them in the standings in the conference is Edmonton. This is a team with serious questions about its future that will find it hard to commit to veterans going forward.
Calgary The Flames want Mikael Backlund back ASAP from abdominal surgery. He has consistently been one of the top possession players in the NHL for a couple of years now, having never posted a negative dCorsi (the difference between observed and expected possession ratings). His combined dCorsi impact since entering the league in 2008-09 is +523.38 shot attempts above expected at 5v5. Only 20 NHL pivots have a better total dCorsi impact since 2005-06.
At centre, Sean Monahan is basically delivering exactly as expected (dCorsi60 of +1.13) while Markus Granlund is a drag on possession despite some good scoring results (dCorsi60 of -6.05). Considering the Flames rank 28th in Score Adjusted CF%, they could use a guy like Backlund back in the lineup.
Chicago The Hawks need a trade partner to off-load some of their aging veterans in exchange for draft picks. They are the best possession team in the NHL at the moment—tops in shots per game, top five in goals per game and the NHL’s best penalty kill at a ridiculous 91.6 percent. They boast the reigning Norris Trophy-winner and have one of the deepest offensive corps in the NHL centred around one of the most complete players in the world. Their goaltending features a starter with the league’s 13th-best save percentage, backed-up by the third- and seventh-best marks.
But they do have some looming salary cap questions. The Hawks have $69 million tied up in 14 players next year—which leaves about $4 million to sign another nine players.
Colorado As far as I can tell, all that most Avalanche fans want is a respite from the discussion around how analytics predicted the regression of their team following last season’s high-flying results. The reality is the Avs are really looking forward to some goals from Nathan MacKinnon who is shooting an abysmal 2.67 percent at 5v5. MacKinnon currently has the 10th-highest rate of Unblocked Shot Attempts per 60 mins (iFen60) amongst NHL forwards who have played 400-plus minutes at 5v5.
Fear not, Avs fans, despite his horrible luck MacKinnon is going to blossom into an elite offensive talent—the results of which will quite possibly be seen in the second half of the season.
Dallas All Big D could use for Christmas is, well, some good D. The Stars have made changes on the blueline already this season via the trade market, but the results aren’t improving and more is needed to find consistent success.
The Stars are one of the more high-flying offensive teams, averaging 2.91 goals per game (10th overall). Kari Lehtonen has posted an Adjusted SV% of .919 (when you account for shot type and location), which compares favourably to Sergei Bobrovsky (.919), Tuukka Rask (.918) and Jimmy Howard (.920). He isn’t really the problem.
Adjusted for score effects, the number of shot attempts the Stars are surrendering at 5v5 per 60 mins ranks 27th (60.07), right there with the likes of Toronto, Colorado, Columbus and Calgary, all of whom have significant issues when it comes to surrendering shot attempts. That has to improve.
Edmonton Fans have to be hoping for yet another first-overall draft pick in Connor McDavid, and some serious bolstering of talent depth. Yet for all the criticism leveled Edmonton’s way, most of the horrid results again stem from amazingly poor goaltending. The 5v5 team SV% of .903 (29th) is brutal.
Ben Scrivens’s and Viktor Fasth’s rough years are coming on the heels of a career worst season from Devan Dubnyk. It would do Oilers fans some good to remember that Scrivens actually has a 5v5 SV% of .915 in 45 games since arriving in Edmonton. Over the past three years his Adjusted SV% is .919 in 83 games played, exactly the same as Dubnyk in 84 games and better than Pekka Rinne in 94 (.917). Hopefully his numbers rebound and the first 30ish games can become a semi-distant horrible memory.
Los Angeles A healthy 2015 and fewer minutes for aging players would be a good thing. The Kings are the reigning Stanley Cup champs—but are sitting in the second Wild Card slot and are in danger of missing the playoffs. They’ve gone 4-4-2 in their past 10 despite seeing significant improvement in their underlying play.
From a possession standpoint, the biggest problem for L.A. remains the decline of veteran skaters Jarret Stoll and Dustin Brown. The two forwards have seen their contributions drop off significantly with dCorsi Impacts of -60.07 and -60.66 respectively, after basically meeting expectations last year.
Their impacts are heavily weighted due to the fact that thus far they’ve played the second- an third-most 5v5 minutes among Kings forwards. As the season progresses, it would make sense to use Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter, Tyller Toffoli and Tanner Pearson more and rein in Brown and Stoll’s minutes significantly.
Minnesota The Wild could use some goaltending help. Their .900 SV% at 5v5 is the NHL’s worst, and they’ve been relying on 36-year-old Niklas Backstrom and 24-year-old Darcy Kuemper, who are at the opposite ends of the career spectrum.
Minnesota is basically the poster child for converts to the world of analytics. On Dec. 18, 2011, the Wild were in first place overall with 45 points through 33 games. But the underlying possession stats suggested that was a total mirage. They had the 30th-ranked Score Adjusted CF% at 42.1%. Their 5v5 +/- in goals was even, despite the fact their goaltenders had a 5v5 SV% of .943, tops in the NHL. They only won six games in regulation in the final 49 contests of the season and missed the playoffs by a whopping 14 points.
Now in 2014-15, the Wild have made a major shift to a possession-based team. They currently rank fourth in the NHL in Score Adjusted CF% at 53.2%. A few more saves from the goalies they’ve got—or a new netminder—would help them into the playoffs where they could do significant damage.
Nashville The Predators have improved a lot in a short period of time. Getting back a healthy Pekka Rinne helps in that regard, and seeing big leaps in development from their youth in the form of Filip Forsberg, Mattias Ekholm, Seth Jones, Calle Jarnkrok and Colin Wilson also helps.
Really what they could use to sustain this string of good play are revivals from Shea Weber and Roman Josi, who are consistently producing worse results than anyone else on the team from a possession standpoint. While much of that is their usage as a shut-down pairing, they are still having a hugely negative impact overall. They rank 764th and 762nd amongst 765 NHL skaters with dCorsi Impacts hovering around -110. If they could improve that remotely, it would be very useful.
San Jose The Sharks could use some production from their bottom-six forwards. They have always been a top heavy team, but James Sheppard, Tyler Kennedy, Chris Tierney, Andrew Desjardins, Adam Burish, Mike Brown, Tye McGinn, Barclay Goodrow and John Scott are not productive enough. Sheppard has 10 points, but the others have combined for 20 total. That group of nine has provided only 11.8 percent of the point production for the entire team.
St. Louis The Blues would like some shooting luck for anyone not playing on the Tarasenko-Lehtera-Schwartz line. David Backes, TJ Oshie, Patrik Berglund and Joakim Lindstrom are all shooting under six percent at 5v5 and have three goals or fewer in full strength situations through 32 games. A little bit of puck luck for his teammates would go a long way to ensuring an amazing season by Vladimir Tarasenko isn’t wasted.
Vancouver The Canucks hope to find some consistency in goal. Despite posting three shutouts already, Ryan Miller only has a .901 SV% through 24 games played. His Adjusted 5v5 SV% of .899 is actually worse than Ben Scrivens’s .903—not something most Canucks observers expected entering this year.
Unfortunately for Vancouver, the results for the 34-year-old Miller are likely to trend down over the course of his three-year contract. Using the delta method to look at the theoretical aging curve based on era adjusted SV% from 1984-2013, it’s obvious that most decline significantly past their age-34 season. He could certainly rebound a bit as the campaign moves on—but since his trade last year to the Blues at the deadline, he has a .902 SV% on 1,083 shots.
Winnipeg The Jets just added Jay Harrison to the blueline via the trade market from Carolina and are getting some solid contributions from Dustin Byfuglien and Adam Pardy, but realistically if they hope to make the playoffs they’ll need to weather the storm until February and hope to avoid any further catastrophes on the injury front.