2017-2018 Red Wings Statistical Guess-O-Motron Thread

[One Blurred Eye]

Reading some of the prognostication posts in the opener GDT got me wondering what I really expected of the team this year, removed from the ridiculously unlikely fantasies that we land one of the top picks (or both!) or go on some insane Cup run. To help with that end, I needed some numbers, so I crammed the Wings' expected skaters through my Guess-O-Motron, a complex and super scientific apparatus which is powered by alcohol and hunger to decipher "what my gut tells me" about how each of them will produce in the simple statistics over the course of 82 games, which I present more or less in the order of how the lines/pairings panned out in the OP tweet:

Name	GP	G	A	P	+/-
Zetterberg	72	15	32	47	10
Tatar	80	24	21	45	4
Nyquist	82	17	35	52	-2
Larkin	80	17	27	44	-8
Mantha	78	24	20	46	-6
Frk	64	5	9	14	1
Abdelkader	67	11	15	26	-11
Nielsen	74	15	30	45	2
Helm	70	9	10	20	-7
Booth	14	2	2	4	-3
Sheahan	78	8	12	20	-12
Glendening	81	5	11	16	-12
Dekeyser	76	7	21	28	-16
Daley	65	7	21	28	-12
Ericsson	58	3	11	14	-15
Green	48	11	21	32	2
Kronwall	42	2	7	9	-9
Oullette	56	2	10	12	-12
Jensen	67	4	12	16	-14
Athanasiuou	60	15	11	26	-6
Bertuzzi	32	4	8	12	-4
Svechnikov	27	6	6	12	2

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Which amounts to 215 total goals, a measurable increase over last season, but is probably largely dependent on whether AA actually signs with the team, isn't traded and produces at a similar rate as last season.

My gut figures we can't count on a repeat of Z's health and production from last year, but it still looks pretty good for a guy with his excessive mileage. My gut also assumes like everyone else that Green is traded close to the deadline, so his numbers reflect a relatively healthy and productive season before getting shipped out, hopefully for a nice package. My gut figures a lot of shuffling of bodies on the blueline otherwise, due to age, injury and poor performances, but the Guess-O-Motron was particularly willy-nilly with their numbers.

I wonder if my gut undersells Booth here--I suppose that's also contingent on the AA factor, as well as how the other, younger callups perform. I was bit surprised to find my gut expects Nielsen to perform at his standard pace even with the prospect of centering Gator and Helm.

Collectively the team finishes -130, which my gut roughly translates to 21-27 goals against (-130 divided by these 22 skaters yields a ~-6 per player, multiplying by 4 lines just because, and building in a comfortable margin of +/- half of the player average), so 215 goals for and 236 to 242 goals against, which would be a marginal improvement over last season, but still pretty crummy. But it could mean closing the GF/GA gap by 15-20 goals, which probably gives them a chance of having a few lucky bounces turn losses into wins or loser points, which the Guess-O-Motron figures will translate into a 36-36-10 record, with 28 ROW.

So I guess my gut agrees with a lot of the predictions that we'll be a little better statistically, probably win a small handful more games, but not enough to make the playoffs and not few enough to make my dream of collecting the top two lottery picks in the draft even a remotely distant possibility. On paper it'll look like progress, but meh. It'll be fun to see in April how wrong or right my gut was though. Might as well have a game of it for anyone who wants to claim some bragging rights at the end of the season, at the risk of appearing fully foolish and unqualified to express hockey opinions (not that it would or should stop us of course). Curious what y'all might similarly guess-timate while we pass the duration until puck drop...

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[Leronziia]

Pretty solid.

No chance DeKeyser breaks 20 points though, let alone 28.

Everything else is within the realms of possibility.

 

[One Blurred Eye]

Pretty solid.

No chance DeKeyser breaks 20 points though, let alone 28.

Everything else is within the realms of possibility.

Ha, yeah 28 is definitely a stretch but I just kind of got this feeling he has one of those seasons where a guy gets an aberrant number of secondary helpers and lucky bounces, combined with the slight uptick in production from the the forwards, that'll make him look more productive than he really is.

 

[SpookyTsuki]

Green only having 4 more points then Danny D by the deadline? Where’s the bold prediction thread. (Edit: Didn’t think that this was the whole season. Still don’t see green only having 32)

I think alittle more goals for sheahan and less points for the young guys (including games it’s probably gonna be close to that

 

[Number1RedWingsFan52]

Pretty solid.

No chance DeKeyser breaks 20 points though, let alone 28.

Everything else is within the realms of possibility.

Totally agree that DDK wont reach the 28 point plateau especially with no PP time.

 

[Frk It]

Pretty realistic outputs, kind of also have a gut feeling Nyquist will lead the team in pts.

I think Z can do a little better than where you have him. I'd like to believe Mantha and/or Larkin could exceed what you have for them. But then again I don't have much faith in the bums getting the puck out of our end on the back end.

 

[BeersHockey]

I think Frk is going to surprise people. He's going to score more gritty goals than people think, plus PP.

 

[Beltv]

Still think Zetterberg leads the team in points. I say he gets to the 60 point mark this season. Tatar hits 30 goals. Larkin and Mantha show improvement.

 

[One Blurred Eye]

Green only having 4 more points then Danny D by the deadline? Where’s the bold prediction thread. (Edit: Didn’t think that this was the whole season. Still don’t see green only having 32)

I think alittle more goals for sheahan and less points for the young guys (including games it’s probably gonna be close to that

32 in 48 games is pretty darned good, I think, for a defenseman his age and on this particular team--my thinking was that he'd probably miss a couple games here and there, and then be moved well before the deadline since it's likely the best offer for him will already have been made and it would be foolish to hold onto him in hopes of driving up the price, considering his injury history and so on.

Totally agree that DDK wont reach the 28 point plateau especially with no PP time.

Haha, yes, again I must concede it's quite a stretch, but in defense of my gut I suppose this comes largely down to how injuries affect roles and ice time--my gut seems to think Dekeyser will be the only d-man to play more or less the full year, and that will probably mean at some point he's getting opportunities, and the statistical rebound of 15ish teams goals will probably benefit his totals at least some. We'll see...

Pretty realistic outputs, kind of also have a gut feeling Nyquist will lead the team in pts.

I think Z can do a little better than where you have him. I'd like to believe Mantha and/or Larkin could exceed what you have for them. But then again I don't have much faith in the bums getting the puck out of our end on the back end.

I would love to see Z have another great year--closer to 80 games, 20ish goals and 60+ points, but my gut says he sees a little less ice time this year and slows down some in the second half just as a consequence of his age. And with his having missed only 5 games the previous three seasons, I just think it's too much too hope he makes it through a fourth without missing a chunk or two of games somewhere.

I did wonder if I was being a bit conservative with Mantha's goal total, 30 really doesn't seem too much of a stretch at all, but I thought if he did get off to a good run, opponents would stick heavier matchups against him, depressing his numbers a bit as the season wears on, along with the tendency for teams to tighten up defensively when the the playoff race gets to crunch time. It also was influenced a bit by my thinking that 220 goals for just seemed a little high, so he got a bit dinged in the distribution there as well. But here's to hoping I'm low by ten or fifteen goals in his case.

I think Frk is going to surprise people. He's going to score more gritty goals than people think, plus PP.

I didn't get to watch a whole lot of Frk in the pre-season so I probably do undersell his potential totals, though I was also thinking he'd end up doing a lot of things that lead to goals, but wouldn't get credit for them on the score sheet (sort of a reversal of my thinking with Dekeyser). Again, would love for him to well outperform the prediction!

 

[Obe2kenobe]

I think you numbers are probably pretty close to what I would guess. Nothing looks to out of place. Except maybe Frk if he plays 64 games he probably is going to have to score more than 5 goals. It will be interesting to see at the end of the season.

 

[HIFE]

I think your motron may need calibration. Seems overly generous to speculate everybody's totals magically raise up out of nowhere. Abdelkader looks like complete garbage, Nielsen looked slower than ever in PS; Daley I predict will struggle here. I can agree Nyquist's points are certain to improve but Larkin with 27 assists? Sadly I saw nothing in PS that indicates Larkin has improved his passing game.

I 100% agree with analysts we are the worst team in the east. On paper we're really no better than anyone out west either. I predict this season goes down with the same terrible, ugly, broken hockey as last and we finish bottom 3 instead of 24th. Holland's vision of rebuilding is dragging a vehicle along the cement until it bursts into flames. That's always fun to watch, unless it's your ride.

 

[One Blurred Eye]

I think your motron may need calibration. Seems overly generous to speculate everybody's totals magically raise up out of nowhere. Abdelkader looks like complete garbage, Nielsen looked slower than ever in PS; Daley I predict will struggle here. I can agree Nyquist's points are certain to improve but Larkin with 27 assists? Sadly I saw nothing in PS that indicates Larkin has improved his passing game.

I 100% agree with analysts we are the worst team in the east. On paper we're really no better than anyone out west either. I predict this season goes down with the same terrible, ugly, broken hockey as last and we finish bottom 3 instead of 24th. Holland's vision of rebuilding is dragging a vehicle along the cement until it bursts into flames. That's always fun to watch, unless it's your ride.

You might be right, but in fairness I didn't project them all to go up and most that I did were pretty modest. For instance Sheahan's season was aberrantly terrible, even though I didn't have the highest opinion of him before he needed 82 games to score a goal. So a +6 goal correction for him accounts for more than a third of the projected 15 extra goals my gut thinks the offense will be able to produce this year. Adding in a bit of PP zest from Daley, growth from Mantha and Larkin (whose assists I'd assume would largely arise from rebound taps ins, garbage goals, etc--ie, more from his shot generation than his passing acumen) and a (hopefully) generally grittier, hungrier play around the net from guys like Bert and Frk and perhaps Witkowski could easily account for the other 9 goals. Part of it too is simply my expectation that last season's 198 goals was more or less the floor for this group; 215-220 seems about right for the ceiling and that a swing in that direction is likely just for the satisfaction of the law of averages. And whatever we think of their overall skill, a lot of these guys are still proud athletes coming off highly disappointing campaigns, so I expect a slight motivational element that factors into some minor, localized performance boosts. My gut says they're still a really bad team, I just think rather being -45 in goal differential, they'll "improve" to the area of -25. Which, unfortunately, probably means we're missing out on the lottery.

Nielsen is a bit out there, but I suppose my thinking is he's been pretty consistent throughout his career, he'll get leaned on more heavily as the season progresses (especially if Z misses a stretch of games as I expect) and it might provide that little statistical bump you sometimes see before the end-of-career regression sets in for good.

And in general there's a just an allowance for "noise" baked into the predictions--statistical goofiness from the various human and elemental aspects that can't be fully account for.