LordNeverLose
Registered User
I'd love to see stats that say Matthews faced noticeably harder competition
Barzal vs. Matthews
- Thread starter Adele Dazeem
- Start date
- Status
La Masse
Registered User
I personally like Matthews game more and feel like he has alot of room to grow. I would like to see another season out of Barzal where he gets the toughest matchups night after night. The other thing to consider is the fact that Babcock doesnt rely heavily on his big guys and pretty much plays them even. Matthews will get more PP time this year and that should help him bump up his point totals
LordNeverLose
Registered User
Just looked it up:
| Matthews 16-17 | Barzal 17-18: |
|
|
As you can see, their QoC was essentially the same, and Matthews was playing with better linemates.
I wouldn't call his linemates better since Hyman, Brown, Nylander were rookies too.
LordNeverLose
Registered User
Also, since I'm already on the fancystats website, here's something for everyone saying Barzal played run n' gun hockey:
[TBODY]
[/TBODY]
As you can see, while they were still giving up a lot of high danger shots, they were giving up less when he was on than when he wasn't.
Now look at supposed future Selke winner Auston Matthews:
[TBODY]
[/TBODY]
As you can see, the Leafs actually allowed fewer high danger chances with Matthews off the ice.
| 5v5 Shots Against with Barzal | 5v5 Shots Against without Barzal |
As you can see, while they were still giving up a lot of high danger shots, they were giving up less when he was on than when he wasn't.
Now look at supposed future Selke winner Auston Matthews:
| 5v5 Shots Against with Matthews | 5v5 Shots Against without Matthews |
As you can see, the Leafs actually allowed fewer high danger chances with Matthews off the ice.
I'd need to see more than one season from Barzal personally. Mathews also played on the Leafs second power play unit, I'd like to see what a full season of him being on the primary unit looks like.
Barzal had 27 points on the PP and 58 ES while playing a full season while Matthews had 13 points on the PP and 50 even strength while playing 62 games. Matthews scored 20% of his points on the power play and Barzal scored 32% on the power play.
I also value goals over assists and Matthews 54% is better than Barzal's 27% of point being goals. I was only looking at last season but Matthews numbers aren't drastically different his first season except he was better on the power play (30%) his goals breakdown was a little better as well (57%).
I think if Matthews is getting prime power play time his numbers will only increase. Barzal looks good but I think Matthews is better.
LordNeverLose
Registered User
Sorry, I worded that poorly. I didn't mean Matthews' teammates were better, I meant he was playing with better teammates relative to their teams (i.e. Matthews was playing with the top couple forwards on the Leafs, while Barzal played with 3 and 4).
LordNeverLose
Registered User
And that's completely fine. I'm objecting to people saying it isn't close.
This place would be infinitely better if people stopped engaging in pointless hyperbole, most elite players are closer than people would like to admit.
Barzal played with Beauvilier and Eberle. So you think Eberle> Nylander and Beauvilier> Brown/Hyman right?
What a stupid post.
Matthews outplayed him and he's a year younger while playing the best comp all season long.
Matthews outplayed him and he's a year younger while playing the best comp all season long.
LordNeverLose
Registered User
Just looked it up:
As you can see, their QoC was essentially the same, and Matthews was playing with better linemates.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
Matthews 16-17 Barzal 17-18: 
Even in those graphs you can see that Matthews played more minutes against top pairing defenders and fewer against bottom pairings while Barzal played more against second pairings. I'm curious to see how the depth chart ranks the players because Matthews has been stapled to Hyman for 2 years now, who is a fantastically hard worker but not a top6 talent.
Rather than rely on some graphs, let's just look at the numbers from Corsica.
5on5 TOIqoc
Matthews (16-17) 29.1
Barzal (17-18) 28.94
Matthews (17-18) 29.71
5on5 TOIqot
Matthews (16-17) 30.17
Barzal (17-18) 29.62
Matthews (17-18) 31.04
For reference, Patrice Bergeron's TOIqoc was 29.83 and TOIqot was 31.39 this year. Matthews' 29.71 is 16th in the league.
You can clearly see that Matthews has in fact played against harder competition in both years and was miles ahead this year. The numbers do indicate that Barzal had worse linemates than Matthews, though I do wonder how much Hyman plays into that. He literally led our forwards in ice time at 5on5 last year, which probably skews the data considerably, since TOIqot isn't balanced out by different coaches. I do believe Matthews' linemates were better overall because Nylander is such a fantastic player, so I won't belabor the point too much.
Barzal's numbers actually match up with Marner's (TOIqoc 28.96 and TOIqot 29.78) who spent most of the year on the sheltered third line with Bozak and JVR, a few games finding his game on the fourth line, and then finishing the year strongly on the matchup shutdown line with Kadri. (If anyone cares, Marner's TOIqoc in the playoffs was 29.93, he performed well in the increased role). I believe very strongly that Barzal will do well next year in his expanded role, much like Marner did. But Matthews played against elite NHL competition this year and still played against stronger competition in his rookie year where he was a full year younger.
That's not what they said at all, why are you trying to set some kind of word trap? You would expect that a veteran winger of Eberle's caliber would be better than Nylander going into Nylander's first real season.
That doesn't make any sense, Lemieux was the better goal scorer between the two. Matthews is easily the better goal scorer.
LordNeverLose
Registered User
I was just curious because in Nylander's thread leafs fans call him an elite player with an historic 60 points rookie season but in Matthews thread they call him a "rookie" to make Matthews looks better.
Also, since I'm already on the fancystats website, here's something for everyone saying Barzal played run n' gun hockey:
As you can see, while they were still giving up a lot of high danger shots, they were giving up less when he was on than when he wasn't.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
5v5 Shots Against with Barzal 5v5 Shots Against without Barzal 
Now look at supposed future Selke winner Auston Matthews:
As you can see, the Leafs actually allowed fewer high danger chances with Matthews off the ice.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
5v5 Shots Against with Matthews 5v5 Shots Against without Matthews 
Those graphs always crack me up, they measure shots by the hour! Over the course of 930 minutes the difference between ice cold blue and red hot is 15.5 total shots! And Matthews played against the 16th hardest competition in the league this year. If he allowed 3 more shots over the course of the entire season in the slot than his teammates, why should we care?
That doesn't change the fact that yes Matthews had two rookie line mates. It's easy to look back but yes Matthews starting his career on a line of rookies and excelling is pretty impressive.
That doesn't mean people won't praise Nylander but going into their first season on paper Barzal had much better line mates.
LordNeverLose
Registered User
Then can y'all at least stop trying to push the narrative that Barzal is bad defensively? Because there's literally nothing to support that.
I think Nylander and Eberle are a wash. Eberle is good but he got carried by Barzal. (He's not the same player he once was in his early Edmonton days)
NextYear67
Averaging over a like per post
That's a bit of a stretch.
His last season with the Oilers in 82 games he had 20 goals and 51 points, this season he had 25 goals and 59 points in 81 games.
- Status
Ad
Upcoming events
-
French Open - Women's Jelena Ostapenko vs Clara TausonWagers: 3Staked: $1,125.00Event closes- Updated:
-
-
-
-