Line Combos: Ryan Nugent Hopkins should Center the 3rd line.

[Tobias Kahun]

+/- is not the perfect stat but it the closest <non advanced> stat that measures "outscoring" at ES.
I look at primary assists when figuring out if a line is clicking or not. It really does not look like either of the top linemates are producing goals off each other.

10/8 and 8/8 is nothing to be proud about when you have McD on that line.

Heres a pretty simple way to measure scoring at ES.

How about sorting by 5v5 or even strength gf/ga, that's not an advanced stat.

 

[McDrai]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

 

[Tobias Kahun]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

Yeah, who needs to follow the rules of the salary cap.

 

[Porkleaker]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

But then we wouldn't have Larsson or... Markus Niemelainen?

 

[Draiskull]

Heres a pretty simple way to measure scoring at ES.

How about sorting by 5v5 or even strength gf/ga, that's not an advanced stat.

Thanks. Im an old guy and do all my stats checks on yahoo.com/nhl or hockeydb

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

Eberle gone for nothing.
Hall gone for basically nothing.

 

[McDrai]

Yeah, who needs to follow the rules of the salary cap.

Well technically we wouldn't have the Neal contract or Larsson contract on the books if we had kept Hall and Eberle. That's around 10 mil right there. And we wouldn't have signed Kassian to his stupid deal which is another 3+ mil. There you go. 13 mil

 

[Draiskull]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

unconventional but skilled D pairings

 

[Tobias Kahun]

Thanks. Im an old guy and do all my stats checks on yahoo.com/nhl or hockeydb

Fair enough.

Naturalstattrick.com is my go to when wanting to sort by ES and 5on5 goals, also has adjusted score stats.

But I do agree with the 10/8 from McDavid isn't very impressive, I would be willing to swapping kahun and RNH and see if that sparks them a bit, most of their offense seems to still be when its a stacked line which skews how the stats look.

Kahun/McDavid/Puljujarvi
RNH/Draisaitl/Yams

I would really like to see this next game.

Kahun has the speed and skill to play with McDavid, he just needs to pot his first one and I believe we'll see a whole new player.

 

[Tobias Kahun]

Well technically we wouldn't have the Neal contract or Larsson contract on the books if we had kept Hall and Eberle. That's around 10 mil right there. And we wouldn't have signed Kassian to his stupid deal which is another 3+ mil. There you go. 13 mil

This is true.

So between those 6 we would have roughly 41.5m tied up in those players.

we would have 40m to fill out 7-8 forwards, 7d and 2 goalies.

 

[Canovin]

Hall-McDavid
Draisaitl-Yamamoto
RNH-Eberle

That would have been something to watch

Could have that plus Larsson and Strome. But Hall and Eberle decided to sign elsewhere

 

[Messrules11]

So Maroon scored 27 goals playing with McD, Nuge hit 28. We wouldn’t re-sign Maroon who makes 1m this year but some want to spend North of 7M to retain Nuge. Insanity.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

Hes a 45-50 pt C when his wingers were better than him. With the junk we got, lucky to hit 40 pts.

He was stapled to Lucic nearly his entire time here.


And 40 point is still a universe better than the garbage Turris is getting us.

 

[McDrai]

This is true.

So between those 6 we would have roughly 41.5m tied up in those players.

we would have 40m to fill out 7-8 forwards, 7d and 2 goalies.

It is definitely cap hell. My point is that we simply would have been a better team if we had just kept Hall and Eberle. We would be in the same cap situation, just with a better 3rd line (which would essentially be a 2nd line)

With that being said, it's fairly clear that we need better defense. I think Nurse and Bear would make a decent 2nd pairing so I would keep them...we are still desperately needing that elusive #1 dman that all of the top teams seem to have (Klefbom is a good #2 when healthy). The goalies are a crapshoot but it doesn't help when the defense in front of our goalies isn't very good. I remember when Dubnyk looked great...and Talbot looked great...then we destroyed their confidence. It doesn't matter who we bring in at goalie until we fix the D.

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

I don't think RNH gets cratered like Turris on the 3rd line. Infact, I think RNH is still a legitimate scoring threat from back there.

The problem he might have, is he becomes a 45-50 point center on the 3rd line, rather than a 70 point winger flanking one of McDrai.
Playing him there is boosting his next-paycheque but not really helping us win.

If he gets 70 points that means he should be helping us win. If he is a 3C with the wingers we can offer my guess is he would be hard pressed to crack 30 points.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

If he gets 70 points that means he should be helping us win. If he is a 3C with the wingers we can offer my guess is he would be hard pressed to crack 30 points.

30 Points is still a significant improvement on what Turris is projecting to produce.

 

[Ck1]

Time to maybe use some pics and prospects plus cap dump to bring in a winger for McDavid.
Put rnh third line center between Turris and Archibald

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

30 Points is still a significant improvement on what Turris is projecting to produce.

But where will those points come from? Mostly the powerplay. I just don't think we have the winger depth for RNH to 3C to make a difference in the W L column.

What we need is better goaltending, team defence, a true top pair of D, all which leads to a better PK and that would shore up 90% of our problems.

 

[Captain Controversy]

Didn't khaira play decent with nuge ?
You could make nuge the 3C. Run khaira and Kassian on his wings.

Neal-Mcdavid-Puljujarvi
Nygard/kahun - draisaitl - yams
Khaira - Nuge - Kassian

 

[McOvechking]

I think we should try these lines next game:
McDavid - Draisaitl - Puljujarvi
RNH - McDavid - Draisaitl
RNH - Draisaitl - Yamamoto
Neal - McDavid - Puljujarvi

 

[bucks_oil]

Being a one line team is a legit tactic in today's NHL. We need to at least try the DRY line to attempt to save the year.

After that has been run for a month and we continue to sink, sure let's try RNH on the third line.

I don't think anyone (unfortunately other than Tippett) is against reuniting DRY. I'd rather do that too, but Tippett must have decided to balance the offense.

So if you are going to spread out offense, then you might as well balance three lines rather than two. It really comes down to McD's line. McD isn't playing his best hockey right now anyway WITH Nuge and the third line is doing zippo... why not try to extract something out of Turris with McD and give the third line a better two-way C to stabilize it.

 

[Whyme]

Didn't khaira play decent with nuge ?
You could make nuge the 3C. Run khaira and Kassian on his wings.

Neal-Mcdavid-Puljujarvi
Nygard/kahun - draisaitl - yams
Khaira - Nuge - Kassian

Funnily enough I just happened to check this before your post. Last year Nuge's and Khaira's GF% together was 28.57, worse than Nuge had with anyone else. The sample size wasn't huge, 118 minutes. During the three previous years it was 41.18 (total time together 206:39).

I'm not saying it can't work, but on paper that doesn't look like a very good combination. Of course it would depend on the 3rd guy.

 

[Chabot84]

Our depth is getting absolutely carved right now.
Our bottom 6 are the suckiest sucks that ever sucked. Turris clearly isn't the answer.

We need to spread the suck to other lines, in hopes to get them going because our bottom 6 xGF is f***ing heinous where the top 2 are ridiculously stacked.

Has anyone else noticed our depth getting absolutely thrashed the second TMac converted RNH to wing?


Sure he adds a significant punch to our top 6, but man, we need help back there in a BIG way.
He's been mostly a positive corsi player despite lugging around Lucic.

He could be an absolutely DEADLY 3rd line player similar to how Toffoli is scorching our division against the weaker matchups. It will give Tippett the ability to roll 3 lines without fear of getting carved.


Neal - McD - Kassian
Kahun - Drai - Puljujaarvi
Ennis - RNH - Yamamoto
Nygard - Turris - Shore

Top 6 isn't NEARLY as sexy, but they're not going to get thrashed in with McDrai still up there. He's a stat-padding luxury up there more than actually helping to contribute to wins.

We can still stack the top 2 lines situationally, but our depth problems can definitely be solved internally. We AREN'T getting depth help through a trade this season.

At least put Turris up on Mcdavid wing in this situation. He has a top 6 skill set and I think he can get it going given the right opportunity.

 

[JBear]

You need a defensive winger on McDavid's line who can also score. Now that'd be the perfect player but what we have is RNH and Turris.

Turris - McD - Pul
Archi - Drai - Yama
Ennis - RNH - Kass
Nygard - Haas - Neal

Going through last year's numbers, even strength scoring per game was as follows:
(McD 0.37), (Dra 0.35), (Yama 0.33), (Kass 0.24), (RNH 0.23), (Archi 0.15), (Ennis 0.15), (Neal 0.12), (Turris 0.11), (Khaira 0.09), (Haas 0.09), (Chaisson 0.07), (Nygard 0.05)

Now I know that this is just a rough statistic but it kind of does show we need to spread out the scoring or the bottom 2 lines are going to get outscored everytime.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

You need a defensive winger on McDavid's line who can also score. Now that'd be the perfect player but what we have is RNH and Turris.

Turris - McD - Pul
Archi - Drai - Yama
Ennis - RNH - Kass
Nygard - Haas - Neal

Going through last year's numbers, even strength scoring per game was as follows:
(McD 0.37), (Dra 0.35), (Yama 0.33), (Kass 0.24), (RNH 0.23), (Archi 0.15), (Ennis 0.15), (Neal 0.12), (Turris 0.11), (Khaira 0.09), (Haas 0.09), (Chaisson 0.07), (Nygard 0.05)

Now I know that this is just a rough statistic but it kind of does show we need to spread out the scoring or the bottom 2 lines are going to get outscored everytime.

Totally agree. But it's more like spreading out our suckiness.

We have 3 competent centers who are all capable of carrying their own lines.

We definitely need to use it to mask our inadequecies at wing.

Nuge can be the extra attacker, stay on PP1, and double shifted late in the game when the bench is shortened situationally in the top 6 when we trail.