I say make him a neutral zone specialist! That way the puck is sure to be in transition, one way or another.
Sounds good to me!
Put Virtanen with Sutter and let them carry the neutral starts (split with the 4th line).
Let Horvat carry the Ozone (split with Sutter), Beagle carry the Dzone (split with everyone).
Now on a tangent...
On average... across the league... there are 60-61 faceoffs per game.
The general ratio :
21 Ozone
21 Dzone
19 Neutral zone
Canucks this season:
60 FO/gm
20 Ozone/gm
21 Dzone/gm
19 Nzone/gm
Never did make sense to me why Zone start percentages were only a ratio of O-D zones.
That "Rate" is misleading as hell.. and often used/quoted without proper context... and usually (99.9%) with zero regard for the actual raw numbers.
60 faceoffs a game..
4 lines in hockey...
Weighted approximately like 22-18-12-8
Then you split by zones...
- Your weakest lines you want starting in the Nzone
- Your best lines you want in either O/ D zone.
- But there 20ish/zone over the course of a game...
If that second line player goes on in a 6-7-5 ratio usage (O-N-D).. people are quoting a 6/11, 54.6% ozone start number and discussing how he was gifted... a 4th liner (
like Gaunce) could go 1-5-2.... and people would be quoting his insanely heavy lifting 66% dzone start usage... vs 25% actual personal usage... or an actual game usage of 2/20 of the team's total D zone draws.
Neutral zones need to referenced in order to contextualize the stat better. We would already know who the league's real neutral zone specialists actually are...
Game by game zone start numbers are some of the most useless to ever quote for an individual player... But it continues.. over and over.
For example... that 6-7-5 second line player... with a 54.5% zone start.. switch one O start for a D, and he's now a 45.5% zone start player. 9% swing. One faceoff.
Now compare that to the perception someone has for a 54.5% vs 45.5% player after a game.
/tangent.