News Article: Do the Penguins have a Puck Possession Problem? (Parts I and II) (will update OP)

[IcedCapp]

http://thehockeywriters.com/penguins-puck-possession-problem/


http://thehockeywriters.com/5-reasons-penguins-possession-problem/

Click to read more...

 

[ColePens]

So I guess my question is.... how does DB not see an issue w/ the likes of Sutter, Adams, Pyatt, & Glass? They clearly lose the puck every time they touch it. Film has to show that and writers, since January, are talking about it.

I leave Vitale and a few others off because they show they can cycle. Hell.. even Engo can cycle and possess the puck. It's so clear who can possess and who cannot. I don't get it.

 

[Crafton]

the declining trend is troubling, on the other hand i believe i read that the team is/was a top five fenwickClose team when both Letang and Martin in the line-up. wonder where they rank in FenClose when Sid, Malkin, Letang and Martin are all in the line-up? of course, that's an instance of the 'big guns' masking what is an unmitigated dumpster fire in the bottom-six and the twin towers of negative possession the back-end (you know who i'm talking about).

 

[Whakahere]

I can't understand it either. The third and forth line are just time burners where we hope they don't get scored on. They do nothing more.

On a side note, the only player to challenge craig adams for the iron man title .... was Brandon Sutter who our mighty coach benched on the last game. He can't take away his pets record now can he.

 

[Sideline]

They miss Jordan Staal.

 

[wej20]

So I guess my question is.... how does DB not see an issue w/ the likes of Sutter, Adams, Pyatt, & Glass? They clearly lose the puck every time they touch it. Film has to show that and writers, since January, are talking about it.

I leave Vitale and a few others off because they show they can cycle. Hell.. even Engo can cycle and possess the puck. It's so clear who can possess and who cannot. I don't get it.

Sutter is a strange 3rd line centre, seems he's most effective off the rush.

 

[Pick87your71Poison]

Sutter is a strange 3rd line centre, seems he's most effective off the rush.

Agreed, just generally thinking back, it feels like just about everytime I'm excited about something Sutter does offensively, it's when he gets a chance with the puck in space on the rush.

It's def exciting when he shows flashes in those spots, but hasn't seemed to really to translate to anything consistent in terms of puck possession/cycling which is a shame. Would be really valuable for this team and was big for us with Staal back in the day who I don't have the possession #'s on but the 3rd line clearly dictated play more back then.

It's not all on Sutter who has played with a constantly changing pile of trash, while Staal had some consistency and more useful wingers, but Sutter def it part of the issue too as far as possession goes.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

Interesting quote within the article.

People talk about Sid having an 'off' year this year. However there was a reason for it and it was not the decline in scoring league wide, it was not any diminishment of his skills.

The amazing thing is that because of Bylsma's head scratcher lineup decisions, especially the playing of constantly bad Adams and Glass over more talented players he sits, Crosby has been turned into basically a third line shut down center. And STILL out pointed everyone else by one of the largest percentages in NHL history.

Ryan Wilson had this to say in January:

The bottom 6 has played at a very poor level for most of the year and it has forced Bylsma to use Crosby in more of a shutdown role than he would like. It’s crazy to think but Crosby could be producing even more points if he was given some more advantageous matchups….

…The bottom 6 grouping does not score, they do not possess the puck well, and they are not showing any signs of improving.

http://thehockeywriters.com/penguins-puck-possession-problem/

 

[AjaxTelamon]

We have numerous reasons for our low possession this year, but turnovers and failure to create them is a significant contributing factor as well that doesn't get analyzed a lot. Our 4th line is clearly horrible:

Turnover +/-:

Typically good checking players create turnovers, and defenseman have negative +/-. Ours:

Adams: -1 (15 takeaways / 16 give aways)
Glass: +5 (10/5)
Vitale: +2 (10/8)

Sutter: +16 (29/13)

Boston:

Paille: +19 (32 take aways / 13 give aways)
Campbell: +16 (26 / 10)

So good teams really rely on their 4th lines to create turnovers and hold possession, whereas ours is terrible at this.

But what's even worse is that our top 6 is terrible in turnover ratio also:

Crosby: -15
Malkin: -21
Kunitz: -21
Jokinen: -25
Neal: +8

When a guy like Hossa is +49, Toews is +19, ROR is +50.

The whole team is a mess, and I can't help but think that's an indictment of the system/coaching in some cases, poor transitional play in others, and some players just being careless with the puck. And a roster built out of players that are just not good at causing turnovers and avoiding them.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

I think that it really is this simple.

Good third and fourth lines can be weak offensively and you can get away with it. Especially on a team with as much top end talent and scoring as we have.

Far more serious is when the third and fourth lines do not do what they are primarily responsible for. Pinning the top lines of the opposition down in their own end. Getting the puck out of your end and harrassing the other teams' top players and lines. That is where the bottom six have failed the most this year.

The lack of scoring bothers me far less.

 

[mpp9]

They miss Jordan Staal.

I was fine moving on from him if we surrounded Sid/Geno with more talent and used Sutter as a pure shutdown guy. But that didn't happen.

And IMO, we would have been better off last year with Staal, Beau and Despres than all of our trade acquisitions combined.

 

[Sideline]

I was fine moving on from him if we surrounded Sid/Geno with more talent and used Sutter as a pure shutdown guy. But that didn't happen.

And IMO, we would have been better off last year with Staal, Beau and Despres than all of our trade acquisitions combined.

Yeah, I get why they moved Staal; you can't force a guy to stay, but he was such a great positional play asset. He made Sid and Geno better by getting them more offensive zone starts.

The Morrow trade still grinds my gears...

 

[IcedCapp]

Nicholas W. Goss ‏@NickGossNESN 13h

The Penguins' possession numbers this season are ugly. pic.twitter.com/yY66tftmc3

 

[MeticulouslyDishevel]

We have numerous reasons for our low possession this year, but turnovers and failure to create them is a significant contributing factor as well that doesn't get analyzed a lot. Our 4th line is clearly horrible:

Turnover +/-:

Typically good checking players create turnovers, and defenseman have negative +/-. Ours:

Adams: -1 (15 takeaways / 16 give aways)
Glass: +5 (10/5)
Vitale: +2 (10/8)

Sutter: +16 (29/13)

Boston:

Paille: +19 (32 take aways / 13 give aways)
Campbell: +16 (26 / 10)

So good teams really rely on their 4th lines to create turnovers and hold possession, whereas ours is terrible at this.

But what's even worse is that our top 6 is terrible in turnover ratio also:

Crosby: -15
Malkin: -21
Kunitz: -21
Jokinen: -25
Neal: +8

When a guy like Hossa is +49, Toews is +19, ROR is +50.

The whole team is a mess, and I can't help but think that's an indictment of the system/coaching in some cases, poor transitional play in others, and some players just being careless with the puck. And a roster built out of players that are just not good at causing turnovers and avoiding them.

Yikes! I know that the top 2 lines seemed to turn over the puck a lot this season, but I had no idea it was that bad.

 

[Jesse]

Nicholas W. Goss ‏@NickGossNESN 13h

The Penguins' possession numbers this season are ugly. pic.twitter.com/yY66tftmc3

Injuries haven't helped.

 

[mpp9]

Injuries haven't helped.

DB keeping Gladams no matter what doesn't either.

 

[Shady Machine]

Injuries haven't helped.

That's true but it also doesn't help that DB effectively replaces those injured players (at least forwards) with the worst possession players (Glass and Adams) rather than the Megna's of the world. Glass gets promoted and Megna gets 8 minutes. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

 

[MrBurghundy]

Injuries haven't helped.

I know. Because Bylsma gave more playing time to worse players.

 

[madinsomniac]

Its no secret... when we won the cup, guys like Cooke, Staal, Talbot, Dupuis, Rupp and even Sykora played on the bottom two lines. They could all play an offensive role when need be. most could also play a bit of a gritty game and a defensive role as well. Even Adams was an asset then because he was younger and slightly faster skating shotblocker at the time and filled a checking/Pk role that we didnt have a lot of options for. Now we are chock full of one dimentional players, playing with a system that relies on cherry picking to get goals... we dont cycle and have few netfront presences.

 

[UnrealMachine]

Injuries haven't helped.

Have they hurt? The 3 players who missed the most time (Letang, Martin, Scuderi) are all (-) FF% Close Rel. players. Replacement players like Gibbons & Despres were (+). The numbers are low because never-scratch fixtures like Orpik, Glass, Pyatt & Adams were all heavy (-) players. Sutter is low as well, but he has mostly been playing with toxic waste all season.

 

[AjaxTelamon]

Its no secret... when we won the cup, guys like Cooke, Staal, Talbot, Dupuis, Rupp and even Sykora played on the bottom two lines. They could all play an offensive role when need be. most could also play a bit of a gritty game and a defensive role as well. Even Adams was an asset then because he was younger and slightly faster skating shotblocker at the time and filled a checking/Pk role that we didnt have a lot of options for. Now we are chock full of one dimentional players, playing with a system that relies on cherry picking to get goals... we dont cycle and have few netfront presences.

The more I look at this roster, the more I start to blame Shero for getting the wrong guys to support our top players, and for DB for giving a lot of TOI to the worst possible players.

A lot of NHL teams are using advanced stats like zone entry rates (and not so advanced stats like Corsi) to help pick their roster and determine usage of players. Our organization seems to be willfully ignorant of all of that information.

But what's worse is they also ignore traditional hockey axioms, such as grit, net front presence, clearing the net in the D zone, etc etc.

I just don't understand the philosophy behind this team's construction and usage.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

I am going to take off my jaded hat for one second.

We have played in troubling ways all year. But have been especially bad since the Olympics.

To be fair we also had the Metro basically won by then too. So maybe some of the worst we saw was a product of not having anything much to play for in months now.

 

[MrBurghundy]

I am going to take off my jaded hat for one second.

We have played in troubling ways all year. But have been especially bad since the Olympics.

To be fair we also had the Metro basically won by then too. So maybe some of the worst we saw was a product of not having anything much to play for in months now.

Well we'll find out if that meant anything or not soon enough.

 

[Shady Machine]

Its no secret... when we won the cup, guys like Cooke, Staal, Talbot, Dupuis, Rupp and even Sykora played on the bottom two lines. They could all play an offensive role when need be. most could also play a bit of a gritty game and a defensive role as well. Even Adams was an asset then because he was younger and slightly faster skating shotblocker at the time and filled a checking/Pk role that we didnt have a lot of options for. Now we are chock full of one dimentional players, playing with a system that relies on cherry picking to get goals... we dont cycle and have few netfront presences.

Rupp wasn't on the team when we won the cup.

 

[Joejosh999]

Great nbrs on the turnovers.....

I wonder, how much of Crosby/Malkins negative nbrs are due to them trying to do too much/carrying the puck too long, not trusting their wingers...?
Also as has been pointed out, opposition simply collapsing 2or even 3 guys on Sid and Geno, thereby forcing a lot of turnovers?