so what do you guys think of Larry?
Hasn't been a particularly notable player so far. Very little production. But aside from some early penalties, he's not been bad either. He's mostly doing the little things right (particularly in terms of shot suppression), but hasn't found line mates that he can generate with offensively. Can quietly eat minutes and keep the puck on the right half of the ice, but isn't doing much to help with the depth scoring issues in terms of generating for himself or for his line mates.
I do wish he was winning more of his faceoffs. 47.9% total on the year, and only 36.6% shorthanded. Other than the faceoff circle, he's probably been the team's best PKing forward in terms of limiting goals against.
Beagle says hi!
Hasn't been a particularly notable player so far. Very little production. But aside from some early penalties, he's not been bad either. He's mostly doing the little things right (particularly in terms of shot suppression), but hasn't found line mates that he can generate with offensively. Can quietly eat minutes and keep the puck on the right half of the ice, but isn't doing much to help with the depth scoring issues in terms of generating for himself or for his line mates.
I do wish he was winning more of his faceoffs. 47.9% total on the year, and only 36.6% shorthanded. Other than the faceoff circle, he's probably been the team's best PKing forward in terms of limiting goals against.
Beagle has given up 7.47 GA/60 while shorthanded. Eller has given up only 5.72 GA/60.
It's still early in the season for special teams rates (as they're a few minutes per night job), so aren't completely stable yet and single goals can still nudge them pretty far. However three year samples for both players also favor Eller when compared against Beagle and when compared against Eller's former Montreal teammates. From 2013-16, Eller gave up only 4.58 GA/60 while shorthanded. The next best Habs were Pacioretty (5.57) and Plekanec (5.80). Among players with at least 300 PK minutes since 2013, Eller has the 2nd lowest GA/60 among forwards in the entire NHL, behind only Zubrus. He's an elite penalty killer.
He must play fewer short handed minutes than Beags though, both because Beags is always on the ice first, and because Eller has so often been in the penalty box...
Presumably, though, Beagle is facing more of teams' first power play units than Eller, which might also make a difference. Either way Beagle + Winnik/Oshie and Eller + Wilson make strong PK units.
I don't know. Beagle takes most of the toughest PK minutes because of the FO ability you were talking about. He takes twice as many FO's on the PK than Eller who often comes on when the puck has already been cleared out of the Capitals D zone. Eller is a great PK'er but face-offs have huge impact on the PK. Jay Beagle is 2nd in the NHL in FO's on the PK with 59.1%, only behind Antoine Vermette (65%) who takes way less draws.
I'd buy those explanations a lot more if Eller didn't have such a strong track record of PKing in Montreal, as well. And there's no reason Eller couldn't be deployed in a left/right combo that allowed him to take draws on his strong side (he's 8.8% better against righties on the dot this season).
And while faceoffs are important, just a reminder that we're talking about a difference of an event that happens only 3.6 times per game (for Beagle) and 1.8 times per game (for Eller) while shorthanded. A 20% difference in an event that happens fewer than 4 times per game is a relatively minor shift in the actual outcome. The difference comes out to be less than 1 faceoff difference per game. The remainder of play can more than make-up for that.
Eller is 4th among forwards in pk/toi average. Beagle averages nearly a full minute more per game on the pk. 30-40% more. That doesn't sounds a lot like the best Pk'r on the team to me.
Eller was brought in to push Beagle to 4 and improve the production in that 3C hole. So far Eller as failed at that in almost every phase of the game.
I can write that off to being on a new team that is quite a change from where he came from. But he is not close to better than Beagle right now at anything
Biases don't have to be conscious (and most often they are not). Beagle is a higher visibility player than Eller, that's for sure. We all remember Beagle's impressive forechecking on the PK, driving opponents back into their own zone. Plays like that could cause a coach to favor Beagle. Alternatively, Trotz could be highly valuing Beagle's faceoff ability. There are numerous reasons why Trotz may value Beagle more. It doesn't mean that Eller is less effective than Beagle, though.
Despite your giant wall of text, Eller has allowed fewer goals against on the PK consistently through-out his career. Both in Washington and Montreal. He's outperformed Beagle and every other forward in Washington. He's out performed his teammates in Montreal. So, yes, there is a stat that suggest Eller is superior to Beagle at *something,* and that *something* is penalty killing. Eller has now and in the past a lower goals against/60 than Beagle does on the PK, by a significant margin. Eller is, simply put, better at stopping the opponent from scoring while killing penalties.
You attempt to paint the 2nd PK unit as a unit that gets lesser competition. That's simply not true. PK units typically change every time the puck is cleared from the zone, while PP units will stay on for 60-90 seconds of a PP. Each PK unit gets a heavy dose of the opponent's first unit. Plus, regardless of what personnel the opponent has on the ice, all PK assignments are a difficult one. There's no such thing as an sheltered deployment while killing penalties.
And once again, minutes doesn't mean better or worse. It just mean the coach selects a different player.
You can get all hung up on face-off% you want, but that's both easy to mask (have someone else take draws or platoon the draws to Eller's favorable RH match-up) and a relatively rare event. As I pointed out earlier, the difference between 62% and 48% faceoff percentage is only less than once faceoff per game when counting Beagle's and Eller's shorthanded faceoffs combined. For Eller's 1.8 PK faceoffs per game, improving that % would only mean one more faceoff won every four games. The percentages seem like a big difference, but in terms of actual results, it's minuscule.
Also, +/- is a (flawed) stat that only tracks even strength play. I'm not sure why you're bringing it up in a discussion about penalty killing. Same with your rant about game winning goals (how is that even remotely relevant to short-handed play?).
This isn't taking any credit away from Beagle, who's had a terrific start to the season. This is simply stating that Eller is the superior penalty killing player. Because that's the objective truth.
Eller has allowed fewer goals against on the PK consistently through-out his career.
And once again, minutes doesn't mean better or worse. It just mean the coach selects a different player.
TOI - Time On Ice
CA60 - Corsi Against per 60 minutes [shot attempts]
xGA60 - Expected Goals Against per 60 minutes [basically 'quality' of shots]
SCA60 - Scoring Chances Against per 60 minutes [high danger shots]
GA60 - Goals Against per 60 minutes
Sv% - Save Percentage while player was on ice [basically goaltending 'influence']
From 2013-2017, Eller gave up 4.67 GA/60, 2nd in the NHL among all forwards. During that same span, Beagle gave up 5.96 GA/60. That's as far back as stats.hockeyanalysis.com will let you take it if you still want to include 2017.Except last year, right? Beagle's SHGA60 was over 30% better than Eller's last year, despite Eller being the Habs' best PKer overall.
If we can agree that Holtby's play and Price's injury were big factors in that -- and we'd be stupid not to -- then you pretty much have to concede that Eller playing in front of Price went a long way toward helping him achieve the low SHGA60 he did.
So no, Eller has clearly not been better throughout his career. He was 30% "worse" for a full year just last year.
Once again, ice time is a reflection of who's played more, not who's been more effective in their ice time. I'm not pro-rating points here and claiming a 3rd liner will put up first line numbers based on point/60. This isn't about sheltered match-ups or deployments that can inflate or deflate numbers like a depth scorer. This is about actual goal limitation. And Eller has done a much better job at limiting goals against, both in total figures (4 goals against to Beagle's 9) and per ice-time terms.This year, sure, Eller's number is lower. But he's also logged 36% fewer minutes. "Per 60 minutes" stats aren't that simple. More minutes per game adds up. That Beagle has played 22% more PK time than any other Caps forward matters.
Once again, the difference in their faceoff number is less than one draw per game combined. That's not a hard concept to grasp.Which brings us to the faceoffs -- another thing you like to dismiss out of hand. The only reason Beagle's playing so many more minutes than everyone else on the PK is that he's killing it on draws. If our elite penalty-killing center wasn't such a glaring liability in the faceoff circle, Beagle wouldn't be out there for those lopsided minutes in the most disadvantageous situations (shorthanded defensive zone draws). You think that doesn't pull his stats down? That you think faceoffs don't matter is staggering to me.
So it doesn't mean anything that Eller logged less PK time for Montreal last year than two forwards that played way fewer games than he did? That makes sense to you? It means nothing that though he's their best PKer -- far and away by your estimation -- he doesn't log the most time? It says nothing that the 8th winningest coach in NHL history has him logging 36% less time on the PK than another guy?
You don't attribute that at all to performance? Faceoffs? Forecheck? The fact that he's been invisible at even strength, and THAT might make coaches less apt to lean on him when the chips are down?
None of that tracks for you at all?
Show me WHY they matter rather than just claiming they do. I've laid out my argument repeatedly, and you keep going back to the same things. I've shown with larger sample sizes that Eller outperforms Beagle. I've shown that the difference in faceoff percentage is relatively minor (less than one per game).Minutes don't matter, faceoffs don't matter, an entire year of stats that don't support your argument don't matter...
Give me the evidence that the difference is profound, rather than just stating it. Show me that PK performance declines with minutes played. Otherwise you're just mouthing off without any supporting evidence.Yeah, I can see why you've reached this "objective" conclusion. When you're this apt to completely discard huge, weighty factors that anyone would concede profoundly affect a player's deployment on the PK, it's easy to reach pretty much ANY "objective" conclusion you feel like tossing out there.
Show me the evidence.Of course minutes, faceoffs, pairings, ES performance, compete level, and the other guys on the ice matter. And no, OF COURSE our 1st and 2nd units don't see equal time versus their opponents' best power play unit. OF COURSE the guy logging 36% more time sees those units more -- that guy sees 36% more of EVERYTHING. OF COURSE the disadvantageous nature of Beagle's "extra" minutes figure in big-time.
Good thing they're playing in front of the same goalie then.Using SHGA60 as your only metric is just silly. A great goalie offsets any meaningful differential entirely. So does a bad one.
It's a crap statistic that doesn't even describe short handed time, yet you're now using it to back up that one player is a better penalty killer? LOLIn other news, I agree that +/- is a crap statistic. But when you're comparing two guys that play the same position for the same team, rotating pretty evenly between the same two lines with same personnel around them, versus the same opponents and in front of uniformly great goaltending, yes, a -11 differential is very telling. There are some perspectives where +/- has meaning, and this is one of them.
That's why I also included much larger sample sizes, and they still reflect better on Eller than Beagle. The difference is also larger than 2 goals (Beagle has 9 against, Eller has 4).And lastly, your argument about the faceoffs boiling down to one per game, the same can be said of Eller and Beagle's SHGA60 differential. When you factor in all the mountains of things you discard that you really shouldn't, that gap closes a bit, and whatever's left amounts to very little when spread out over 30% of a season. Given that between them they've averaged about 60 PK minutes this year, we're talking about 2 goals. That's a couple bounces, a couple blown saves, a couple lapses by ANY of the other guys on the ice at the time... Doesn't have to all be on Beagle.
From 2013-2017, Eller gave up 4.67 GA/60, 2nd in the NHL among all forwards. During that same span, Beagle gave up 5.96 GA/60. That's as far back as stats.hockeyanalysis.com will let you take it if you still want to include 2017.
This is about actual goal limitation.
Once again, the difference in their faceoff number is less than one draw per game combined. That's not a hard concept to grasp.
We've been over this numerous times already. Your appeal to authority argument is weak. Alexander Semin was also an exceptional penalty killer (to the point where he was actual even between short-handed goals and goals against over a two year span), but he didn't see much PK time because the coach preferred other players and saved Semin for other ice time. Coaches have favorites. It happens.
What doesn't track for you at all seems to be that coaches can have biases and/or mistakes.
Show me that PK performance declines with minutes played.
It's a crap statistic that doesn't even describe short handed time, yet you're now using it to back up that one player is a better penalty killer? LOL
Keep your arguments more concise.