Blade Paradigm
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There has been plenty of discussion about the evolution of Pavel Bure's game in recent years, and excellent work has been done to differentiate between the styles and tendencies of the younger Pavel Bure, the Panther-era Pavel Bure, and the New York Ranger-era Bure. That is not the topic of this discussion, although new evidence has come to fruition that continues to support the idea that Bure was a different player in Vancouver than he was in Florida.
Plenty of work has been done in recent years to document his play earlier in his career.
In Vancouver, he was known more as an end-to-end player with a penchant for taking the puck out of his zone and starting rushes, whereas towards the end of his tenure in Florida he allegedly started to look more for the outlet pass from teammates. It's difficult to say whether he should be criticized for this, as this is exactly how Wayne Gretzky generated so many breakaways -- playing high in the zone and sneaking past center when a teammate looked like he could get to the blue line to avoid a two-line pass. It could all be hearsay started by Bill Lindsay and Trevor Kidd, who infamously slandered Bure publicly. Other teammates disagreed.
I am in the midst of developing a Gretzky shift-by-shift package that highlights his tendencies, so the intricacies of his game are fresh in my mind. By modern standards, Gretzky played the game like a winger.Bure artfully etching his place among NHL's all-time elite
by David J Neal - - Miami Herald
March 30, 2001
...
``Right now, he's playing as well as I've seen him play,'' said Panthers defenseman Bret Hedican, who has been Bure's teammate since March 21, 1994, near the end of Bure's last 60-goal season, with the Vancouver Canucks.
``He's doing things defensively; he's scoring goals,'' Hedican said. ``He's finding ways to score when you don't even think there's a chance to score. He just finds a way to slip it through the goalie's legs, up high, down low, five hole. It's not like it's the same shot every time. It's a nightmare for a goalie, I'd think.''
...
Ryan Walter commented on Bure in an episode of NHL Power Week in 1993 after Bure had already played 115 NHL games.
0:24:
Mike Emrick (narration): "Since his debut, Bure's posted 135 points in 115 games. But it's his total game that has won all the admiration."
Ryan Walter: "There's Pavelmania, there's no doubt. And he is a tremendous player, a great talent. He is the type of player that is a game breaker, but he's also a backchecker. He's got incredible speed and great hands. But, I think, the thing I've appreciated about Pavel the most is that he's a team guy."
Testimonials about his time as a New York Ranger: http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/bures-58-goals-in-99-2000.1475339/page-3#post-69696921
In this discussion, I intend to discuss Pavel Bure in his first full season with the Florida Panthers, his 58-goal, 94-point campaign that resulted in Bure being named a Hart Trophy finalist, finishing in fourth-place for the Lady Byng Trophy, and the clear-cut winner of the Rocket Richard Trophy.
Despite these accolades, Bure's season is sometimes undermined and devalued by some because of one statistic: Bure's nine empty-net goals. This may go hand-in-hand with the common narrative that Bure was quick to leave the defensive zone at this point in his career, and sometimes this season is conflated with the reputation that he developed the following season as a result of disparaging comments by a couple of his Panthers teammates and parroted throughout the hockey world ever since. However, the extra-attacker situation at the end of games is akin to any penalty-killing situation that requires substantial, odd-man pressure to be removed from the defensive zone. Bure's proficiency and skill as a penalty killer is often overlooked, and that same skill would have translated perfectly for the final-minute defensive situations that he was clearly very much involved in.
While at face value, one could claim that 9 EN goals is "inflation" of his goal total, one also has to consider the circumstances of the player being in that situation and the net (overall) effect of his placement on the ice in the final minute of a one-goal game. One should consider his 9 EN goals to be a positive reflection of his play, not a negative. For his team, he achieved exactly what is required of a player in such instances and made himself the key to his team's success in the final minute of a game in which they lead the scoring by a close margin -- the player that any team would want on the ice in the final minute to help secure the victory due to his proficiency in that circumstance.
Let's look at some statistics:
In 1999-00, out of 28 teams, the Florida Panthers only allowed 2 goals against when down 5-on-6, which ranks in the bottom-third of the league (bottom being fewest GA, top being most). That tied them with two other teams for ninth-best at keeping the puck out of the net 5-on-6 (with Ottawa and Montreal). Only eight teams were better. Of the teams that allowed more goals than them in 5-on-6 situations, six teams allowed three goals; six teams allowed four goals; five teams allowed five. If we include 4-on-6 situations where the net is empty but the trailing team has a two-man advantage, the Panthers were the eleventh-best team, as they allowed one 4-on-6 goal for a total of 3 GA with six skaters on the other side. Two teams allowed three goals against specifically in 5-on-6 situations. Seven teams allowed 4 GA when 4-on-6 situations are factored in; 5 teams allowed 5 GA; two teams allowed 6 GA; one team, the Boston Bruins, allowed 7 goals against when the other team had six skaters on the ice. I exclude 3-on-6 situations because (1) the Panthers, as well as 25 other teams allowed none; (2) they are rare and comparing between teams offers little information.
In terms of Goals For 5-on-6, meanwhile, the Florida Panthers ranked second in the NHL with 12. They also scored one goal 4-on-6. That is a total of 13 empty net goals that the Panthers scored while the other team had six skaters on the ice. Sixteen NHL teams scored 6 or fewer goals while the other team had six skaters on the ice, while eight teams scored 7. One team scored 8. One team scored 10. The St. Louis Blues scored 14 empty net goals while down 5-on-6, and 2 while down 4-on-6 for a total of 16 EN goals.
This means that twenty-six other teams had much more difficulty closing games than the Panthers -- the differential between GF and GA with the Panthers of 10 is much higher than any team other than the St. Louis Blues, who closed games by committee (10 St. Louis players scored at least one empty net goal, but only Mike Eastwood scored three). The team with the third-highest empty-net total, for example -- Philadelphia --, had 10 GF 5-on-6, but they allowed 3 goals when down 5-on-6, and 1 goal 4-on-6, for a differential of 6. The team with the fourth most EN goals, Phoenix, scored 8 goals when the other team had six skaters on the ice, but allowed 5 goals: a differential of 3. The worst differential belongs to the Calgary Flames, who only scored 2 empty-net goals that season but allowed five goals against when down 5-on-6 -- a differential of -3. Teams had a much better success rate scoring a goal with their goaltender pulled against every other team except Florida and St. Louis.
The ability for a team to score on an empty net with pressure coming down on them is rather difficult as shown in the following statistic that I call "GF at 4-on-6 and 5-on-6 vs GA at 4-on-6 and 5-on-6" or "extra attacker-empty net differential." I will calculate the differentials for all 28 teams below for the 1999-00 season:
(GF at 4-on-6 and 5-on-6 vs GA at 4-on-6 and 5-on-6)
St. Louis: 15
Florida: 10
San Jose: 7
Anaheim: 6
Philadelphia: 6
Dallas: 5
New Jersey: 5
Tampa Bay: 5
Pittsburgh: 5
Toronto: 3
Phoenix: 3
Washington: 3
Detroit: 2
Montreal: 2
Nashville: 2
New York Rangers: 2
Ottawa: 2
Los Angeles: 1
Vancouver: 1
Carolina: 0
Colorado: 0
Edmonton: 0
Boston: 0
Buffalo: -1
New York Islanders: -1
Chicago: -1
Atlanta: -2
Calgary: -3
Some teams scored several empty net goals, but allowed several goals against with the opposing net empty. Some teams scored very few but allowed very few. The President's Trophy winners, the St. Louis Blues, had the greatest positive differential with good work done by committee; the only reason the Florida Panthers are up at the top instead of down at the bottom is because of Bure's 9 EN insurance goals, and he also did a great job with his team to prevent goals from being scored against them with the opposing net empty. That's an important element as well, which goes hand-in-hand with his penalty-killing skill set. Again, he was the team's most reliable penalty killer, allowing fewer powerplay goals against per 60 than any other significant penalty killer on the 1999-00 Panthers except Ray Whitney (Whitney logged much less shorthanded TOI than Bure). Bure was much more effective than either Rob Neidermayer or Ryan Johnson (as we will see later).
Out of the 13 empty net goals scored by Florida that season, Bure scored 9 of them, one of which was the 4-on-6 EN goal against Pittsburgh. He scored his nine EN goals in nine separate games. Seven of them were the insurance goal that gave the Panthers a two-goal lead. The shorthanded goal was one of the two that gave the Panthers a three-goal lead. Rob Neidermayer, Scott Mellanby, Viktor Kozlov, and Robert Svehla each scored one empty net goal.
In the entire NHL, no player other than Bure scored more than 3 EN goals. Only six other NHL players scored 3 EN goals. 30 players scored 2 EN goals. 94 players scored 1 EN goal. Bure scored three times as many EN goals as any other player.
When one considers that the Panthers allowed a very low 2 goals against in the final minute of a one-goal game and guaranteed themselves a victory with a very high 13 EN goals, one could say that the Panthers were an extremely difficult team to defeat if they had a one-goal lead in the final minute of a game.
One may consider Bure as a closer -- someone who could seal a victory for his team. That season, he was by far the best closer in the NHL.
Bure led the league with 45 even strength goals that season, which also led the league in that category. He led the second-next player by 13 even strength goals -- Jaromir Jagr, the second-place finisher, only scored 32. Paul Kariya, third, scored 28. Even without the 9 EN goals -- technically, they are considered to be even strength goals --, Bure would have scored more even strength goals than any other player in the NHL.
15 times he scored the first goal of the game, which led the league. Everyone knows that leading a game changes a team's approach, and it opens up the opposition as they play a more aggressive game. No other player scored the first goal of the game more than 11 times. In fact, only two players scored 11 -- Steve Yzerman and Jaromir Jagr. Only 16 players in the league scored more than 7 opening goals, a number that Bure doubled. On his own team, he scored 15 of the team's 45 opening goals that season; the next-highest total was four by Jaroslav Spacek; three Panthers players scored three opening goals; five players scored two opening goals that season; seven scored one. Four of Bure's 15 opening goals were GWGs.
Bure had 14 GWGs, which led the league in GWGs. Only six other players scored more than 7 GWG in the entire league.
One might wrongfully declare that some of his GWGs were empty net goals, but in fact zero of his GWGs were empty net goals. There were six games where he scored one empty net goal and the GWG in the same game, but they were all multi-goal games.
Here are the nine game logs documenting his empty-net goals:
1999-10-06: LA vs FLA: Los Angeles Kings - Florida Panthers - October 6th, 1999 (4-2 insurance EN goal)
1999-12-11: FLA @ NSH: Florida Panthers - Nashville Predators - December 11th, 1999 (4-2 insurance EN goal)
1999-12-17: FLA @ BUF: Florida Panthers - Buffalo Sabres - December 17th, 1999 (hat trick: 1-0 PP first goal, 3-1 GWG, 4-2 insurance EN goal)
1999-12-18: FLA @ PIT: Florida Panthers - Pittsburgh Penguins - December 18th, 1999 (two-goal game: 3-0 goal, 5-2 shorthanded EN goal)
2000-01-01: TB vs FLA: Tampa Bay Lightning - Florida Panthers - January 1st, 2000 (four-goal game: 3-1 PP goal, 5-4 goal, 6-5 GWG, 7-5 insurance EN goal)
2000-03-01: TOR vs FLA: Toronto Maple Leafs - Florida Panthers - March 1st, 2000 (two-goal game: 2-0 goal, 3-1 insurance EN goal)
2000-03-18: FLA @ NYR: Florida Panthers - New York Islanders - March 18th, 2000 (hat trick: 2-1 goal, 3-2 GWG, 4-2 insurance EN goal)
2000-03-23: FLA @ BOS: Florida Panthers - Boston Bruins - March 23rd, 2000 (3-1 insurance EN goal)
2000-04-03: NJ vs FLA: New Jersey Devils - Florida Panthers - April 3rd, 2000 (two-goal game: 3-1 PP goal, 5-2 EN goal)
One may assume that all of these plays were breakaways into an empty net, but we can not know that without footage or written documentation. Bure scored empty net goals throughout his career from all over the ice; some examples below:
Furthermore, those multi-goal games, especially his hat tricks and the four-goal game, are evidence that he created the circumstances that required the other team to pull their goaltender; he was not opportunistic. He forced the opposition to pull their goaltender through dominance at even strength throughout the matches. If not for his three goals against Tampa Bay prior to the final minute of that match, for example, the Lightning could have had a better result. He was by far the most important player on the 1999-00 Florida Panthers.
Bure led in the categories of: opening goals, game-winning goals, and goals to seal a victory. He scored 24.18% of the team's goals and contributed to 38.52% of the team's scoring.
The fact that Bure did not have an elite linemate was most certainly a hindrance. In the current NHL, we are already witnessing the effect of duos and the plight of Connor McDavid with his lack of support. Skilled teammates with high hockey IQ make each other better, and Bure was no exception. His feat of individual prowess should be recognized as a demonstration of ability but not of a player in an appropriate circumstance to succeed.
Bure's 1999-00 season should not be disparaged for another reason: even without the EN goals, he still scored more goals than anyone else at even strength and was an elite penalty killer for his team.
If anyone wishes to criticize his ice time, they have to consider that he played an average of 1:58 of TOI shorthanded per game, which obviously inflates his total average TOI by nearly 2 minutes. However, he only scored 2 shorthanded goals that season, so that shorthanded TOI did not factor much into his goal total at all.
At even strength, he played an average of 17:52 of TOI. That is only an average of two seconds more than Joe Sakic, who played 17:50 of even strength ice time per game. Sakic averaged 23:15 of total TOI, whereas Bure averaged 24:23, but that is only because Bure played 1:58 of shorthanded TOI as opposed to Sakic's average of 1:15 of shorthanded TOI per game. Aside from shorthanded time, their ice time per game was practically the same.
Kariya played an average of 24:21 of TOI per game, two seconds less than Bure. Teemu Selanne averaged 48 seconds less of EV TOI and 1:30 less of shorthanded TOI, but averaged 38 seconds more of powerplay TOI than Bure.
Eric Lindros averaged 1:15 less of EV TOI, 1:02 of shorthanded TOI and 5 seconds of powerplay TOI.
Jaromir Jagr averaged 23:12 of total TOI -- he averaged 48 seconds less of EV TOI, but averaged just 0:16 seconds of shorthanded TOI and 5:50 of powerplay TOI. He averaged 1:42 less of shorthanded time, but played an average of 1:18 more of powerplay time.
Bure played more PK time than Sakic and, to a greater extent, Jagr, Lindros, and Selanne. He played less powerplay time than any of them and ranked 15th in the NHL in average powerplay TOI per game for forwards. He and Kariya played similar time on the penalty kill, but Kariya was nowhere near as effective a penalty killer with 19 PP goals against scored against him in 156:06 of total shorthanded TOI; Kariya was highest among forwards on the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in PP goals against. Bure played 146:19 of shorthanded TOI that season, the third-highest among forwards on the Panthers, and allowed just 9 PP goals against; those nine goals ranked him 5th-highest in powerplay goals against for the Florida Panthers. Rob Neidermayer, by comparison, led the Panthers with 230:41 of TOI but allowed 23 PP GA; Ryan Johnson, the next-highest forward in shorthanded minutes with 159:47 of SH TOI, allowed 15 PP GA. Compared with Bure, Kariya was nowhere near as reliable a penalty killer that season.
With all of that time geared towards the penalty kill, the Florida Panthers were 10th in the NHL in penalty kill % with a PK% of 85.4. He ranked third out of all forwards on the Florida Panthers in total shorthanded TOI with 146:19 that season, only behind Ryan Johnson (159:47) and Rob Neidermayer (230:41). Worth noting is that while on the ice, Rob Neidermayer allowed the most PP Goals Against on the Panthers with 23 PP goals against. Ryan Johnson allowed 15 PP GA, the third-most on the Panthers. Bure was on the ice for just 9 powerplay goals against while on his team's penalty kill, ranked 11th in PP goals against on the 1999-00 Panthers.
Of the forwards, Rob Neidermayer was ranked 1st in PP goals against (5.98 PP GA/60); Ryan Johnson was ranked 2nd in PP goals against (5.63 PP GA/60). Ranked third and fourth were Radek Dvorak (with an abysmal 11 GA in 78:50 of shorthanded TOI) and Viktor Kozlov (11 GA in 140:28 of SH TOI), while Bure was ranked 5th out of the penalty-killing forwards in terms of PP goals against with 9 PP GA in 146:19 (3.69 PP GA/60). Bure and Ray Whitney were the most reliable penalty-killing forwards on the 1999-00 Florida Panthers, but Whitney only played 84:16 of SH TOI. Bure was the team's most effective high-minute penalty-killing forward, and his two shorthanded goals -- the team's only two shorthanded goals that season -- made him not only the team's most reliable penalty-killing forward but their most dangerous shorthanded threat. When Bure was on the penalty kill, the net effect is that opposing teams were afraid to be aggressive and make mistakes. Bure only scored 2 shorthanded goals that season but is tied with Marian Hossa and Derek Sanderson for 11th all-time in shorthanded goals with 34. He was one of the most dangerous shorthanded threats of all time -- combined with a high-end ability to prevent powerplay goals against, this is the basis for an elite penalty killer. Pavel Bure was among the elites as a penalty killer.
Bure was relied on heavily for penalty killing by the Florida Panthers and was very successful for his team. The Panthers were shorthanded 323 times, ranked 14th in the NHL.
He led the Panthers in +/- at even strength with a +25 rating while five of the 18 players who played 41 games or more had minus ratings, including Rob Neidermayer (-5). Ryan Johnson, the aforementioned second-highest minute logger on the PK, had just a +1 rating. The players who were supposed to play the team's biggest role defensively were not the team's best players defensively, Bure aside.
He also had fewer powerplay points (20) than any other player in the Top 10 of NHL scoring that season except Tony Amonte (19) despite the Panthers having the eighth-ranked PP% in the NHL with 58 goals in 338 attempts. This means that other players on the team capitalized on the powerplay and he was less reliant on the PP to score points than his league-leading NHL peers. This attests to his lack of support on the powerplay, as the top scorers for the team aside from Bure were Ray Whitney (22 PP points), Viktor Kozlov (21 PP points), Robert Svehla (defenceman, 21 PP points), and Jaroslav Spacek (defenceman, 16 PP points). There was a significant drop in scoring after that group of five players on the powerplay, as the next several highest-ranked PP scorers for the Panthers were Scott Mellanby (10 PP points), Mark Parrish (9 PP points), Rob Neidermayer (9 PP points), Ray Sheppard (7 PP Points), Mike Wilson (6 PP points), Peter Worrell (5 PP points), and Oleg Kvasha (4 PP points), etc. The team had one powerplay unit, and as a unit it was only had one elite player.
The Anaheim Ducks received 332 powerplay attempts -- six less than the Panthers -- but Kariya and Selanne scored 31 powerplay points each.
Eric Lindros only played 55 games, but 21 of his 59 points were powerplay points.
Jaromir Jagr had 29 powerplay points out of his 96 total points.
Sakic and Bure had similar ice time aside from shorthanded time; Sakic scored more powerplay points than Bure.
Owen Nolan had 18 powerplay goals and 33 powerplay points, by far the most powerplay-reliant player in the NHL.
Bure scored 20 powerplay points out of his 94 total points. He led the league in even strength points, Jagr aside, by a very wide margin -- Jagr scored 67 even strength points; Tony Amonte, ranked third, scored 59. Bure scored 72 with only two seconds more of average EV TOI per game than Joe Sakic and less than a minute more than Kariya, Jagr, and Selanne.
Bure ranked 43rd in the NHL in powerplay points, tied with Martin Rucinsky and Radek Bonk, and was tied with eight others for 11th in powerplay goals. The powerplay comprised a greater percentage of his teammates' scoring than his. Ray Whitney (22), Viktor Kozlov (21), and Robert Svehla (21) all had more PP points than him albeit fewer total points. Bure feasted on teams at even strength.
His scoring was not situational or reliant on the powerplay. More times than anyone else, he put other teams on their heels with the opening goal, scored the game-winning goals more times than anyone else, sealed the games better than anyone else, and was a crucial penalty killer for his team. He did most of his damage at even strength and did not require any situational assistance to be an extremely effective scorer.
No one else had the combination of versatility and game-breaking ability that season.
It is entirely misleading to diminish Bure's effectiveness and impact that season by citing his empty net totals or by saying that his peers were unavailable to play.
Furthermore, if ever the argument surfaces that some of the other top players in the league were injured at the time, it is pivotal to remember that he was not immune from that wave of unfortunate injuries that hampered and shortened several careers. His abilities and his prime were already compromised by the injury below, so his peers were not the only ones to lose out.
Before the 1999-00 season, he had already been required to repair his knee twice (1995-96, 1998-99).
The player who debuted in 1999-00 might have only been a shadow of the player he could have been, yet the value of that season was not only his offensive prowess -- it was proof of his ability to kill penalties and close games for his team, an element of his game that simply gets lost far too often. Bure was the key factor to his team's success in all facets of the game that season. On nights such as when he scored the game-winning goal and the insurance goal, or when he scored multiple goals, his ability to put his team on his back was clearly apparent on the score sheet, but his ability to limit the opponent's chances in his own end are severely understated.
He was a very versatile player who could thrive in any situation and did not need to be sheltered. Whether his team was on the powerplay, playing shorthanded, at even strength, or leading by one goal with two minutes left, he could be a difference maker, and was the greatest difference-maker on teams that simply needed more help than one player could provide.
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