Tortorella is a Problem, Part II

[opendoor]

I think the team would probably be in the playoffs if not for the fiasco in January and the Luongo trade that was precipitated by Tortorella's actions.

Yeah, I just don't see that at all. The team had 1 win in 9 games prior to that Calgary game; not sure why that's seen as some watershed moment.

And Luongo wasn't going to make a huge difference. In 52 games this year he has won only twice without getting 3+ goals in support and 4 of the Canucks' 7 losses since the trade have been where they've scored 0 or 1 GF. He probably would've won the Islanders game and maybe one of the Tampa or Washington games but even that's far from guaranteed given that he has allowed 3+ GA in 11 of his last 15 starts.

 

[leftwinglockdown]

My way or the highway - GMMG to 'Murican coach.

Personally I do not think Torotorella can adapt and change so he should be gone. The Canucks never should have fired AV. IMHO that was also interference from fan boy ownership.

General manager Mike Gillis says the Vancouver Canucks have strayed from the style of hockey that made them successful and is adamant that the team return to a more up-tempo brand.

In a revealing interview with Team 1040 radio Thursday morning, Gillis seemed to suggest that the more defensive style adopted this season by coach John Tortorella is largely to blame for the team's struggles.

"When you have an entire team's level of performance drop off there has to be reasons for it," Gillis said.

The Canucks have become one of the NHL's lowest-scoring teams under Tortorella and Gillis said that must change.

"I want us to play an upbeat, puck-possession, move the puck quickly, force teams into mistakes, high-transition game," he said. "And I think we have the personnel to do it and if we don't have the personnel to do it they will be changed.

"That's my vision. That's how I believe you are going to win in the Western Conference and the National Hockey League. Look at the top teams in the West. There isn't a lot that separates any of the teams in the West, but the top teams play that way. That's the way we played and in playing that way we made a lot of enemies, but we had the success that we wanted to have. And that's the style that we are going to get back to and that is the way I want to see out team play."​

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/...+Mike+Gillis/9696073/story.html#ixzz2xr2ZUjYA

Well that's funny because like many have pointed out in this thread, the Canucks have no semblance of a transition game right now.

A transition game would mean an emphasis on neutral zone play, converging on people coming through center ice and standing guys up at our blue-line, cause turnovers.

There has been almost none of that this season.

 

[vanuck]

Here's the scoring chance and shot distance stuff:

http://somekindofninja.com/nhl/

I don't know if there are rankings anywhere, but you can search each team in various situations. Here are the Canucks scoring chances this year so far in all situations:

http://somekindofninja.com/nhl/inde...=All&time=All&scoringChance=yes&search=Search


Their shot distance has increased by a bit over last year, but their number of scoring chances per game is also up by quite a bit. However, the big thing that sticks out to me is just how many goals they managed last year on non-scoring chances which to me suggests they got extremely lucky. Here's how many goals per game they've gotten off of non-chances over the last 6 seasons, as you can see there's one big anomaly:

08-09: 0.63 G/G
09-10: 0.77 G/G
10-11: 0.76 G/G
11-12: 0.80 G/G
12-13: 1.08 G/G
13-14: 0.71 G/G

This year's team is actually generating about 15% more offense from scoring chances than they did last season, but because last year's team scored a bunch of what were arguably fluke goals, their offense wasn't as bad as it is this year. You give last year's team a more normal scoring rate for non-chances and they'd have had the worst offense in the league.

Thanks, I'll be adding that site to my bookmarks. Pretty useful. If chances usually correlate with shot attempts - and based on the raw numbers last time I checked they're one of the most high-event teams in the league, so even if by simple percentages they probably should get more chances as a result overall.

When they were winning back in November and December our top 6 were taking on all the hard minutes yet our bottom 6 were still getting outshot when on the ice. I just don't think it's as much a system issue as much as a combination of injuries and a lack of depth that has derailed their season. Not enough players on the 3rd and 4th line who can drive play against their equivalents on the other team IMO.

 

[Ernie]

Yeah, I just don't see that at all. The team had 1 win in 9 games prior to that Calgary game; not sure why that's seen as some watershed moment.

And Luongo wasn't going to make a huge difference. In 52 games this year he has won only twice without getting 3+ goals in support and 4 of the Canucks' 7 losses since the trade have been where they've scored 0 or 1 GF. He probably would've won the Islanders game and maybe one of the Tampa or Washington games but even that's far from guaranteed given that he has allowed 3+ GA in 11 of his last 15 starts.

Lack has 17 straight starts. His save percentage was 0.889 in March. You don't think Luongo would do better than that? His March save percentage was .923. If he had those numbers for the Canucks, that would be 13 less goals against and probably a few more wins and the Canucks would be in the thick of things.

Lack was thrust into the starting role too early and his performance has suffered because of it.

 

[Vankiller Whale]

Here's the scoring chance and shot distance stuff:

http://somekindofninja.com/nhl/

I don't know if there are rankings anywhere, but you can search each team in various situations. Here are the Canucks scoring chances this year so far in all situations:

http://somekindofninja.com/nhl/inde...=All&time=All&scoringChance=yes&search=Search


Their shot distance has increased by a bit over last year, but their number of scoring chances per game is also up by quite a bit. However, the big thing that sticks out to me is just how many goals they managed last year on non-scoring chances which to me suggests they got extremely lucky. Here's how many goals per game they've gotten off of non-chances over the last 6 seasons, as you can see there's one big anomaly:

08-09: 0.63 G/G
09-10: 0.77 G/G
10-11: 0.76 G/G
11-12: 0.80 G/G
12-13: 1.08 G/G
13-14: 0.71 G/G

This year's team is actually generating about 15% more offense from scoring chances than they did last season, but because last year's team scored a bunch of what were arguably fluke goals, their offense wasn't as bad as it is this year. You give last year's team a more normal scoring rate for non-chances and they'd have had the worst offense in the league.

This year we're averaging 13.04 scoring chances per game, last year 10.85 scoring chances per game. However, if we compare them to in-conference teams only:

2012-2013:

Chicago: 14.18
San Jose: 13.21
Calgary: 12.5
Edmonton: 12.42
Minnesota: 12.04
Anaheim: 11.75
Colorado: 11.71
Vancouver: 10.85
Phoenix: 10.85
St. Louis: 10.48
Los Angeles: 10.4
Dallas: 10.13
Nashville: 10.02

2013-2014:

San Jose: 16.7
Anaheim: 15.8
Dallas: 15.48
Chicago: 15.29
Los Angeles: 13.92
Edmonton: 13.71
Colorado: 13.69
Vancouver: 13.04
Calgary: 12.8
St Louis: 12.68
Phoenix: 12.39
Nashville: 12.13
Minnesota: 12.07

The average this year is 13.82 scoring chances per game, compared to an average of 11.58 last year. So we were slightly below average in generating scoring chances both this and last year. But trying to draw a direct comparison is obviously flawed, given the clear difference in both goals scored and scoring chances when we play games against the East.

However, that does make the fact that our G/G actually dropped since last year despite playing more games against less defensive teams all the more indicative of this year's coaching being a downgrade on last years, where a decrease in offense was almost to be expected given the difference in both scoring and scoring chances between the two conferences.

I'd also like to say that even still, a "scoring chance" is still a very subjective metric, and just because we're generating more scoring chances this year doesn't necessitate that the scoring chances we're getting are the same quality as the ones we've gotten in the past, and there's no real way to objectify that kind of information.

EDIT: Fixed. Still very similar results

 

[KeninsFan]

Fire Mike Sullivan. Replace with a real systems guy who can run a transition/puck possession hybrid. Throw a boat load of money for them to run the show but not have the head coach title.

Allow Torts to stay on. He can be the motivational guy to yell at players but not do much else.

Sully can stay or go. Our PP is dreadful but there was a rumour that Sullivan had a hand in personnel decisions as well.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Personally I do not think Torotorella can adapt and change so he should be gone. The Canucks never should have fired AV. IMHO that was also interference from fan boy ownership.

I agree with you that Torts was a bad choice looking back at it, but you are either extremely delusional or the smartest man on the planet if you think we shouldn't have fired AV.

 

[opendoor]

Lack has 17 straight starts. His save percentage was 0.889 in March. You don't think Luongo would do better than that? His March save percentage was .923. If he had those numbers for the Canucks, that would be 13 less goals against and probably a few more wins and the Canucks would be in the thick of things.

Lack was thrust into the starting role too early and his performance has suffered because of it.

When you're talking about a small sample though, it's vital to consider how those save percentages came to be. With some of the blowout losses the Canucks have had, they could've easily allowed fewer goals and had basically the same record.

Like I said, 4 of the 7 losses saw the Canucks get 0 or 1 GF. Luongo has a 0-17-1 record in that situation this year, so he wasn't going to get any points out of those games. That leaves 3 games he might've won that Lack didn't and I said he'd probably win 2 of them so that gives you 4 points. And of course there's the possibility that he doesn't win some of the games that Lack did (2-1 vs CGY, 2-0 vs NSH, perhaps the visit to MIN where he hasn't won a game since 2008) which would leave the team in a similar place. At best we're talking about a swing of 4 points IMO.

Not saying Lack has been good, but given the way the games have played out, better goaltending wasn't going to be enough to give the team them the extra points they'd need to be in a playoff spot right now. The Canucks would've needed a 24 points in 17 games (a .705 record) from the Olympic Break onwards to be in the top 8 of the conference in points % right now. I'm not sure why it'd be assumed that a guy like Luongo with 11 points in his last 17 starts would get them there.

 

[Canucker]

Fire Mike Sullivan. Replace with a real systems guy who can run a transition/puck possession hybrid. Throw a boat load of money for them to run the show but not have the head coach title.

Allow Torts to stay on. He can be the motivational guy to yell at players but not do much else.

Sully can stay or go. Our PP is dreadful but there was a rumour that Sullivan had a hand in personnel decisions as well.

Torts can't motivate this team as it is....No, he has to go, as does his entire staff.

 

[Vankiller Whale]

I agree with you that Torts was a bad choice looking back at it, but you are either extremely delusional or the smartest man on the planet if you think we shouldn't have fired AV.

I hate to be one of those guys, but I was against firing AV at the time as well.

 

[cutcopy]

I agree with you that Torts was a bad choice looking back at it, but you are either extremely delusional or the smartest man on the planet if you think we shouldn't have fired AV.

Agreed. It was time for a change, but it just sucked the best available coach at the time was the one the team needed to let go.

 

[opendoor]

EDIT: Shoot, for some reason I calculated these just looking at shots, not Shots + goals.

Give me a second to recalculate.

I imagine the rankings will be pretty similar, so fair enough if scoring chances in the West are higher overall this year. Still, that points to the idea that last year's team benefited from a fair bit from the percentages, especially when you consider that they were the only playoff team in the West last year to not have a positive scoring chance differential. The playoff teams that produced fewer chances than the Canucks (LAK and STL for instance) just played lower event hockey and still manged positive chance differentials. The Canucks were the only ones who couldn't outchance their opposition which is pretty damning given the joke of a division they played in.

 

[Aphid Attraction]

It was actually a lot more telling than any interview he's previously done on Team, at least this year. Basically said we're gonna play an up tempo, high offense style, and if you don't want to do that, you can gtfo (Torts?).

Yes, (I have not heard the interview and will look for it now) I jumped the gun and have egg on my face... (Ironic because I am eating egg in real life right now...) My bad...

Interview with MG... http://www.teamradio.ca/news/2014/04/03/canucks-gm-mike-gillis-on-team1040

 

[me2]

Lack has 17 straight starts. His save percentage was 0.889 in March. You don't think Luongo would do better than that? His March save percentage was .923. If he had those numbers for the Canucks, that would be 13 less goals against and probably a few more wins and the Canucks would be in the thick of things.

Lack was thrust into the starting role too early and his performance has suffered because of it.

Or he might have continued his run of .879 .842 .897 .906 .857 .875 that he put up before the trade with the crap defense the team is playing.

 

[me2]

Well that's funny because like many have pointed out in this thread, the Canucks have no semblance of a transition game right now.

A transition game would mean an emphasis on neutral zone play, converging on people coming through center ice and standing guys up at our blue-line, cause turnovers.

There has been almost none of that this season.

That's what happens when you over commit at both ends. Gillis seems to be offering Torts an opportunity to adjust.

 

[BobbyJazzLegs]

He more than inferred it and IMHO he is correct.

I have said this as well.

Tony Gallagher on the problems with the Tortorella system.

How many breakaways did this team give up? How many two-on-ones did they surrender by this system which essentially insists on the D pinching often when they don’t have the slightest hope of keeping the puck in the zone?

At this point in the season, you have one of the best group of defencemen in the league playing as though they were brain-dead. And we all know they’re not, because we’ve all seen them play like stars at some stage. They simply don’t know what to do.

When they get the puck in their own zone, there is nobody to give it to, as the forwards are largely standing still. In the offensive zone, it’s pinch and pressure, pinch and pressure until you give up a two-on-one or at three-on-two. Then you are treated to a constant show of the one guy back having to swim on the ice like Michael Phelps to try to break up the odd-man rush. On the 3-on-2, the pair is left to fend for itself as the backside pressure doesn’t materialize.​

http://www.theprovince.com/sports/h...Lack+stats+aren+true+story/9692596/story.html

I can't argue with this.

I thought the team (primarily dmen) would be able to adjust, improve their decision making, and reduce the odd man rushes... but it's just continued to plague us - far worse than our scoring issues imo.

Confidence killers all over the place.

 

[opendoor]

Just to add to the 12-13 scoring chance stuff, here are the teams ranked by chance differential over the 48 games. Vancouver ended up 12th out of the 15 teams in differential:

CHI: +126
SJS: +108
MIN: +101
ANA: +70
LAK: +68
STL: +45
DET: +40
NSH: -9
CGY: -42
CBJ: -59
COL: -64
VAN: -67
PHX: -70
DAL: -108
EDM: -148

I honestly don't think the team performance from last year to this year is that much of a drop off at all. I think last year's team just had better goaltending and a lot of good luck.

 

[SgtToody]

Yeah, I just don't see that at all. The team had 1 win in 9 games prior to that Calgary game; not sure why that's seen as some watershed moment.

And Luongo wasn't going to make a huge difference. In 52 games this year he has won only twice without getting 3+ goals in support and 4 of the Canucks' 7 losses since the trade have been where they've scored 0 or 1 GF. He probably would've won the Islanders game and maybe one of the Tampa or Washington games but even that's far from guaranteed given that he has allowed 3+ GA in 11 of his last 15 starts.

Convenient to say "Luongo wasn't going to make a huge difference." In fact, when they screwed over Luongo they lost the team. The air was taken out of the team, which whether they were angry or just confused, decided WTF about the braintrust. They threw a raw rookie, who missed nearly all of last year, ahead of a guy who use to be captain. Are you old enough to remember Trevor Linden before the Islanders' trade? Go back and see what happened to the team then and stick up for dumb ideas again.

 

[Vankiller Whale]

I imagine the rankings will be pretty similar, so fair enough if scoring chances in the West are higher overall this year. Still, that points to the idea that last year's team benefited from a fair bit from the percentages, especially when you consider that they were the only playoff team in the West last year to not have a positive scoring chance differential. The playoff teams that produced fewer chances than the Canucks (LAK and STL for instance) just played lower event hockey and still manged positive chance differentials. The Canucks were the only ones who couldn't outchance their opposition which is pretty damning given the joke of a division they played in.

I also realized another flaw that I think we both made in our analyses: We were looking at all shots combined instead of just at ES.

At ES, this year we had 860 scoring chances against and 780 for, for a ratio of .906, whereas last year we had 423 chances for and 465 against, for a ratio of .910.

Otherwise you have variations in the amount of PP or PK TOI throwing things off.

And don't just throw the division argument out there.

Last year we went 7-6-5 against playoff teams in the West, this year we're 7-13-6.

I'm not saying we were great last year, but we were certainly better team than we are now.

 

[David71]

My way or the highway - GMMG to 'Murican coach.

Personally I do not think Torotorella can adapt and change so he should be gone. The Canucks never should have fired AV. IMHO that was also interference from fan boy ownership.

General manager Mike Gillis says the Vancouver Canucks have strayed from the style of hockey that made them successful and is adamant that the team return to a more up-tempo brand. the question is does torts stay and get another shot? or he gets fired. and gillis finds another coach to change the system.

In a revealing interview with Team 1040 radio Thursday morning, Gillis seemed to suggest that the more defensive style adopted this season by coach John Tortorella is largely to blame for the team's struggles.

"When you have an entire team's level of performance drop off there has to be reasons for it," Gillis said.

The Canucks have become one of the NHL's lowest-scoring teams under Tortorella and Gillis said that must change.

"I want us to play an upbeat, puck-possession, move the puck quickly, force teams into mistakes, high-transition game," he said. "And I think we have the personnel to do it and if we don't have the personnel to do it they will be changed.

"That's my vision. That's how I believe you are going to win in the Western Conference and the National Hockey League. Look at the top teams in the West. There isn't a lot that separates any of the teams in the West, but the top teams play that way. That's the way we played and in playing that way we made a lot of enemies, but we had the success that we wanted to have. And that's the style that we are going to get back to and that is the way I want to see out team play."​

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/...+Mike+Gillis/9696073/story.html#ixzz2xr2ZUjYA

Yeah this quote gillis should put some blame to himself to. its his fault he moved away from the fast puck transitioning game. uptempo. after the bruins beat the crap out of the nucks gillis changed his mindset and acquired and drafted BIG players. his first 2 seasons here he had the players and the coach a.v adapted to that philosophy. and it succedded

 

[Ernie]

When you're talking about a small sample though, it's vital to consider how those save percentages came to be. With some of the blowout losses the Canucks have had, they could've easily allowed fewer goals and had basically the same record.

Like I said, 4 of the 7 losses saw the Canucks get 0 or 1 GF. Luongo has a 0-17-1 record in that situation this year, so he wasn't going to get any points out of those games. That leaves 3 games he might've won that Lack didn't and I said he'd probably win 2 of them so that gives you 4 points. And of course there's the possibility that he doesn't win some of the games that Lack did (2-1 vs CGY, 2-0 vs NSH, perhaps the visit to MIN where he hasn't won a game since 2008) which would leave the team in a similar place. At best we're talking about a swing of 4 points IMO.

Not saying Lack has been good, but given the way the games have played out, better goaltending wasn't going to be enough to give the team them the extra points they'd need to be in a playoff spot right now. The Canucks would've needed a 24 points in 17 games (a .705 record) from the Olympic Break onwards to be in the top 8 of the conference in points % right now. I'm not sure why it'd be assumed that a guy like Luongo with 11 points in his last 17 starts would get them there.

If Luongo had have been around, the Canucks could have played whatever goalie was playing well. Clearly there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with his game. Pretty ridiculous that he went from being in contention to be the starter for Team Canada and then was relegated to backup behind a rookie goalie in the space of two weeks.

Lack has had several poor nights that cost the Canucks games. You can say the Canucks didn't score enough in some games, but at the same time, going down 2-0 off of bad goals really makes it hard to create offence when the team clamps down after that. I count 6 losses out of 8 losses since the trade that bad goaltending was a factor in. A goaltender who was playing well could probably have helped the Canucks win half of them.

Would it have been enough to put the team in the playoffs? Probably not. The screw ups that Tortorella made in January definitely cost the team more, but trading Luongo likely cost the team any chance of going on a roll to get back into the thick of things.

 

[dave babych returns]

If the Canucks decide they want to get rid of Torts but are balking at the cost of paying two coaches at once, they could always save a bit of green by bringing up the Comets head coach, Travis whats-his-name.

 

[Bleach Clean]

Just to add to the 12-13 scoring chance stuff, here are the teams ranked by chance differential over the 48 games. Vancouver ended up 12th out of the 15 teams in differential:

CHI: +126
SJS: +108
MIN: +101
ANA: +70
LAK: +68
STL: +45
DET: +40
NSH: -9
CGY: -42
CBJ: -59
COL: -64
VAN: -67
PHX: -70
DAL: -108
EDM: -148

I honestly don't think the team performance from last year to this year is that much of a drop off at all. I think last year's team just had better goaltending and a lot of good luck.

Was the 2nd president's trophy (2012) more luck based too then? Amazing that a team could have such a precipitous drop over just 130 games of hockey (shortened season + this full season).

 

[dave babych returns]

If the Canucks decide they want to get rid of Torts but are balking at the cost of paying two coaches at once, they could always save a bit of green by bringing up the Comets head coach, Travis whats-his-name.

I mean, I guess whats-his-name is a little bit green but you'd think after a year running the Comets bench he'd have learned a lot, and there's only one way to deal with inexperience..

 

[dave babych returns]

I mean, the only issue I can think of - if they hired Travis... darn, what is it.. anyway if they hired him - is that if the want to surround him with more experienced coaches, those guys might be green with envy.