Penguins by the Numbers: Some Metrics to Ponder

Phil,

Actually, we were talking about the importance of ZAR to this team and what a difference he could have made in this series and absolutely not, his presence meant nothing to this series.

You haven’t addressed the blatant fact that the in game 7, the deciding game of the series, the Penguins scored 2 PPG to the Ranger’s 1 PPG – a clear indication that the Penguins won the battle of the special teams 2 – 1. Add to that the Penguins scored a SHG. All three of the Penguins goals in Game 7 were special teams Goal, not a single 1 of our team’s goals were scored Even Strength – while 3 of the 4 goals the Rangers scored were scored Even Strength.
And I do understand why you won’t address Game 7, that destroys any attempt to argue that special teams lost the series for the Penguins. In Game 7 Penguins Even Strength play let them down, particularly the Goaltending – Jarry’s Sv% was 0.867%. Horrible, absolutely horrible Goaltending.
If you want to use the excuse that it was Jarry’s first game back after his injury, over 1 month earlier, I can agree to that. However, that calls into question the Coaches decision to play Jarry in that pressure cooker game – most especially when one considers Jarry’s only other playoff experience was completely negative – not a good way to get the kids confidence up.

You also failed to address one of the most established Hockey axiom that the Goaltender is the most important PK person and the Penguins Goalies stunk out loud, both 5 on 5 and on the PK. Their Sv%, as a team, throughout the series was 0.903%, very weak, and absolutely pathetic in Games 5 – 7, 0.880%. During the regular season, as a team, their Sv% was 0.919%.

In Game 5 the first attempt at a close out, 3 of the 5 Goals against were scored Even Strength, 1 on the PP and 1 ENG but those Goals didn’t count. In your argument it doesn’t matter that Domingue could only stop 25 of 28 Even Strength Shots of which 1 of those GA was on what was considered a low danger shot. Furthermore the 1 PPG the Rangers scored was scored on what considered medium danger shot.
I may have agreed with you if the Rangers got a ton of High Danger Chances and scored on their Goal on a HDC, but it was a MDC – little to nothing to do with the PK skaters but heavily on the Goalie.

Now let’s talk about game 6. Domingue only faced 4 shots on the PK and 2 beat him, one from the HDC range and 1 from the Low Danger Chance range. Once again not a question of poor defense in front of the Goalie but a ton of blame on the Goalie.

We already addressed Game 7

Finally, had you created an acronym of TS TOR Statistics, you could argue a neutral statement, but you qualified your acronym with an entirely negative adjective, “twisted”. I personally don’t care that you made the personal attack, I am just pointing your Personal Attack out as evidence that you didn’t have a valid argument. When there is a valid counter argument to what I have written, you would have stuck to a discussion of facts and not added “twisted”.

I was responding to Ricks comment, “Aston-Reese is an excellent defensive player and penalty killer and he does provide at least a degree of physicality and sand. We could’ve used help in all those areas during the Rangers series.”

You mentioned the Penguins powerplay with your TTS . It wasn’t mentioned before. What ZAR has to do with the Penguins powerplay no one will ever know. Why you keep talking about ZAR and the Penguins powerplay could never even be guessed by ZAR himself. I know I don’t have a clue.

Just one simple scenario
In game six when penalty killer Boyle got injured in the game. ZAR could have been used for the penalty kill. Instead the Penguins had O’Connor in the line up. I’m sure those 4 minutes of playing time O’Connor racked up was extremely important to team. But If ZAR, a very good penalty killer for years on the Pens, had been on the roster just one of those powerplay goals could have been stopped according to the odds possibly both. Malkin’s goal would have been the go ahead goal. Odd’s are the Rangers coach who always pulls the goalie earlier than most would have had the goalie pulled when the Rangers go ahead goal was scored at 18:36 meaning the Pens would have had a 3-1 chance of scoring an empty netter over the Rangers tying it up. Pens win series.

i didn’t want to address this but here it is “You also failed to address one of the most established Hockey axiom that the Goaltender is the most important PK person ”
The goaltender you don’t like has a bad game it was him, a goalie you like has a bad game it was the defense. Every time.

Here’s an axiom a good defense makes a good goalie and vise versa.

Team wins two Stanley Cups with a coach you hate it was the players not the coach, team loses in the playoffs first round a few times it was because of the coach you hate. Your favorite player has a bad corsi he was playing against the best players, guy you hate has a good stat he was playing against the bottom six. Guy you hate has a great offensive rating is only because he took 51% of the draws in the offensive zone. All TTS.

The last three games 33% of the goals the Rangers had were powerplay goals. Zar is a great penalty killer. No fancy stats needed.

Looks like somehow part of what I posted got truncated. What I meant to write was this

Furthermore, what I present are not my statistics, they are simply statistics. you don’t have to like them. I don’t like the fact that Matheson’s stats aren’t as bad as I feared, but they are facts and as I noted once before, as John Adams once said “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Best evidence says ZAR was not an integral cog in the Penguins machine. Trading him harmed nothing. Any attempt to bring him back accomplishes no benefit to the team but possibly harms the team by depriving it an opportunity to bring in younger players, players that would benefit from more TOI. The Penguins will not get different results by doing the same thing over and over again.

Question Phil,

Where did you get your stats?
Looking on Natural Stat trick, in his career (since our last Stanley Cup) ZAR has played 34:54 TOI on the PK and opponents have scored 4 Goals. Natural stat trick only allows 3 consecutive seasons to be averaged. To get data over 3 seasons you have to do the math yourself. So 4 Goals / 34:55 minutes x 60 minutes = 6.87 Goals (6.08 over the last 3 seasons). Post hoc I looked at the NHL web site and Hockey reference. Hockey reference

Teddy Bluegers GA/60 over the last 3 seasons was 6.03 – 6.87 career (5 Goals / 43.39 TOI minutes x 60 minutes)

Beyond that, you are comparing apples to oranges again. This years playoff Goaltender was Louis Domingue, ZAR never had to kill a playoff penalty with Domingue in net. You are in violation of basic scientific principals by not controlling for external factors. In 2017-2018 when ZAR played his first Playoff Games, Matt Murray posted a 0.908 Sv%, not his best post season but significantly better than Domingue and Jarry this season.

ZAR’s GA/60 on the PK in his career in Pgh are 9.52 (17-18), 6.77 (18-19), 0.0 (19-20), 9.51 (19-20). The 19-20 season looks like a severe anomaly.

And none of that explains how the special teams lost the series for them when, in Game 7 they won the battle of special teams but lost the game. Goaltending lost that series bottom line.

Post hoc I looked at the NHL web site and Hockey reference. Hockey reference shows the same raw data I used to calculate my numbers but they didn’t normalize it to 60 minutes. The NHL Web site’s raw numbers agree with mine all around, including GA/60. I am not doubting you may have seen 5.71 for ZAR, but where did you find it?

Sorry Phil, you are still grasping at straws you still have not made a case for ZAR being important to the Penguins or being the defining factor in the penguins loss. All you have done is showed that he was better than Dominik Simon and nobody is arguing that point.

Even using the Goal Difference the number isn’t significant enough to justify ZAR, particularly when 2 of the players who were on the ice when he scored that SHG aren’t on the team anymore either (Ceci and Gaudreau) and you still Refuse to talk about the Penguins’ winning the special teams battle in game 7 but losing the war and by your choosing GD to argue ZAR is the BEST PK man on the team and ignoring the GD when citing the OT PPG as evidence that the ZAR would have made a difference. Since the Pens scored a shortie in game 7 the fact the game winner was scored, by your logic, negates the PP aspect of the GW.
And once again you ignore the 5 Even strength Goals scored as unimportant.

No ZAR means nothing to this team and is only stealing a roster spot from moving on. The difference between ZAR, Carter, Blueger, and McGinn is negligible. The difference between at least an average playoff goalie and what the Penguins received doomed them.

Perhaps had Sullivan employed bigger “D” men during the regular season, instead of his stick wavers Jarry does’t get hurt and he gets a legitimate chance to redeem himself from last seasons horrible playoff experience. Perhaps if Sullivan kept Filip Lindberg as the backup and not sent him to WBS, instead waving DeSmith and sending him down, Lindberg doesn’t get injured last Nov and gains experience, Jarry gets more breaks during the regular season while DeSmith regains his confidence, with the extra breaks he isn’t beat up enough to put himself in a position of injury due to fatigue. Regardless of the ifs, the bottom line is Jarry’s 0.867 Sv% and Domingue’s 0.898 Sv% were the problem not the forwards playing the PK.

7 of Domingue’s 19 GA were considered Low Danger Goals against.