Quote:
Originally Posted by HighLifeMan
That may be true but Lindholm and Gaudreau are also both bottom five among forwards IN THE LEAGUE in terms of xGF%, and that's with significantly more ice time than those around them.
The top line is clearly competing extremely hard... It doesn't change the fact that they are still getting heavily outplayed, and have been extremely fortunate not to have hurt the team to this point.
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This is where I think xGF% can be a bit misleading though since it has been such low event hockey.
They are poor at 40% but that different is only .27 goals for vs against - not really hurting them too much because they have been giving up so little defensively.
xGF: 0.78
xGA: 1.15
They could play higher event hockey and push their xGF% to 45% for example but maybe the team is actually worse off.
Something like below would be ~45% xGF, but the team would still be a delta of .3 xG.
xGF: 1.2
xGA: 1.5
So really I'm okay with the first line playing really low event "safe" hockey as long as they are doing it with defensive zone deployment and mostly against the other teams top 6, as they were doing in the Qualification round.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
The problem is that Dallas started icing Comeau against Johnny.
So our 1st is playing in the defensive zone against their 4th line. That's a match-up that they should pounce on and attack. That right there is a match-up you can expose and win a series on.
No matter the deployment, the Gaudreau - Monahan - Lindholm line has to produce on the PP and be better 5 on 5.
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Yeah this was the problem yesterday. Against the Jets the deployment was mostly against the Jets top 6. Yesterday the Stars 4th line was taking those offensive zone draws against the Flames first line, the Flames top line need to use those opportunities to generate offense.
Here is the ice time for the top line yesterday against the Stars top 4 centers (at least as they were listed on the pre-game lines):
Hintz: 0:12
Pavelski: 4:37
Seguin: 0:52
Faksa: 8:09
So problem was most of the TOI was against the Faksa line, which is a matchup they need to take better advantage of than they were able to yesterday.
CF: 11
CA: 17
HDCF: 0
HDCA: 0
SCF: 4
SCA: 2
xGF: 0.16
xGA: 0.16
Zone Starts: 33.3%
So heavy defensive zone deployment, gave up absolutely nothing in terms of scoring chances or high danger chances, and didn't hurt the team. Interestingly enough they actually dominated the Pavekslki line where they had a couple of offensive zone starts (78% CF), but struggled against the Faksa line against whom they had mostly d-zone starts (21.4% CF).