Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Nothing cherry picked about it. First stat I went to.
4th liners generally don't score. none of them. So you look to what they give up. You can't look at actual goals against only or you may get some bad luck. So you go to expected goals against.
He's 287th
With 400+ players he's roughly 9th on an average NHL team.
Hell on the Flames he's 9th.
That's fine for a fourth liner in my mind.
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He's maybe fine for a 4th liner if
1) the Flames had an elite top line doing the lions share of the team's scoring, or,
2) the Flames are fine with being mediocre and/or chasing a high draft pick
Since the Flames are neither of these, they need a better 4th line than what they currently have. After all, they're a score-by-committee team now that Johnny and Chucky are gone.
Simply saying "4th liners basically don't score" is a very flawed argument. To fully assess a player's worth to a team, you have to look at everything the player does and doesn't do, and make a comprehensive assessment of what the player brings to the table. If the player contributes nothing offensively, he needs to be above average (I'd argue
way above average) in terms of helping his team keep the puck out of the net.
Among forwards with at least 200 5v5 minutes, he's 219th place among 305 forwards in xGA/60. That's below average. Not nearly good enough. By comparison, Lewis is in 6th place in the entire NHL in that category. So you could make a good case that Lewis is suitable for the 4th line, but not really in the case of Lucic. As for Ritchie, he just barely misses the 200 minute threshold but if you overlook that, he's 144th in that category, about the league average. Which is fine if he's chipping in offensively. He did earlier this year, but only has 2 points in the past month.
Sitting Ritchie makes sense at this point, but Lucic and Rooney are not guys I would slot ahead of him.